By Tony Attwood
Two of us went off to watch Arsenal at Coventry recently in the Checkatrade Trophy. Now its time to go and see the club in the under 23s league, known as Premier League 2 as tonight they are playing at Leicester.
I occasionally use these games as a riposte to people who say how much they wish they could go and see Arsenal, saying “you can: away matches like this are open, you don’t need a ticket, and normally prices are very low.” Plus of course there are Europa home games, and indeed the League Cup the other night at Arsenal Stadium, for which there were tickets a plenty available.
Indeed speaking of the League Cup, here is the draw…
AFC Bournemouth v Norwich City
Arsenal v Blackpool
Burton Albion v Nottingham Forest
Chelsea v Derby County
Leicester City v Everton/Southampton
Manchester City v Fulham
Middlesbrough v Crystal Palace
West Ham v Tottenham Nomads
I’m hoping to be at the Blackpool game – for just like tonight’s game it is always good to watch the younger talent to see who is coming up.
Arsenal are third in the under 23 league, with a game in hand over the leaders…
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
| 1 | Manchester City | 7 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 20 | 20 | 0 | 13 |
| 2 | Everton | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 11 | 2 | 9 | 11 |
| 3 | Arsenal | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 15 | 10 | 5 | 11 |
| 4 | Leicester City | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 11 |
| 5 | Chelsea | 7 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 9 | 7 | 2 | 11 |
- The results so far have been
- 20 August 2018: Arsenal 1-1 Brighton & Hove Albion
- 17 September 2018: Blackburn Rovers 0-0 Arsenal
- 21 September 2018: Arsenal 4-0 Liverpool
In the last match against Liverpool we had goals from Bukayo Saka (assist Eddie Nketiah), Eddie himself (assist Joe Willock, then Joe Willock scored, and finally Eddie got his second (assist Josephy Olowu).
The game tonight is at Holmes Park in Leicester with kick-off at 7pm (to allow the kiddies to get home in time for tea).
Leicester City started in the league with three wins from their opening four fixtures, but they’ve since been held to back-to-back draws by Chelsea and Brighton & Hove Albion. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see them playing for a draw tonight.
The up and coming man of the moment is Tyreece John-Jules who has played in the last three under 23 games.
There is a video of the Arsenal v Liverpool under 23 game here. And if you keep scrolling down the page there is a video of the last under 18 game as well.
Meanwhile the world of funny headline goes on. Here are a few to pass the time until kick off
Zinedine Zidane to take over Manchester United, Arsenal in race to re-sign Alexis Sanchez,… (
Winning mentality’ refreshing but not certain (
Dermot Gallagher – Referee right not to give penalty to Alexandre Lacazette (
Anyway, enough of the gibberish. We’ll be meeting up, hopefully being at the ground in time for a beer, and then settle down to watch the match.
It’s getting decidedly cooler in the East Midlands this evening. Must be time to get the big coat on and put the sunglasses away until next year.
- Arsenal training centre: virtual reality and tales of past recoveries
- How Arsenal’s win v Watford was re-written to fit with an alternative reality
- Bonkers drivel, start of World War III, and a load of complaints. What the papers say.
Play for a draw! Stick it on the dressing room wall young foxes
There is a live feed via the official Leicester City website. You will have to sign up but it is free and you can opt out of all Leicester communications.
Should be a good game, both teams level on points and sitting third and fourth in the table two points behind City at the top so a win for either sees them go top.
One all at half time.
Leicester started better and had the majority of the early play but switched off at a corner allowing Arsenal to take the lead. Leicester got their equaliser from a sloppy Arseanal pass in our final third
No Smith Rowe, Nketiah or Willock so a fair chance they will be on the plane on Thursday. Also no Bramall or Zelalem so i guess they are both injured
Omole got our goal in min20, Wright equalised ten minutes later
Our team
Iliev (gk), Plezueguelo, Bola, Omole, Ballard, Medley, Olayinka, Burton, Coyle, Saka, John-Jules
Subs – Hein (gk), Olowu, Thompson, Smith, Balogun
60 minutes and we retake the lead from the penalty spot Robbie Burton sent the keeper the wrong way and a nice finish to the bottom right hand corner.
That’s the final score Arsenal 2 Leicester 1.
We are back on top of the table!
Not the best or most fluent of gamesfrom either side but like our senior team three points won ugly still count as three points.
I think we might be second in the league.
Either way it was a good fun evening out at a nice ground, and an Arsenal team playing without any of its top stars.
Just back home so will hold until the morning to write it up.
Game Day 7 ended today.
The man-minutes of caution handed out to the Top-6:
Liverpool!! 2 219
Chel$ea _ _ 3 220
Man$ity _ _ 4 241
Spuds _ _ _ 6 324
ManU _ _ _ _8 437
Arsenal _ _17 545
This is a combination of of how many cards are handed out, and how early. And it takes into consideration red cards (double value) and penalties. In some sense, people might expect this to be a measure of how dirty a team is.
Is Arsenal really twice as dirty the worst of the rest (ManU)? Or does the PGMO have a “plan”?
The median man-minutes in the EPL is 467. This is a more robust estimator of central tendency than the average (assuming a single distribution). The estimator of dispersion associated with the median is MAD (Median Absolute Deviation). I’ll put up some steps in calculation this, maybe you will “see the light”?
Write them in order, in a manner which shows where the median is:
211 _219_ _220_ _241_ 306
_324_ 345 _437_ 453
465
469
483 486 498 529
535 _545_ 554 558 582
The median is midway between 465 and 469 (and is 467).
Calculate the deviations of team man-minutes from this median value (same display format as above):
-256 -248 -247 -226 -161
-143 -122 -30 -14
-2
2
16 19 31 62
68 78 87 91 115
This is NOT a symmetric distribution, it looks very much like two modes.
Remove the sign of the deviation, and sort the deviations. Display in the same manner.
002 002 014 016 019
030 031 062 068
078
087
091 115 122 143
161 226 247 248 256
Or our estimate of dispersion (assuming a single distribution) is 82.5.
—
I went back above, and put underscores around the Top-6 scores. Let’s divide the data into Top-6 and Rest-of-the-Pack.
Median for Top-6 is 282.5
219 220
241
324
437 545
63.5 62.5
41.5
41.5
154.5 262.5
41.5 41.5
62.5
63.5
154.5 262.5
So the MAD for the TOP-6 is 63. But the distribution looks strange.
Rest of the Pack
211 306 345 453 465 469
483
486
498 529 535 554 558 582
The median is 484.5.
273.5 178.5 139.5 31.5 19.5 15.5
1.5
1.5
13.5 44.5 50.5 69.5 73.5 97.5
MAD is 47.5.
Collecting data: Top-6 is 282.6 +/- n * 63. Rest of the Pack is 484.5 +/- n * 47.5
Let’s look at the Top-6 without Arsenal.
219 220
241
324 437
Median is 241.
22 21
0
83 196
The MAD is 22.
Let’s drop ManU out as well.
219
220
241
324
Median is 230.5
11.5
10.5
10.5
93.5
MAD is 10.5.
So the Spuds might be special too. Let’s just look at the two money clubs and Liverpool!!.
219
220
241
By inspection, median is 220
1
0
21
The sorting just swaps the first two lines, so the MAD is 1. This is far too SMALL a measure of dispersion! I think someone is cooking the books.
—————–
Wolves are doing something exceptional (so far) in terms of avoiding playing under caution. Three are other things which make Wolves stand out in my limited data set. It might be worth looking at Rest of the Pack without Wolves, but I don’t want to.
The Top-6 largely don’t get carded. They have the most money, the players they have may be more skillful. It is possible that some of their skills extend to tackling in a manner which should be carded, but isn’t. Most skillful players don’t try to injure opponents, but examples do exist. How many are associated with ManU?
They get few cards, if the get cards they are late. They don’t get penalties given against them. Except Arsenal. Statistically, it is possible the Top-6 are: Liverpool!!/Chel$ea/Man$ity, Spuds, ManU, Arsenal.
If I look at the inverse treatment league (with poor reporting of treatments being mandated by EPL/FA/PGMO) we see Chelsea in 3rd, Liverpool!! in 5th and Man$ity in 15th. ManU are in 17th and spuds at 18th.
Man$ity, ManU and the Spuds really should be getting carded more than they are. Somebody (named 😈 Mike Riley?) is telling referees to not give cards to Man$ity, ManU and the spuds.
I don’t know where Arsenal might be, if the officiating was fair. ManU has tons of money, and yet it isn’t getting them what Chel$ea and Man$ity are getting. I can only think this is fallout because Moaninho is not the excellent manager that he thinks he is.
Spuds and Liverpool!! are media darlings.
Arsenal are getting players injured (severely) and referees are not giving cards (or sometimes even fouls). Some Arsenal players (Xhaka) are getting cards for being named to the starting 11 or for being on the bench. Arsenal players are being called for fouls far too easily (he ate garlic ice cream last night ref, he should be carded) and cards far too easily given.
The number of cards is said to be a sign of teams being dirty. PGMO wants the number of cards issued in games to be nearly equal, to get away from this interpretation. What would be a better measure, is the number of man-games missed due to injury when the actions of the referee allows an injury to be assigned to an incident. But look back to AMN, the referee didn’t even call it a foul. Expect no help from PGMO to Arsenal.
Above, I present mostly data from the caution league.
[sarcasm]
Arsenal must be dirty, because they are getting more cards and/or cards sooner than the other Top-6 teams.
[/sarcasm]
The inverse treatment league is all about which opposition cause teams to require treatments on the field. As the reporting of treatments changed slightly after the league started, it became obvious to me that most treatments on the field are no longer kept track of in any easily available source I can find.
But, the data I have is this. The most number of treatments inflicted on opposition is 14 by Crystal Palace. The Top-6 teams who have inflicted 7 or less treatments are: Liverpool!! (6) and Chel$ea (5). By the strict definition I have used, Arsenal have a score of 9. But, 2 of the incidences where an opposing player needed treatment playing Arsenal, were self-inflicted. So Arsenal should be joining Liverpool!! and Chel$ea. Man$ity has a score of 11, ManU has a score of 12, and the spuds are at 13.
Of the 178 treatments counted there are no cards for someone simulating injury and I believe only 4 cards handed out for some variation on rough play. I do not know how many of those 178 treatments involved the granting of a free kick because a foul was called. I do believe AMN’s treatment because his fibula was broken, was not a foul, let alone a card to the opposition.
But the inverse treatment league is suggesting that the dirtier Top-6 teams are Man$ity, ManU and the spuds.
So why do we get forced to play under so many man-minutes of caution?
—-
I wish the various sources producing commentaries, woud start to mention _every_ incidence of a player needing a treatment, instead of just mentioning the odd treatment here and there. And explicitly mention whether a foul was called and whether a card was issued.