| Date | Comp | Home team | Score | Away team | Res |
| 11/11/18 | PRL | Qəbələ | 1 – 3 | Qarabağ | W |
| 24/11/18 | PRL | Qarabağ | 1 – 1 | Sabah | D |
| 29/11/18 | Europa | Qarabağ | 1 – 6 | Sporting CP | L |
| 03/12/18 | PRL | Qarabağ | 5 – 1 | Keşlə | W |
| 09/12/18 | PRL | Zira | 0 – 6 | Qarabağ | W |
| 13/12/18 | Europa | Arsenal | 20 : 00 | Qarabağ |
Thus Qarabağ has shown some remarkable scoring quality -winning 5-1 and 0-6 in their last two games. Only when facing a Sporting Lisbon team did anything go wrong.
But here is a very strange thing I have found – in the Azerbaijan Premier League there is not just one Qarabag but two – as there are for many other teams – at least according to the increasingly odd Wikipedia’s European football pages.
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sumgayit II | 13 | 10 | 0 | 3 | 29 | 10 | +19 | 30 |
| 2 | MOIK Baku | 13 | 9 | 2 | 2 | 22 | 11 | +11 | 29 |
| 3 | Neftçi Baku II | 13 | 7 | 2 | 4 | 16 | 15 | +1 | 23 |
| 4 | Zaqatala | 13 | 5 | 6 | 2 | 22 | 13 | +9 | 21 |
| 5 | Qarabağ II | 13 | 6 | 2 | 5 | 23 | 15 | +8 | 20 |
| 6 | Keşla II | 13 | 6 | 2 | 5 | 21 | 16 | +5 | 20 |
| 7 | Shuvalan | 13 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 16 | 14 | +2 | 20 |
| 8 | Qarabağ | 13 | 6 | 2 | 5 | 13 | 15 | −2 | 20 |
| 9 | Sabah II | 13 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 12 | 8 | +4 | 19 |
| 10 | Sabail II | 13 | 4 | 1 | 8 | 13 | 26 | −13 | 13 |
| 11 | Turan | 13 | 4 | 1 | 8 | 17 | 24 | −7 | 13 |
| 12 | Kapaz | 13 | 2 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 14 | −7 | 11 |
| 13 | Ağsu | 13 | 2 | 4 | 7 | 9 | 23 | −14 | 10 |
| 14 | Zira II | 13 | 2 | 0 | 11 | 11 | 27 | −16 | 6 |
If you can explain what is going on please do let me know. I have checked as far as I can and there is no doubt Qarabag and Qarabag II are both one of the same club. There is a long article on Wiki concerning the national league but no mention of double club entries.
And even odder, other sites give a different league table… This one below is from Odds Portal. And the table here does not correspond to either QI or QII in the Wiki league. Surely Wiki isn’t making it all up is it? Whoever heard of that?
| # | Team | P | W | D | L | F:A | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Neftci Baku | 14 | 10 | 3 | 1 | 26:10 | 33 |
| 2. | Qarabag | 14 | 9 | 3 | 2 | 32:14 | 30 |
| 3. | Sabail | 14 | 6 | 3 | 5 | 16:14 | 21 |
| 4. | Gabala | 14 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 17:18 | 17 |
| 5. | Sabah Baku | 14 | 5 | 2 | 7 | 12:20 | 17 |
| 6. | SumQayit | 14 | 4 | 3 | 7 | 13:20 | 15 |
| 7. | Keshla | 14 | 3 | 3 | 8 | 16:23 | 12 |
| 8. | Zira | 14 | 2 | 4 | 8 | 12:25 | 10 |
But really I do wonder if someone hasn’t got at the Wiki site and been messing around a bit. At least, as I say in the headline we only have to play them twice.
Still the Europa table isn’t looking quite so strange.
| Pos | Team | Pld | W | D | L | GF | GA | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 5 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 11 | 2 | +9 | 13 |
| 2 | Sporting CP | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 10 | 3 | +7 | 10 |
| 3 | Vorskla Poltava | 5 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 10 | −6 | 3 |
| 4 | Qarabağ | 5 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 2 | 12 | −10 | 3 |
We are through and of course we are champions of the group – it would have been a cause of much teeth gnashing if this were not the case. And thinking of which I wondered in watching the TV last night if anyone has ever told the commentators or newspaper writers that the “Last 16 is not a trophy”. Can you imagine how they would have reacted if we made a lot of our 19 consecutive years in the Champions League the moment of massive celebrations, reflected through all the country’s newspapers?
Of course we don’t deny that Liverpool has a remarkable record in the European Cup and Champions League winning it five times – something we’d be knocked out to do (and we didn’t because we got knocked out, if you see what I mean), but then to get completely over excited by qualifying seems a bit silly.
Clubs’ fortunes ebb and flow – apart it seems is with the Wiki version of the Azerbaijan Premier League where some teams get two goes.
We’ll know by the end of today all of the teams that are coming down from the Champions League to go into the Europa’s second phase. Eight clubs will make the move, so far including Club Brugg, Inter Milan, Napoli, Galatasaray, Benfica and Valencia. Sadly Monaco will not be there having come bottom of their group. The final clubs will be decided in this evening’s games.
More anon – and if you do understand that Wiki league table please do let me know.
The wikipedia page is odd for me as well. There is nothing listed in the “talk” page for the entire 2018/19 season, nor for the talk page of the league template being used. The wikipedia page does say the league standings are based on a page at Soccerway, and that page doesn’t show the I/II-ism that wikipedia is showing.
The soccerway page shows that 14 games have been played, which is one more than Wikipedia is showing.
What I think is happening, is that there is one person editing the page using an Azerbaijani characterset, and another person is editing that same page using a Russian characterset. And there is some subtle difference between the two charactersets. My guess is there are one or more diacritical marks which have different codes.
Gord – you amaze me! Truly one of the coolest dudes on this site.
Hope the winter is not too severe for your farming activities.
Menace
I didn’t think I was doing anything amazing. My Mom’s family were Germans living in the Ukraine (Volhynia, west of Kyiv). So I have spent some time researching the family, and ran across this multiple characterset problem a long time ago.
We have little snow on the farm, but more than I want to go and get wood chips from piles to put around the trees I planted this year.
OT: Referee stats
I am getting caught up. At Game Day 16, we now have 15 sets of changes in the ranking of referees. If I add together all 15 of these increments in rankings, I get:
+3 8
+2 16
+1 68
0_ 71
-1 43
-2 12
-3 13
-4_ 4
-5_ 1
A swing in the positive direction, means the referee is becoming worse – their “man management” is such that more treatments are coming up, with more time short-handed being played and more teams forced into substitutions because of injury.
It would appear that referees tend to act just a little to cause these positive changes in ranking. Why then do we have this tail off to the negative side?
-3(13)
Coote, East, Hooper, Attwell (no games)
Friend (Chel$ea 0 – 0 Everton)
Probert (Cardiff 0 – 1 Leicester)
Kavanagh (Southampton 0 – 0 Newcastle)
Atkinson (CPalace 0 – 2 Southampton), Tierney (Leicester 1 – 2 Liverpool)
Dean, Mason, Marriner, Attwell (no games)
-4(4)
Mason (Bournemouth 0 – 4 Liverpool!), Tierney(Arsenal 1 – 0 Huddersfield)
Marriner (Cardiff 2 – 1 Wolves)
Probert (Bournemouth 0 – 0 Southampton)
-5(1)
Attwell (Everton 1 – 1 Huddersfield)
+3(8)
Scott, Tierney, Attwell (no games)
Scott (Arsenal 3 – 1 State Aid)
Scott, Kavanagh, Atkinson (Chelsea 3 – 2 Arsenal), Moss
Because differences in ranking involve 2 consecutive game days, it is possible the game which triggers things is the week before. And you see a number of occassions where a change in rank of 3, is accompanied by no games to the referees in question.