Viva Espana

Good luck to Spain against Germany - they'll need it.
That said, the tournament pre-favourites have looked dire, but generally only when Torres is starting.  As soon as he's taken off, they come to life.  The benefit of having a mobile frontman in Villa and a creative but steely  Fabregas in support seems to liberate them, mainly in the way England would have benefited with Rooney up top on his own.
Torres is yet another of the big guns who've been piss-poor - Torres, Ronaldo, Rooney, Kaka, Messi.  The top five players in the world at club level, and they've been shockingly out of sorts.
Torres does not look fit, does not look motivated, does not seem to have the belief of his colleagues.
Make sure that you don't start with Torres, Del Bosque, now will you?

Woy of the Pool

Good appointment by Liverpool.  Very smart.
Woy Hodgson is a nice bloke, intelligent, eloquent, multi-lingual, and an achiever. Despite his poor spell at Blackburn, he's achieved everywhere he's gone.  He turned Fulham from relegation fodder to the league position that Liverpool finished this season just gone.  Then a Europa Cup final playing the opposite of the sort of football Rafa Benitez played in the Champions League.
But he's got a big challenge on.  He's just lost one of the few decent players - Benayoun to Chelsea on a Free - and he's only got a report £15m to spend.
Not wishing to come over all Football Manager, but Woy has some simple choices to make:

1. Sell Gerrard, Mascherano and Torres - that'll net £100m, probably.
2. Ship out Benitez' duds - Kuyt (who is astonishingly having a good world cup, so might go in group 1), Lucas, Arveloa, N'Gog, etc (to the power of a million).
3. Spend whatever you get left over on decent players.

Easy.

I hate Liverpool, but I wish Woy luck there.

Expectation

A similar post to the previous one - what is expectation?
32 Countries go to the World Cup, and each one has an expectation.
There are duffers like New Zealand, Algeria and North Korea (and my native Scotland, should we ever qualify again) whose expectation is that they'll go out first round, without a win.  Exceeding that expectation - scoring a goal, winning - is easy, you might think.  Paraguay are the greatest example at 2010.
The middle-ranking nations - Ghana, Slovenia/akia, Australia, US, Mexico, Uruguay - all expect a gallant run to the second round, not necessarily getting there, and being pumped by the group winner and the second round opponents.  That is easy to manage - qualify for the second round.  Uruguay are greatly exceeding this. Ghana should be
The so-called big guns, though.  Okay, I'll list them:

• England
• Germany
• Spain
• Netherlands
• Italy
• France
• Portugal
• Argentina
• Brazil

All of these nations have an expectation that they would win the World Cup.  Add in Uruguay, and that's 10 countries for whom anything less than the semis is abject failure - sack the coach, ditch the team.  Of those, two went out in the group stages, two in the second round, two in the quarters, so six nations have abjectly failed.  However awful England were, they and Argentina lost to the current favourites, the Germans.  Arguably, only Brazil, Germany and Italy have the history, and Spain the current squad and form, to have such an expectation.
Looking at the (flawed) FIFA rankings the following expectations are obvious:

• Brazil & Spain - finalists
• Netherlands & Portugal - semis
• Italy, Germany, Argentina & England - quarters
• France & Uruguay - 2nd Round

So there is over-achievement - Germany & Uruguay - and underachievement - England's is not as abject as Italy or Portugal.  (Portugal were incredibly lucky to get even that far, they were abysmal - Ronaldo looked lost, Queiroz shared the incompetence of his predecessor at Man Utd.)
A final point - England were used to Quarter Finals according to the press.  The Euros' Quarters are equivalent to the World Cup second round - 16 teams start the tournament, not 32.

Capello

So, the Team England suits have given Capello a stay of execution. Interesting.

The pros to the decision are obvious -

£6m a year = £12m payoff,

they wouldn't be able to replace him with anyone with as good a CV - Woy's gone to Liverpool, Dave Redknapp's in far and away the biggest job of his career now, not got the track record of Capello, and the tabloids seem to have forgotten Big Sam's dreadful record at Newcastle (either way, he's not an international manager, is he?).

The cons - a poor World Cup.

Okay, so losing to the only decent team in the World Cup is not bad, at whatever stage of the competition it's at. Germany, for all their lack of big time, big name players, are the only good TEAM I've seen at the World Cup. England's formation was all set around accommodating the stars - Lampard and Gerrard - into an unbalanced midfield. Germany lost their star - Ballack - and have reaped the benefit of letting Oezil and Schweinsteiger free.

To have any hope of any glory, England need to focus on youth. There were good youngsters in the squad - Milner, Johnson, Dawson, Hart - and more outwith, albeit underperforming - Walcott, Johnson, Young, Agbonlahor, Taylor, the Everton boys, and Micah Richards, who seriously needs to move.

If Capello doesn't ditch the old guard, then he deserves to go.

Statgasm 2

After a somewhat shocking night, Burnley's win over Man U means they jump to the top, 3pts better than what West Brom did last season.  Not looking good for Pompey...

D    Team
3    Burnley
2    Arsenal
2    Chelsea
2    Fulham
2    Liverpool
2    Manchester City
2    Sunderland
2    West Ham United
2    Wigan Athletic
1    Birmingham City
0    Tottenham Hotspur
-1    Aston Villa
-1    Blackburn Rovers
-1    Bolton Wanderers
-1    Everton
-1    Hull City
-1    Manchester United
-1    Stoke City
-1    Wolverhampton Wanderers
-2    Portsmouth


So, the predicted league table is interesting; Liverpool actually close the gap to a point and Hull fall into the Drop zone...

       Team
89    Manchester United
88    Liverpool
85    Chelsea
74    Arsenal
62    Everton
61    Aston Villa
55    Fulham
53    West Ham United
52    Manchester City
51    Tottenham Hotspur
47    Wigan Athletic
44    Stoke City
40    Bolton Wanderers
40    Blackburn Rovers
39    Portsmouth
38    Sunderland
35    Birmingham City
35    Burnley
34    Hull City
31    Wolverhampton Wanderers

Yeah, so it's still pointless, but a bit more meaningful...

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Statgasm

Okay, here's the first entry then. One of my main gripes is how the league table starts after the first game (and on the BBC website this year, they have a live table, so effectively from the first minute), and is obviously meaningless. This hasn't stopped a lot of blogging on the horrendous start to Liverpool's season.

But is it horrendous? Managers talk of "getting 40 points" or "if he can get 20 goals for us", and this article on Liverpool's horrendous start had an interesting comment; they got beaten by Spurs at White Hart Lane last year. Also, they drew away to Stoke; therefore, if they beat Stoke, they're actually 2pts up on last season. Tottenham, by contrast, beat Liverpool, so they're headed to the same points total.

There are some assumptions in this statgasm - Birmingham, Wolves and Burnley replace Newcastle, Boro and West Brom by virtue of finishing in the corresponding places, and hence take their results - so it's not quite perfect, but it works.

And it makes for interesting reading:

Diff Team
2 Arsenal
2 Chelsea
2 Fulham
2 Manchester City
2 Manchester United
2 Sunderland
2 West Ham United
2 Wigan Athletic
0 Burnley
0 Liverpool
0 Stoke City
0 Tottenham Hotspur
-1 Aston Villa
-1 Birmingham City
-1 Blackburn Rovers
-1 Bolton Wanderers
-1 Everton
-1 Hull City
-1 Portsmouth
-1 Wolverhampton Wanderers


Keep this up, and Fulham will do even better than last year. Unfortunately, Hull will do worse. Actually, that's not a bad thing at all.

This is after the games last night. More to come.

Have you tried restarting?

I'm restarting this blog.  I did for a few months in 2007 and got too busy, but I think the time is write to start again.

I will usually do a post every day, and try to focus more on indepth thoughts and analysis of news, rather than reporting.  I hope to get a post about Michael Owen up today or tomorrow.

Thanks,
Jamie

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