Liverpool ‘weird bunch’ hypocrites after Salah ‘sabotage’ as football can be fixed with seven changes | OneFootball

The Liverpool ‘weird bunch’ have had their hypocrisy called out after the contrasting treatment of Trent Alexander-Arnold and Mohamed Salah.

There are also seven ‘drastic’ changes to fix football, while the xG debate rolls on.

Liverpool fans acting ‘weird’ over Alexander-Arnold hypocrisy

“Liverpool gave him everything. Academy graduate. Local lad. European Cup winner. Premier League winner. The city adored him. The Kop practically adopted him. Yet after years of noises suggesting he wanted to stay and build a legacy, he walked away for nothing.”

You gave him [Alexander-Arnold] nothing, he provided a world class (going forward) service in return for a wage, and your own increasingly inept transfer brains trust didn’t tie him down at the right time, or sell him if they couldn’t.

The fact that you and whole swathes of your emotionally immature, and in many cases hard of thinking, fan base can’t (or more likely won’t) accept this just reinforces why the rest of us justifiably think you’re a bunch of children with a hugely impressive collection of double standards.

You’re not different or special, this doesn’t mean more, and you continually embarrass yourselves with emails like this. Even if you were right though, and once more for clarity – you’re absolutely not, why would you even care? He was an employee of the team of millionaire football players that you decided at some point in the past will fill whatever emotional void in your life, now he’s an employee of another. Ironically possibly the only other in world football with a bigger set of balloons as a fan base. End of. There’s no deeper meaning. He doesn’t owe you anything. He just moved jobs.

My advice would be to seek alternative views outside the kopite headbanger echo chamber. Be prepared for some funny looks at first while you reintegrate into normal society though. RHT/TS x (Meanwhile, your has-been gobby winger leaves on a free and sabotages the whole stinking edifice on his way out, and you bid him a tearful farewell. You really are a fantastically weird bunch)

Late Arne Slot missive rears his head

Advance warning, this a late (and boring) email from a Liverpool fan about the Slot sacking.

In short, I can’t get my arse off the fence.

Maybe he deserved more time given the whole ‘winning the league in his 1st season’ thing, and issues that impacted last season.

Maybe we would have continued on a slow downward spiral if he stayed.

Maybe Slot lost the room, maybe Iraola can’t bring it together.

Fk knows…but it could be fun. Aidan, Lfc (I know nothing…hopefully better mailboxers have more interesting things to say)

Seven ‘drastic’ changes to fix football

Brian (BRFC)’s mail reminded me that Saudi Arabia are somehow hosting a World Cup in 2034 because FIFA are moral relativists who only care about money and fanboying for human rights abusing dictators while ignoring modern day slavery. Actual football and fans are really an afterthought in the global game these days so it needs a complete overhaul at every level. I have a few suggestions:

1) FIFA, UEFA, domestic FA’s and every other similar bodies need dissolving and replacing with new organizations run by actual footballers and fans not elitist Moloch worshipping bureaucrats that would be working for the UN, EU Commission or a criminal banking organization otherwise.

2) Only nations with democratic governments and good human rights records are allowed to take part in international or continental competitions. The claim that allowing countries like Saudi Arabia and China to take part encourages them to be more “liberal” and “progressive” is nonsense, it just legitimizes these evil regimes and shows them they have no reason to change.

3) If you are at war or supplying weapons to another country at war you are suspended from all competitions at the international team and club level because morals and stuff.

4) All club teams can field a maximum of 3 foreign players. This used to work fine and football was far better back when it was the rule. 50% of players also have to be from your local geographic area. No genuine fan wants to watch an overpaid, average Brazilian who’d never even heard of your club before signing over a local lad do they?

5) All club teams have to be owned by a person(s) from their own country. The German 50+1 rule should be implemented globally at club level. No more American or Middle Eastern owners who know nothing about football and just see your club as an investment or PR exercise.

6) All ticket prices at club and international level should realistically be affordable for everyone. Football is supposed to be a working class sport not an elitist one. Half empty stadiums ruin the game. No more price gouging real fans or excluding them from football entirely for not being wealthy.

7) Gianni Infantino to be placed on a rocket and sent on a one way trip to explore the universe.

If a country or club cannot comply with the rules above then they don’t get to play, tough luck. Football needs to get its soul back so drastic measures must be taken. William, Leicester

England’s excuse for not winning the World Cup arrives

Lots of talk about the heat at the World Cup. It’s a valid concern but have we (England) already got our excuse? If we don’t win it or even worse we utterly flop and exit the tournament early will the fans and even more so the press accept the heat as the factor why we didn’t play to our best? Especially us having a German coach and all? Yes the heat is a concern but is it already planned as an excuse if we don’t do the business? Dan, London

xG debate rolls on with rare actual discussions

Thank you Disgruntled SA and Josh, I’ve been mailing in for years and this is one of the very few actual discussions instead of just fence sitting and shouting your wrong at each other. Lovely

I don’t disagree with anything that either of you say but I also think that xG does have its place beyond betting companies. Ask any coaching or analytical team at any top football club and I guarantee they dissect xG religiously.

The point around the trend was interesting and it’s true it wasn’t a big same size. So I forwent my actual work and ran 5 more seasons prior (thank god for AI). This was fascinating and proves his point quite nicely.

15/16 – variation of 2 positions of average 16/17 – 1.3 17/18 – 2.3 18/19 – 1.3 19/20 – 2.2 20/21 – 2.4 21/22 – 2.3 22/23 – 2.6 23/24 – 2.7 24/25 – 1.6 25/26 – 3.1

So the average of the first 5 seasons was 1.9 and now it’s 2.4 so the xG data is indeed getting less reliable (with the irony of a one season in 24/25 where you could say it’s near perfect.

So I did some more research and the xG models are constantly changing so this might account for changes and swings over the years. But a few things came up from research:

-xG is for average players, top premier league are above average -Game State Management, because when teams are ahead they don’t push for more goals, dropping their xG, so a dominant win doesnt look so dominant (pointing to Joshs comments) -xG becoming more precise means that execution and finishing ability are not taken into account as much -Lowblock and mid-blocks means that xG is harder to quantify accurately

I did a bit more research but I do need to work now. There is so much to learn, such as the dramatic decrease in low-value crosses having a big impact is something I hadn’t even considered. This whole topic is wildly fascinating and I think there is plenty of value on both sides of the fence.

Thanks again to my fellow mailboxers for having a nice debate instead of the usual Stewie bulls*** Rob A (matches being longer means the values are different too, genuinely so interesting) AFC

Since there is very little football happening, let’s continue the xG debate and add to the mailbox discussion.

xG understandably has its critics, but part of the problem is that it is misused and misunderstood. Weget told things like a match finished with an xG of 2.1 versus 0.9, but that is not helpful. XG was never designed to be used when looking at a single game. It is supposed to be looked at over a period of time, to indicate over or under performance of a team.

One of the best examples, and one of the first times I can remember xG forming part of the mainstream football discussion, was Klopp’s final season at Dortmund. Despite finishing second in the Bundesliga the previous season, Dortmund were bottom of the table at in 2014-15, going into the winter break.

However, the analysis showed this was not an accurate picture. Dortmund had an expected goal difference of +8, yet their actual goal difference was -8. They were creating enough chances and defending well enough to be finishing in the top 4, but poor finishing and bad luck left them in the relegation zone.

The second half of the season proved this to be true. Dortmund finished strongly secured Europa League qualification and reached the cup final.

There are countless other examples, but Dortmund remains one of the clearest examples of what xG is actually for. It is not a tool for deciding who deserved to win a match. It is a tool for helping understand whether a team’s results are sustainable over time.

I agree that it is very over used, and much punditry and social media commentary doesn’t help that. But the analysis behind the data is definitely sound. Mike, LFC, Dubai

As somebody who is a professional physicist spending their entire life extracting signals from noisy real-world events using statistics, I made the mistake of actually testing the xG argument. Rob’s completed-season comparison shows that xG difference broadly reflects team quality, but it is not really a prediction test: all 38 matches have already happened. The proper question is whether xG measured now predicts matches that have not happened yet. So I tested ten complete Premier League seasons: 200 team-seasons and 7,600 team-match records. After every team’s fifth through thirtieth match, I compared points, goal difference and xG information with the points it earned during their remaining fixtures. The results:

non-penalty xG difference correlated more strongly with future performance than the current league table or ordinary goal difference;

adding xG to a model containing points and goal difference reduced prediction error by about 7%;

even after including recent form and ClubElo, xG still improved the forecast by about another 4%.

So xG is genuinely predictive. It does add information beyond results, goal difference and historic team strength.

However, the critics are right about several things.

A completed-season xG table is mostly descriptive. A single match’s xG is noisy and often stripped of context. Total xG cannot fully describe tactics, game state, red cards or whether one side spent the final twenty minutes protecting a lead. And it certainly does not decide who “deserved” to win. There is also no contradiction in xG predicting future performance while the current table better predicts the eventual final table late in the season. The table contains points already banked; xG cannot retrospectively confiscate them.

So the sensible conclusion is:

xG is not a faux statistic – it is a useful but imperfect predictive measure.

Anyone claiming xG means nothing is wrong. Anyone claiming xG conclusively proves who deserved to win should also probably calm down.