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4 entries so far, I have sent invites to all those that played the football predictor game as well - reminder that entries must be in tonight

Invites sent to those that wanted in.
IF anyone else wants in then just let me know your ipools username

Any blondes up for an NFL £10 last longest on ipools.
If so put your ipools name on here and I will do the invites in a couple of days.

Starts this Thursday night.

There are rumours of a swap deal of Townsend to Leicester and Gray + £10 million to Palace.

I have only seen a few Gray appearances but I have to say if that deal went through I would be over the moon as a Palace supporter.
Townsend gives one good performance in 3/4 matches, sometimes his workrate leaves a lot to be desired (other days like Saturday he is like a man possessed!) but his end product is simply not good enough.

Why are Leicester happy to let Gray go, he seems to have a lot of potential and is highly rated by most Leicester fans.................problems with his attitude maybe??

as luck would have it.....

Expectations

Already used by many clubs, analysts and bettors for several years the Expected Goals metric from Opta is moving into the mainstream, featuring on Match of the Day this season.

An expected goal shows the percentage likelihood of a player scoring from a position on the pitch and shows how many goals a player or a team should have scored based on the chances they had in a game or over the course of a season. Each chance is ascribed a 'quality value' (xG) based on thousands of chances analysed by Opta over the history of the Premier League. The higher that figure, with one the maximum value, the more likely a chance will be converted. xG is a way of establishing whether a player is scoring more or less goals than his chances should dictate. .

Each of last season's top eight premier league goal-scorers, the exception being Sergio Aguero, scored more goals than their expected goals would suggest. Harry Kane scored 29 goals, 10 goals more than expected by the quality of chances given to him or created by him.

Opta's key xG factor are:

    Distance from goal
    Angle of the shot
    Was it a shot or a header?
    Has the player just gone around an opponent?
    Was it a one on one or were defenders involved?
    What was the assist like? (e.g. long ball, pull-back, cross, through ball)
    In what part of the game did the chance occur? (e.g. open play, direct free-kick, corner kick)
    Is it a rebound?

Expected goals are useful when trying to anticipate turning points and reversions to mean ahead of betting markets, and in counteracting media/fan over-reactions to short term results.

Juventus in 2015-16 are an example cited by the BBC. They won only three of their first 10 games but analysis shows they were vastly outperforming that level of results. When results turned for the better and “G” became more correlated with “xG” they eventually won the title.

It can help when looking at both ends of the pitch, not only expected goals but expected goals against can be analysed. A team may be good or bad defensively, but might be doing better or worse in actual goals conceded than the xA statistic shows us

It is of course very early in this Premier League season but we can look at a few of last weekend’s games to illustrate what we might be looking for:

Southampton Swansea finished 0-0. We could see with our own eyes on highlights that Southampton created a lot of chances. The xG for two sides was Southampton 2.2 Swansea 0.3

Chelsea-Burnley? Down to 10 men early Chelsea were 3-0 down and lost 3-2. The xG? 1.3 and 0.7 respectively. Nothing to get too gloomy about for the home team, or too bullish about for the away team.

Crystal Palace-Huddersfield? Huddersfield won 3-0 but the xG? 0.9-0.6 (plus an own goal)

Everton-Stoke? 1-0  to Everton. Stoke? Their xG was lowest in the division over the weekend at 0.3 but Everton were only at 0.7 too

On Sunday, Newcastle and Tottenham began slowly and xG was well less than 1 for both teams in the first half. Then Newcastle were reduced to ten men and their xG understandably remained low. Tottenham’s leapt to 1.7.

Returning again to last season, and broadening out to a longer time frame the cumulative Expected goals for and against were as follows for last season's champions and this season's favourites:

Manchester City xG 79.4 xA (expected goals against) 28.4 xGD (expected goal difference) 51.1

Chelsea xG 64 xA 28.5 xGD 35.5

Statistics like this, over and above discounting what has happened in transfer market, help explain the bullishness for City this season that saw them go off around 2/1 to regain the title.

Thanks Rich

So if the chance falls to Aguero, is his expected goal value higher than if the same chance fell to Kompany?

more



Arsenal/Bellerin pen not given,Lacazette a shoelace width offside

not ready to anoint Stoke as a mid-table side yet, any more than try to argue that Huddersfield will stay up or West Brom hit the top six

have to admit Jese looked good though and we know Butland is superb

going to be a long season if we knee-jerk after every result

I have seen quite a few references xG this season, even on MoTD.
I know it relates to expected goals (or I assume it does) for each match, but could somebody explain in simple terms how it works.

Will the season predictor pool be updated regularly - will be more fun to follow on here if it is.

There's also a decent season predictor pool.

Predict the winner of various leagues and cups from England and the big leagues in Europe.

If 10 people put their i-pools username here I'll set up a private £2 blondepoker pool and I'll add £50 to the winner.

If you haven't got an account, norw is the perfect time to open one!

I'd be up for a blonde pool - username on there is MattHeasman

That chant really grates. Was all I heard in Brighton from Jan onwards. Interesting to see what they replace it with this season.

We're on our way, to the Champions League, we're on our way.

More like - We're on our way, to the Championship, we're on our way

Is the Coral 10 places online only or also available in the shops?

[Benteke YES Crystal Palace 50-1 could be worth a look]

Bit of an obvious one, but Lukaku top scorer 9/2 each way 1/4 4 places (Stars, Vic).

https://www.oddschecker.com/football/english/premier-league/top-goalscorer

Win price is bang on Betfair, place part we get 9/8, people looking to back odds on prices on Betfair.

Hard to see him not being there or thereabouts unless misses a chunk through injury.

thanks

we can't use either so would be 4/1 on open accounts, at which point the place is evens.


i will go through the championship stuff later when more opinions given

difficult to bet on this market without knowing who takes penalties as could be worth 5/6 goals

Kane   YES
Lukakua  ? he did at Everton
Aguero  YES last season when he played
Jesus  ?
Mane  ?
Lacazette  ?
Sanchez ?
Morata ?

Defoe did at Sunderland 66-1 could be interesting
Benteke  YES  Crystal Palace 50-1  could be worth a look
Andre Gray YES  150- 1 Burnley  stand out big price


https://www.oddschecker.com/football/english/premier-league/top-goalscorer

Missed a couple last season and was taken off them by the end of the season when Milivojevic took them and scored so unlikely Benteke will take them this season.

this lad is a real find.

WhoScored.com‏

Wilfred Ndidi: Only N'Golo Kante (48) has made more tackles than Ndidi (40) in the Premier League in 2017

Click to see full-size image.

having that sort of player is crucial, protects the cumbersome back four and allows, when he wins it, quick counters

 

he has looked very impressive.
Palace's upturn in fortunes is in a long way down to Luka Milivojecic who they signed from Olympiakos for around £12 million in January.  Exactly the type of player that it was obvious we needed but Pardew wouldn't sign - he wanted playmakers like Puncheon and Cabaye in the holding role which just doesn't work.

The holding midfielder role is turning into one of the most important in football.

Southampton vs Crystal Palace

Ok, so just because CP beat CFC 2-1 at Stamford Bridge it doesn't mean that they're a shoo-in for the rest of the season. But 17/4 (yeah, strange price but true atm) on Everyday just looks far too big.

CP didn't appear to pick up any serious injuries in yesterday's game, and they'll certainly be playing with confidence. In fact the one goal they conceded was the first in 5 games since they got drubbed 4-0 at home to The Black Cats. Sam does indeed appear to have shored up the defence.

Ant made a far better case for CP than I will here, and I don't think anything's changed. At the same time, Soton seem to have hit a distinctly flat patch in their season. "Tired" was the manager's assessment of their toothless display against Bournemouth on Saturday. Well, I'm not sure they'll be any less tired on Wednesday. Given the weaker opposition, I wouldn't think we'd need to take the precaution of the handicap either.

I'd recommend £20 Crystal Palace Win 17/4 b366

...or have I missed something here?

Just as a word of caution, we lost Tomkins at half time to injury, and then his replacement Dann was stretchered off which means Delaney is likely to play on Wednesday.  Sakho also went down twice in injury time (may have just been time wasting) so it might be worth waiting for team news before placing this bet.  He has been immense the last 4 matches, he must have pissed Klopp off to a massive extent to not get a sniff at playing for Liverpool.

I was at the game Saturday and haven't seen a Palace team run more or work harder for a long long time (they had no choice, we hardly had the ball!), they were out on their feet in the last 15 minutes. This could have an impact but the massive high of the result should counteract that.

For me it would be a wait and see the team line up.

I have no stats to back it up but the number of goalscorers that get MOTM in tv games is ridiculous - summed up by Luiz getting the award last night.