One Game at a Time: You’re Only Here for the “John Bull”
Blackburn Rovers (A) March 9th
There cannot be many people who, in their schooldays, looked at the timetable at the beginning of the week and though, oh good, Monday afternoon, double maths.
Later in life, and sadly for the writer, much later in life, you come to realise that despite gaining an average O level (look them up all you IB newbies) and bluffing his way through Quantitative Analysis in his degree studies, still not actually knowing what differentiation is, or what it is useful for, maths is, in fact pretty useful.
Actually, it is more than useful, it is the building block for understanding the world around you. So even if you haven’t heard of the Fibonacci sequence, or you have but thought it was the third Da Vinci Code movie, you can see it every day in nature, where it forms the mathematical basis for such everyday patterns as pinecones, pineapple seeds, and even sunflowers. It even has application in the development of bees and their reproductive cycles.
Similarly, the golden ratio. Whilst abstract to most people it exists in art, and architecture and even in music. Elements of Debussy’s La Mer conform to the golden ratio. Da Vinci adhered to it in his glorious painting "The Last Supper. Mondrian, Michaelangelo did the same. All of the buildings that tower ever higher in the world’s great (and in the case of Portsmouth, not so great) cities do so because of the adherence of their architects to the Golden Ratio.
Finance depends on maths, and so does physics, and chemistry and biology and all today’s life changing technologies. And so do football supporters.
Those technologies rely on maths at its most simplistic and as a result, is able to deliver complex outcomes. They fundamentally exist in a binary world where the outcomes are created by the manipulation of the numbers zero and one. Those zeros and ones can be manipulated at speeds so rapid that they can deliver graphic images of the event that has just occurred in front of your eyes, and allow the incredibly wealthy people projecting their logos onto the screens and even the shirts being worn by the people on the screens. to adjust the odds they are offering you on the outcome of the events in front of your eyes, to make sure that more of the money you have staked stays in their pockets.
This week we saw a binary world in action. The first manipulation of the one and zero resulted in the outcome most of us dreaded, many of us feared and the algorithms of the betting companies ensured offered the lowest possible reward to choosing. Wednesday One, Argyle Nil.
That Argyle appeared to be complicit in allowing that to happen was frustrating from all those who travelled, tuned in or simply logged into the results service of choice, shrugged and logged out again, sighing.
The binary outcome was then displayed in the visceral reaction, both on the night at the ground and then beyond that into the home of binary choices, social media, where all decisions and arguments distil to the extremes, and away from the place where, in truth, the majority remain, the middle ground.
But these are opinions, not facts. Outcomes are more complex when choice is involved, and sport is all about choice. Choose who you follow, they choose who to manage or coach, who in turn choose how they play, to pass or to shoot. To score or not. To win or lose. In sport as in life, success is delivered by the people who make the best choices more often than the few occasions they make the wrong choices. We have been spoiled with the people who have been making those choices, but I see no reason to doubt their ability to get more right than wrong. Their track record deserves that.
In my last piece I discussed how US Sport eschews relegation, but of course that isn’t true. Sport is, and always has been, part of the entertainment industry. And so, a failed team in the USA isn’t relegated, but it will be relocated, and likely rebranded. It has happened here also, although one would argue after the binary one nil of the discarded and rebuilt AFC Wimbledon over the relocated and rebranded MK Dons this week, that the American model has a way to go to be established here.
The mathematics of the Football League is brutal. In the far past, of ninety-two clubs every season, four would win their respective titles, another five would gain promotion, and perhaps another would win the FA Cup. Eight would be demoted to the league below, and two would beg, cap in hand to be allowed to remain in the competition through the re-election process. Hartlepool did this the most without ever being voted out. In truth few clubs left the league this way. Stoke City were the first in 1884. After the formation of the third and fourth divisions following the end of regionalisation only five team were ejected through the re-election trapdoor.
Over time new ways to succeed were added, with additional tournaments, European qualification, and most recently extending the final promotion place to a mini tournament and play-off, which has now created the fabled “Most valuable match in the world”.
With that came the added jeopardy of automatic expulsion from the league to the next rung of the ladder. Even with these additional routes to glory the truth remains that come the end of the season the vast majority of teams will have won nothing (another binary phrase).
If those seem bad odds, at time of writing, and excluding Darren Moores expulsion from Tuesday’s opponents Wednesday which was in the twilight zone of pre-season, fifty managers have left their clubs this season. That is forty-one clubs that decided (some more than once, a select few more than twice) that they needed to change their manager. As we know, in some cases the change was forced upon them by the actions of others. In other cases the match between the club and the manager was deemed ”not to be working”. In recent times Forest Green Rovers seem to be a club that either has a manager problem, or perhaps an owner problem. Whichever it is the greenest club in football is looking nailed on for relegation, and presumably a new manager. Again.
Argyle started the latest week after losing to Ipswich in sixteenth place. After a full round of fixtures, the outcome from a Green perspective was that a voluble minority have been adamant that the club is doomed, the manager is a disaster, the players are unhappy, and in several cases agitating for an end of season departure, and relegation is nailed on.
As a result of the above Argyle have plummeted to, oh, hang on, still sixteenth.
That isn’t to say everything is good. The gap has closed for some of those below us. There has been a change in playing style which seems to have resulted in a loss of the previous free scoring nature of the side, certainly at home. Some of that may be down to the quality of the opposition, but past performances, even when getting drubbed by the likes of Leicester and Leeds still had patches of the game where Argyle looked threatening.
The Championship relegation battle is a populous and congested affair. The gap between the Premier League over endowed, plus to their credit, Ipswich, shows the gap between the haves and the have nots, or in the case of Stoke the “haves but squandered its”.
In matches between the bottom eight and the top four to date, the bottom eight have managed four victories, and two of those have come in the last fortnight, unexpectedly for Millwall and QPR. Eleven draws as well. From so far, fifty-three of sixty-four games. Eleven more chances for the minnows to upset the big boys. Or hopefully not. Argyle who are the team above this group of eight, have in fact the worst record of all, having lost all seven of the matches against this seasons leading pack, with only stumbling Champions elect Leicester to come at home. Blackburn have a similar record but still have four games to come against the top sides.
Rovers also are one of the clubs that pressed the eject button on their season highlights DVD before Jon Dahl Tomasson could get to the end of it. He has now landed as the manager of the Swedish National side, and John Eustace, one of the candidates for the Argyle vacancy in those heady days of Guess Who, parachuted in, after his summary decapitation in favour of the Rooney Experiment (fourth in that Da Vinci Code series) at Birmingham.
To date his arrival has been less than graciously received, and despite boasting the Divisions top scorer (hopefully usurped on Saturday by Morgan, or even better, by Ryan Hardie), he has yet to record a victory for Rovers. Hmmmm.
Ewood Park is not a great stadium for Argyle. Twice succumbing to five two defeats, they were last there in the season of the seven keepers, where Mike Cooper made his famous half time entrance after Kyle Letheren’s injury, as an eighteen-year-old apprentice. That season saw Rovers escape the clutches of the third tier, and featured Premier League bound David Raya in goal and a goal from reality TV bound Bradley Dack, who cancelled out a Carey wonder strike.
Argyle’s last win at Ewood wasn’t even against Blackburn. They defeated Carlisle there after floods closed Brunton Park in a two-nil victory.
Argyle will have new coach in Simon Ireland alongside Fozzy, with Neil Dewsnip resuming his ear-piece monitoring duties in the grandstand, and Ash Phillips, will, if selected, be returning to the club for whom he made his debut before being snatched by Spurs and loaned out to Argyle.
Blackburn are in as poor a run of form as are we, so something has to give. They have a goal threat in Szmodics, and a former green in Gallagher. Ennis is now held back for April and the Potters after his January window transfer.
Undoubtedly, we as fans need a positive reaction. We need to see some attacking intent against a side who have a tough run in and are one of the two teams out of seven we will need to match or do better than between now and May.
As ever the maths is simple. Forty plus three is the sum we want to see the answer to visualised .
It has been a while, but this may be the time for this word.
Resurgam!
COYG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Blackburn Rovers (A) March 9th
There cannot be many people who, in their schooldays, looked at the timetable at the beginning of the week and though, oh good, Monday afternoon, double maths.
Later in life, and sadly for the writer, much later in life, you come to realise that despite gaining an average O level (look them up all you IB newbies) and bluffing his way through Quantitative Analysis in his degree studies, still not actually knowing what differentiation is, or what it is useful for, maths is, in fact pretty useful.
Actually, it is more than useful, it is the building block for understanding the world around you. So even if you haven’t heard of the Fibonacci sequence, or you have but thought it was the third Da Vinci Code movie, you can see it every day in nature, where it forms the mathematical basis for such everyday patterns as pinecones, pineapple seeds, and even sunflowers. It even has application in the development of bees and their reproductive cycles.
Similarly, the golden ratio. Whilst abstract to most people it exists in art, and architecture and even in music. Elements of Debussy’s La Mer conform to the golden ratio. Da Vinci adhered to it in his glorious painting "The Last Supper. Mondrian, Michaelangelo did the same. All of the buildings that tower ever higher in the world’s great (and in the case of Portsmouth, not so great) cities do so because of the adherence of their architects to the Golden Ratio.
Finance depends on maths, and so does physics, and chemistry and biology and all today’s life changing technologies. And so do football supporters.
Those technologies rely on maths at its most simplistic and as a result, is able to deliver complex outcomes. They fundamentally exist in a binary world where the outcomes are created by the manipulation of the numbers zero and one. Those zeros and ones can be manipulated at speeds so rapid that they can deliver graphic images of the event that has just occurred in front of your eyes, and allow the incredibly wealthy people projecting their logos onto the screens and even the shirts being worn by the people on the screens. to adjust the odds they are offering you on the outcome of the events in front of your eyes, to make sure that more of the money you have staked stays in their pockets.
This week we saw a binary world in action. The first manipulation of the one and zero resulted in the outcome most of us dreaded, many of us feared and the algorithms of the betting companies ensured offered the lowest possible reward to choosing. Wednesday One, Argyle Nil.
That Argyle appeared to be complicit in allowing that to happen was frustrating from all those who travelled, tuned in or simply logged into the results service of choice, shrugged and logged out again, sighing.
The binary outcome was then displayed in the visceral reaction, both on the night at the ground and then beyond that into the home of binary choices, social media, where all decisions and arguments distil to the extremes, and away from the place where, in truth, the majority remain, the middle ground.
But these are opinions, not facts. Outcomes are more complex when choice is involved, and sport is all about choice. Choose who you follow, they choose who to manage or coach, who in turn choose how they play, to pass or to shoot. To score or not. To win or lose. In sport as in life, success is delivered by the people who make the best choices more often than the few occasions they make the wrong choices. We have been spoiled with the people who have been making those choices, but I see no reason to doubt their ability to get more right than wrong. Their track record deserves that.
In my last piece I discussed how US Sport eschews relegation, but of course that isn’t true. Sport is, and always has been, part of the entertainment industry. And so, a failed team in the USA isn’t relegated, but it will be relocated, and likely rebranded. It has happened here also, although one would argue after the binary one nil of the discarded and rebuilt AFC Wimbledon over the relocated and rebranded MK Dons this week, that the American model has a way to go to be established here.
The mathematics of the Football League is brutal. In the far past, of ninety-two clubs every season, four would win their respective titles, another five would gain promotion, and perhaps another would win the FA Cup. Eight would be demoted to the league below, and two would beg, cap in hand to be allowed to remain in the competition through the re-election process. Hartlepool did this the most without ever being voted out. In truth few clubs left the league this way. Stoke City were the first in 1884. After the formation of the third and fourth divisions following the end of regionalisation only five team were ejected through the re-election trapdoor.
Over time new ways to succeed were added, with additional tournaments, European qualification, and most recently extending the final promotion place to a mini tournament and play-off, which has now created the fabled “Most valuable match in the world”.
With that came the added jeopardy of automatic expulsion from the league to the next rung of the ladder. Even with these additional routes to glory the truth remains that come the end of the season the vast majority of teams will have won nothing (another binary phrase).
If those seem bad odds, at time of writing, and excluding Darren Moores expulsion from Tuesday’s opponents Wednesday which was in the twilight zone of pre-season, fifty managers have left their clubs this season. That is forty-one clubs that decided (some more than once, a select few more than twice) that they needed to change their manager. As we know, in some cases the change was forced upon them by the actions of others. In other cases the match between the club and the manager was deemed ”not to be working”. In recent times Forest Green Rovers seem to be a club that either has a manager problem, or perhaps an owner problem. Whichever it is the greenest club in football is looking nailed on for relegation, and presumably a new manager. Again.
Argyle started the latest week after losing to Ipswich in sixteenth place. After a full round of fixtures, the outcome from a Green perspective was that a voluble minority have been adamant that the club is doomed, the manager is a disaster, the players are unhappy, and in several cases agitating for an end of season departure, and relegation is nailed on.
As a result of the above Argyle have plummeted to, oh, hang on, still sixteenth.
That isn’t to say everything is good. The gap has closed for some of those below us. There has been a change in playing style which seems to have resulted in a loss of the previous free scoring nature of the side, certainly at home. Some of that may be down to the quality of the opposition, but past performances, even when getting drubbed by the likes of Leicester and Leeds still had patches of the game where Argyle looked threatening.
The Championship relegation battle is a populous and congested affair. The gap between the Premier League over endowed, plus to their credit, Ipswich, shows the gap between the haves and the have nots, or in the case of Stoke the “haves but squandered its”.
In matches between the bottom eight and the top four to date, the bottom eight have managed four victories, and two of those have come in the last fortnight, unexpectedly for Millwall and QPR. Eleven draws as well. From so far, fifty-three of sixty-four games. Eleven more chances for the minnows to upset the big boys. Or hopefully not. Argyle who are the team above this group of eight, have in fact the worst record of all, having lost all seven of the matches against this seasons leading pack, with only stumbling Champions elect Leicester to come at home. Blackburn have a similar record but still have four games to come against the top sides.
Rovers also are one of the clubs that pressed the eject button on their season highlights DVD before Jon Dahl Tomasson could get to the end of it. He has now landed as the manager of the Swedish National side, and John Eustace, one of the candidates for the Argyle vacancy in those heady days of Guess Who, parachuted in, after his summary decapitation in favour of the Rooney Experiment (fourth in that Da Vinci Code series) at Birmingham.
To date his arrival has been less than graciously received, and despite boasting the Divisions top scorer (hopefully usurped on Saturday by Morgan, or even better, by Ryan Hardie), he has yet to record a victory for Rovers. Hmmmm.
Ewood Park is not a great stadium for Argyle. Twice succumbing to five two defeats, they were last there in the season of the seven keepers, where Mike Cooper made his famous half time entrance after Kyle Letheren’s injury, as an eighteen-year-old apprentice. That season saw Rovers escape the clutches of the third tier, and featured Premier League bound David Raya in goal and a goal from reality TV bound Bradley Dack, who cancelled out a Carey wonder strike.
Argyle’s last win at Ewood wasn’t even against Blackburn. They defeated Carlisle there after floods closed Brunton Park in a two-nil victory.
Argyle will have new coach in Simon Ireland alongside Fozzy, with Neil Dewsnip resuming his ear-piece monitoring duties in the grandstand, and Ash Phillips, will, if selected, be returning to the club for whom he made his debut before being snatched by Spurs and loaned out to Argyle.
Blackburn are in as poor a run of form as are we, so something has to give. They have a goal threat in Szmodics, and a former green in Gallagher. Ennis is now held back for April and the Potters after his January window transfer.
Undoubtedly, we as fans need a positive reaction. We need to see some attacking intent against a side who have a tough run in and are one of the two teams out of seven we will need to match or do better than between now and May.
As ever the maths is simple. Forty plus three is the sum we want to see the answer to visualised .
It has been a while, but this may be the time for this word.
Resurgam!
COYG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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