bigfluffylemon wrote:Minnow comments withdrawn as North Macedonia teach Germany (and me) a football lesson. Hats off.
England make heavy weather of Poland, but 3 from 3, job done. Just. They should qualify comfortably from this group, but then, they usually do, and it means nothing in tournaments.
Gingerfinch wrote:bigfluffylemon wrote:Minnow comments withdrawn as North Macedonia teach Germany (and me) a football lesson. Hats off.
England make heavy weather of Poland, but 3 from 3, job done. Just. They should qualify comfortably from this group, but then, they usually do, and it means nothing in tournaments.
Scotland beat a team 4-0 so there must still be some terrible sides still out there!
bigfluffylemon wrote:Minnow comments withdrawn as North Macedonia teach Germany (and me) a football lesson. Hats off.
England make heavy weather of Poland, but 3 from 3, job done. Just. They should qualify comfortably from this group, but then, they usually do, and it means nothing in tournaments.
sussexpob wrote:bigfluffylemon wrote:Minnow comments withdrawn as North Macedonia teach Germany (and me) a football lesson. Hats off.
England make heavy weather of Poland, but 3 from 3, job done. Just. They should qualify comfortably from this group, but then, they usually do, and it means nothing in tournaments.
In fairness the point you made could have been validated most of the time, but you picked a tragic week to air it. Not that even I would argue this is indicative, clearly Covid's effect on the calendar has lead to smaller teams doing much better in this set of games. Be a lot of players in top leagues who are totally shagged out.
bigfluffylemon wrote: One example I read about was to do with home advantage.
bigfluffylemon wrote:Fair enough. Covid seems to have had quite an effect in general, closing the gap between stronger and weaker teams. I wonder if when the pandemic is all over someone will look back at a very large swathe of natural experiments
sussexpob wrote:bigfluffylemon wrote: One example I read about was to do with home advantage.
Martin Keown made an interesting point about this recently. He said the most important thing about playing at home was not the crowds or anything obvious, it was all about knowing the surroundings of the stadium and pitch and how that effected where the team setup physically in the middle. He used the example of the defensive line, saying each Arsenal defender knew pretty much the exact row of seats they needed to line up parallel with on each side of the field to have optimum space between the midfield and defence, and the midfielders would be the same. In his opinion that made a huge amount of difference, and playing away you were more likely to be caught slightly out of position or strikers be able to find space in between the lines, because your idea of the depth and distances were so much less down to reflex, and were guess work.
Maybe its just his opinion, but an interesting one nonetheless.
bigfluffylemon wrote:sussexpob wrote:bigfluffylemon wrote: One example I read about was to do with home advantage.
Martin Keown made an interesting point about this recently. He said the most important thing about playing at home was not the crowds or anything obvious, it was all about knowing the surroundings of the stadium and pitch and how that effected where the team setup physically in the middle. He used the example of the defensive line, saying each Arsenal defender knew pretty much the exact row of seats they needed to line up parallel with on each side of the field to have optimum space between the midfield and defence, and the midfielders would be the same. In his opinion that made a huge amount of difference, and playing away you were more likely to be caught slightly out of position or strikers be able to find space in between the lines, because your idea of the depth and distances were so much less down to reflex, and were guess work.
Maybe its just his opinion, but an interesting one nonetheless.
Interesting. I wonder if that could be tested empirically.
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