February 2012 Archives

The League Cup Final on Sunday afternoon got me thinking about Cardiff City, and when I think about Cardiff City, I always think of the last game of the 1923/24 season. That day must have been utterly wonderful, or utterly demoralising, depending on where you stand.

A little while ago I drew up a few tables and graphs about Town and Cardiff that season, and now seems as good a time as any to post them up. It's a story well worth telling.

Nearly a week on and I'm still quite shocked and surprised that Lee Clark has been giving his marching orders by Huddersfield Town. The chairman Dean Hoyle has come out and stated that he had been thinking about this decision for a few weeks, I know many Town fans that have lost faith in Clark as the season progressed and I have to admit I was one of them. Would I have sacked him? Personally no, I would have given him until the end of the season and like many football fans I never saw this one coming. If you look at the table at this moment and time we are 7 points behind 2nd place Sheffield United, realistically there is still all to play for and I don't think there is any danger that we will slip out of the play-off positions. By all accounts Hoyle and Clark had a good relationship, it has been said that they used to spend time together outside of the office but for whatever reason this relationship has turned sour and Clark has supposedly got the boot in a two minute phone call with one of the directors. Suddenly people outside of Huddersfield Town are asking why has been sacked when he has only had 3 defeats in 55 games?

Do you remember Lemmings?

Little computer chaps within a game, that the player allocated a skill to, and they performed an action working towards a goal - when all their followers escape, and move on to the next level. This is going somewhere, stick with it. Lee Clark's departure felt, to me, like he was a Builder, who had put his 16 bricks down, but couldn't quite reach the land on the other side wherein the rest of the Lemmings could escape. As he returns to normality, I'm going to look at the leading candidates for the job and see if their special Lemming skills will help Huddersfield Town will reach their goal (hurray!)

There is, of course, a special remit here. There are 16 games left. Those people quoting full-career win percentages are wide of the mark here. It isn't vastly important how well managers have performed over their careers so much as their experience in what could be classed as 'fire-fighting'; when called in to do a job with players already at a club mid-season. It is their experiences doing that I will analyse in a bit more depth using the 8 'favourites' on Skybet as at 8.00 this morning (well aware that the market fluctuates wildly)

I spend a lot of time working with numbers in and around football. I like to see them featuring in people's enjoyment of the game; for some reason, Leeds fans seem pretty hung up on Win % for managers they're looking at, as if succeeding with one club is exactly the same as succeeding with another. (I always think of Keith Hill when this comes up; he never had the best Win % at Rochdale, but that doesn't mean he's not done a good job). Admittedly, it can be a useful guide, but I wouldn't get too hung up on it; not least because it fluctuates from job to job.

Not often I write about things that aren't about Huddersfield Town, but here's my take on the 'other' story that's going on in English football today.

The news about about Fabio Capello last night was met with a big 'Meh' from me. He is a good manager; the fact he had to work with certain players and balance that with the FA made his job untenable. So. Who, and perhaps more importantly, what comes next?

Its easy if you try.

As this week saw the 500th day since Huddersfield Town scored a penalty in a league game, I thought I'd take a quick look at the difference they made so here I present to you two league tables.

The first is last season's league table but reported if all the penalties were removed; all the points they won are removed and all their goals are taken out of the F and A columns. Sheffield Wednesday are the main winners. The league positions on the right are based on the amount of points they gained, so Plymouth's 19th is on 50 points, though obviously they had 10 deducted.

Last season, I worked out League One's table weighted as per the league positions of the teams at the end of the game in question - so beating the top of the league was worth more than beating the bottom of the league. Its something that I felt gave me a better understanding of how well teams were performing comparatively and something I thought about throughout the early part of this season. There was a few things that stuck in my craw, though.