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Home Team | Lineup Thread | v | Away Team | Lineup Thread |
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Leicester | Thread | v | West Ham | Thread |
Spurs | Thread | v | Norwich | Thread |
Man.Utd | Thread | v | Burnley | Thread |
Match | (3) Bonus | (2) Bonus | (1) Bonus |
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Aston Villa 2-1 Watford | Deeney | Mings | Douglas Luiz, Konsa, Targett |
Bournemouth v Brighton | Mooy | Harry Wilson, Callum Wilson | |
Crystal Palace 0-2 Southampton | Redmond | Stephens | Armstrong |
Everton 2-2 Newcastle | Kean | Digne | Lejeune |
Sheffield Utd 0-1 Man City | Otamendi, Henderson | De Bruyne | |
Chelsea 2-2 Arsenal | Jorginho | Martinelli | Bellerín, Mustafi |
Leicester vs West Ham | Pérez | Barnes | Pereira |
Spurs 2-1 Norwich | Alli | Pukki | Aurier |
Man Utd 0-2 Burnley | Wood | Pope | Mee |
Home Team | Lineup Thread | v | Away Team | Lineup Thread |
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Everton | Click | v | Chelsea | Click |
Bournemouth | Click | v | Liverpool | Click |
Spurs | Click | v | Burnley | Click |
Watford | Click | v | C.Palace | Click |
Man City | Click | v | Man Utd | Click |
Aston Villa | Click | v | Leicester | Click |
Newcastle | Click | v | Southampton | Click |
Norwich | Click | v | Sheffield | Click |
Brighton | Click | v | Wolves | Click |
West Ham | [Click]() | v | Arsenal | [Click]() |
Match | (3) Bonus | (2) Bonus | (1) Bonus |
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Everton v Chelsea | Calvert-Lewin | Kovacic | Sidibé |
Bournemouth v Liverpool | Keita | Salah | Henderson |
Spurs v Burnley | Kane | Vertonghen | Son |
Watford v Palace | Guaita | Kelly , Cahill | |
Man.City v Man.Utd | Rashford | Martial | Wan-Bissaka |
Villa v Leicester | Vardy | Iheanacho | Maddison |
Newcastle v Southampton | Shelvey | Ings | Fernández |
Norwich v Sheffield | Baldock | Tettey | Stevens |
Brighton v Wolves | |||
West Ham v Arsenal |
Home Team | Lineup Thread | v | Away Team | Lineup Thread |
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Southampton | Click | v | Leicester | Click |
Man City | Click | v | Aston Villa | Click |
Brighton | Click | v | Everton | Click |
Watford | Click | v | Bournemouth | Click |
West Ham | Click | v | Sheffield | Click |
Burnley | [Click]() | v | Chelsea | [Click]() |
Newcastle | [Click]() | v | Wolves | [Click]() |
Arsenal | Click | v | Crystal Palace | Click |
Liverpool | Click | v | Spurs | Click |
Norwich | Click | v | Man United | Click |
Match | (3) Bonus | (2) Bonus | (1) Bonus |
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Southampton v Leicester | Vardy | Pérez | Chilwell |
Man City v Aston Villa | Sterling | Ederson | David Silva, Gündogan |
Brighton v Everton | Maupay | Calvert-Lewin, Ryan | |
Watford v Bournemouth | Foster | Aké | Cathcart, Ramsdale |
West Ham v Sheffield | Yarmolenko | Snodgrass, Mousset | |
Burnley v Chelsea | Pulisic | Willian | McNeill |
Home Team | Lineup Thread | v | Away Team | Lineup Thread |
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West Ham | [Click]() | v | Tottenham | [Click]() |
Arsenal | v | Southampton | ||
Bournemouth | v | Wolves | ||
Brighton | v | Leicester | ||
Crystal Palace | v | Liverpool | ||
Everton | v | Norwich | ||
Watford | v | Burnley | ||
Manchester City | v | Chelsea | ||
Sheffield United | v | Manchester United | ||
Aston Villa | v | Newcastle |
Match | (3) Bonus | (2) Bonus | (1) Bonus |
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West Ham v Tottenham | |||
Arsenal v Southampton | |||
Bournemouth v Wolves | |||
Brighton v Leicester | |||
Crystal Palace v Liverpool | |||
Everton v Norwich | |||
Watford v Burnley | |||
Manchester City v Chelsea | |||
Sheffield United v Manchester United | |||
Aston Villa v Newcastle |
Home Team | Lineup Thread | v | Away Team | Lineup Thread |
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Norwich | Click | v | Watford | Click |
Chelsea | Click | v | Crystal Palace | Click |
Burnley | Click | v | West Ham | Click |
Newcastle | Click | v | Bournemouth | Click |
Southampton | Click | v | Everton | Click |
Spurs | Click | v | Sheffield United | Click |
Leicester | [Click]() | v | Arsenal | [Click]() |
Manchester United | Click | v | Brighton | Click |
Wolves | Click | v | Aston Villa | Click |
Liverpool | Click | v | Manchester City | Click |
Match | (3) Bonus | (2) Bonus | (1) Bonus |
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Norwich v Watford | Deulofeu | Foster | Janmaat |
Chelsea v Palace | Tomori | Abraham, Willian | |
Burnley v West Ham | Tarkowski | Pope, Barnes | |
Newcastle v Bournemouth | H.Wilson | Clark | Ramsdale |
Southampton v Everton | Richarlison, Davies | Holgate, Ings | |
Spurs v Sheffield | McGoldrick | Aurier | Son |
Leicester v Arsenal | Vardy | Söyüncü | Maddison, Pereira |
Home Team | Lineup Thread | v | Away Team | Lineup Thread |
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Liverpool | Click | v | Norwich | Click |
West Ham | Click | v | Manchester City | Click |
Bournemouth | Click | v | Sheffield United | Click |
Burnley | Click | v | Southampton | Click |
Crystal Palace | Click | v | Everton | Click |
Watford | Click | v | Brighton | Click |
Tottenham | Click | v | Aston Villa | Click |
Leicester | Click | v | Wolves | Click |
Newcastle | Click | v | Arsenal | Click |
Manchester United | v | Chelsea |
Match | (3) Bonus | (2) Bonus | (1) Bonus |
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Liverpool v Norwich | Origi | Salah | Pukki |
West Ham v Manchester City | Sterling | Mahrez | De Bruyne |
Bournemouth v Sheffield United | Sharp | Mepham | Lundstram |
Burnley v Southampton | Barnes | Pieters | Gudmundsson |
Crystal Palace v Everton | Mina | Keane | Pickford |
Watford v Brighton | Dunk | Andone | Ryan |
Tottenham v Aston Villa | Kane | Mings | Ndombele |
Leicester v Wolves | |||
Newcastle v Arsenal | |||
Manchester United v Chelsea |
Home Team | Lineup Thread | v | Away Team | Lineup Thread |
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Arsenal | Click | v | Burnley | Click |
Aston Villa | Click | v | Bournemouth | Click |
Brighton | Click | v | West Ham | Click |
Everton | Click | v | Watford | Click |
Norwich | Click | v | Newcastle | Click |
Southampton | Click | v | Liverpool | Click |
Man City | Click | v | Tottenham | Click |
Sheffield United | Click | v | Crystal Palace | Click |
Chelsea | Click | v | Leicester | Click |
Wolves | Click | v | Man United | Click |
Match | (3) Bonus | (2) Bonus | (1) Bonus |
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Arsenal v Burnley | Ceballos | Lacazette | Pope |
Aston Villa v Bournemouth | El Mohamady | Douglas Luiz | Grealish, H Wilson |
Brighton v West Ham | Lanzini | Chicarito | Dunk, Groß |
Everton v Watford | Bernard | Digne | Mina |
Norwich v Newcastle | Pukki | Cantwell | Shelvey |
Southampton v Liverpool | Mane | Firmino | Ings |
Man City v Tottenham | de Bruyne | Lamela | Ndombele |
Sheffield United v Crystal Palace | Lundstram | Henderson | Stevens |
Chelsea v Leicester | Mount, Ndidi | n/a | Evans |
Wolves v Man United |
Home Team | Lineup Thread | v | Away Team | Lineup Thread |
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Sheffield United | Click | v | Liverpool | Click |
Aston Villa | Click | v | Burnley | Click |
Bournemouth | Click | v | West Ham | Click |
Chelsea | Click | v | Brighton | Click |
Crystal Palace | Click | v | Norwich | Click |
Tottenham | Click | v | Southampton | Click |
Wolves | Click | v | Watford | Click |
Everton | Click | v | Man City | Click |
Leicester | v | Newcastle | ||
Manchester United | Click | v | Arsenal | Click |
Match | (3) Bonus | (2) Bonus | (1) Bonus |
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Sheffield United v Liverpool | Matip | Wijnaldum | van Dijk |
Aston Villa v Burnley | Targett | Pieters | McGinn, Wood |
Bournemouth v West Ham | King | Yarmolenko | Aké |
Chelsea v Brighton | Jorginho | Willian | Azpilicueta, Tomori, Ryan |
Crystal Palace v Norwich | Milivojevic | Guaita, Ward | |
Tottenham v Southampton | Ings | Kane | Eriksen |
Wolves v Watford | Doherty | Patricio | Boly, Coady |
Everton v Man City | Mahrez | Coleman | De Bruyne |
Leicester v Newcastle | Vardy | Evans | Ricardo Pereira |
Manchester United v Arsenal |
Home Team Lineup | v | Away Team Lineup |
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SOU Link | v | MUN Link |
CHE Link | v | [SHE Link]() |
[CRY Link]() | v | AVL Link |
LEI Link | v | BOU Link |
MCI Link | v | [BRI Link]() |
[NEW Link]() | v | WAT Link |
[WHU Link]() | v | [NOR Link]() |
[BUR Link]() | v | [LIV Link]() |
EVE Link | v | WOL Link |
[ARS Link]() | v | [TOT Link]() |
Match | (3) Bonus | (2) Bonus | (1) Bonus |
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Southampton v Man United | Vestergaard, McTominay | James, Gunn | |
Chelsea v Sheffield United | Abraham | Jorginho | Stevens, Robinson |
Crystal Palace v Aston Villa | Ayew | Ward | Cahill |
Leicester v Bournemouth | Vardy | Tielemans | Fraser |
Manchester City v Brighton | Agüero | De Bruyne | David Silva |
Newcastle v Watford | Hughes | Hayden | Foster |
West Ham v Norwich | Masuaku | Diop | Haller |
Burnley v Liverpool | Firmino | Alexander-Arnold | van Dijk |
Everton v Wolves | |||
Arsenal v Tottenham |
WARNING: VERY LONG POST. READ AT YOUR OWN LEISURE. submitted by digestives27 to footballmanagergames [link] [comments] https://preview.redd.it/75v77obwlfd51.png?width=616&format=png&auto=webp&s=e8548492bfd1a5755cf795466b7e34d44f16c4ae NB: This is part ONE of TWO. If you want to skip to part TWO, please click here. It’s time to roll back the clock and head on back to a bygone era of English football. As the real life 19/20 season is forced to drag its heels out to the end of July and beyond, 13 years ago the season was long done and dusted by now, and the transfer window was in full flow. To quickly recap: Manchester United missed out on league and cup double as the newly crowned Premier League champions lost out to Carling Cup winners Chelsea 1-0 in the FA Cup final, AC Milan got their revenge on Liverpool, beating them 2-1 in the Champions League final after losing to them in 04/05 and the closest any British side got to the UEFA Cup was the final being hosted at Hampden Park in Scotland (NB: Tottenham were knocked out in the Quarter Finals by eventual winners Sevilla). Sheffield United, Charlton Athletic and Watford would all be relegated from the Premier League, to be replaced by the three best teams of the Championship: Sunderland, Birmingham City and Derby County. I daren’t dive too deep into the Conference North and South, but the rest of the leagues were settled as per below: https://preview.redd.it/vzd6zhv5mfd51.png?width=840&format=png&auto=webp&s=6f1678fbabe17965a1329fe8ace73674735f4598 * NB: Altrincham would be spared relegation from the Conference Premier as Boston United were given a double relegation punishment for their financial situation. As such, Boston United would be demoted to the Conference North. Altrincham would remain in the Conference Premier in order for the division to remain at 24 teams. Which brings us round nicely to July 2007 and that burning question: what happened next? Of course, having lived through the next 13 years, we all know what happened next: from backs-to-the-wall Champions League successes to unlikely Premier League champions and Spanish national team dominance, but what did the FM08 engine make of all this? Could it really happen? Is it more or less likely to occur in the game than in real life? Having played the game religiously since its release (why change a good thing?) I have come to love and hate some of the most incredible glitches in the game engine, including physics-defying goals and eternal suspensions to fixture pileups and the entire league calendar disappearing (hello unplayable game). [I’m not here to disrespect the newer Football Manager games, they’re brilliant in their own right, but every year they just get more and more complex for a casual gamer like myself and FM08 always had the perfect balance of “quick play” vs “in-depth analysis” which meant I could get as much out of it as I chose to. Sure, there’s still room for improvement, but I don’t want a perfect game, I want a playable game] I have played FM08 is with so many different permutations: with attribute masking on or off, using fake players, playing in obscure leagues, with FM Genie, without FM Genie, with a custom database, with FM Modifier… and I still have plenty of testing I want to do (currently I’m trying to figure out a formula for CA/PA that allows me to create “the perfect player” in every position). FM08 is my sandbox. But what happens if we put all that to one side and let the computer fight it out? How would it compare to real life? What do the RNG Gods have to say about it all? So thus, I present to you: Reasons Why I Still Play FM08 – The First Five Years (Year 1, Part 1)For this experiment, I will be using the Default, non-patched database, version 8.0.0.As this is my first run through of a simulated story, I will be running this on my old ASUS notebook so, in the interest of not killing it, I’m only going to run all the English leagues. Also, because I’m playing a separate game at the same time on my main laptop and I don’t want to disturb that. https://preview.redd.it/an6n1rqemfd51.png?width=1420&format=png&auto=webp&s=377c9d1d3d33ae92cdd48d7f1ef41a952cb4d02c My manager will be Spanish hero Juan Carlos Perez Martinez. I’m paying homage to my friend’s old FM09 legendary regen striker who would regularly compete with my world-class striker Carlos Pinto for bragging rights. https://preview.redd.it/1byhkh0gmfd51.png?width=1418&format=png&auto=webp&s=a2886518569792f5e3fdaad7268847815bf1099c And so, onto the game we game. Real players and no attribute masking. The goal was to simulate every three months at regular intervals, but I messed up the first season a little so it’s slightly out of sync with the rest. I will be mostly focussing on the Premier League and the Champions League, as well as the World Cup and the European Championships, however I will be relentlessly scouring all the competitions for some of the big stories. Even though my manager is Spanish, I will be keeping close tabs on the England national team because, you know, football’s coming home… 07/08 media league predictions + key: https://preview.redd.it/vnog4c8wmfd51.png?width=157&format=png&auto=webp&s=2a385999df0d182b17e882973fa02a29b2566a5d https://preview.redd.it/k4tnc5twmfd51.png?width=841&format=png&auto=webp&s=c98042d695c5dd8d54e76670cf4cf6e73100454b So, without further ado, we’ll skip ahead a few months and see how the season is going so far. 01 - Wednesday 31st October 2007 First off, let’s rewind back to the transfer window and see who we the big movers. July saw a few big names moving, with Andrea Barzagli and Maxi Rodriguez making moves to Barcelona and Arsenal for £12.25m and £17.5m respectively, however it was Chelsea who first broke the £20m mark signing Goran Pandev for £20.5m from Lazio. He’ll have strong competition for a starting place against Drogba, Shevchenko and Pizarro. Promising 22-year-old Jefferson Farfán makes a shrewd £6m move to Tottenham. August was surprisingly low-key. Lazio replaced Pandev two weeks later with the £12m capture of Obafemi Martin. Arsenal snap up young Swiss winger Tranquillo Barnetta for a further £7.25m. Palermo continue to ship off players selling Cristian Zaccardo and Mattia Cassani to FC Bayern and Atletico Madrid on top of last month’s departures of Amauri to AC Milan and Barzagli. They replace them with a Mexican striker and a Portuguese centre-back. £41.5m sold, £9.75m bought, net profit: £31.75m. Tidy business. As for Lazio, they’d replace £20.5m Pandev with Diego Benaglio, Lucas Biglia, Obafemi Martins, Pascal Chimbonda and a return home for their old wing-back César find a combined total of £21m. Two teams to watch next season in Europe. The Community Shield season opener is contested between Chelsea and Man Utd and is won 2-1 by the latter. First half goals from Wayne Rooney and Ryan Giggs do enough to see off the Blues. Goran Pandev scores on his competitive debut but Florent Malouda’s straight red card 5 minutes later essentially ends the game as a contest, even if Chelsea somehow ended with 61% possession. Back to the league, where we’re about 10 games in. Everton are surprise league leaders, unbeaten with a GD advantage over second-placed Man Utd. A fearsome strike partnership of Andy Johnson and Yakubu with 10 goals and 4 assists between them. A fearsome defence backs them up, with goalkeeper Tim Howard keeping 7 clean sheets in 11 games, conceding only 5 goals in the other 4 games. As expected, Tevez, Rooney and Ronaldo are causing havoc at Man Utd, 12 goals and 5 assists between them, but it’s Newcastle who lead the goalscoring charts thanks to Michael Owen’s 7 goals and £4.6m-signing Cani’s 4 goals and 5 assists. 3rd placed also-unbeaten Arsenal have 2 games in hand on Everton and also boast a mean defence, just lacking the team goal threat to go with it; Eduardo’s 7 goals does mean he joins Owen, Dean Ashton, Leroy Lita and Nicolas Anelka at the top of the charts though. https://preview.redd.it/a383pys0nfd51.png?width=1245&format=png&auto=webp&s=27767eb2d35261d78c4391e3fc3597c5f98ef4f3 I will talk about the lower leagues more as the season (and indeed seasons go on), but for most of part one I will be looking at the Premier League + Champions League. 02 - Thursday 31st January 2008 To clarify, I was still finding my way during the first season. Ideally, I wouldn’t have had a save slot on January 31st, but I learnt my lesson for future seasons. Temporarily using the 03 save file, I can tell you so more about how the Transfer Window would end up playing out. In truth, very little actually happened on Transfer Deadline Day, bar Michael Dawson moving from Tottenham to Bolton for £6.75m; they had already recruited Christopher Samba from Blackburn for £9.25m prior to this. The bigger deals took place much earlier. Chelsea bolstered their strike force even further with the £15.75m signing of Giampaolo Pazzini from Fiorentina, whilst Tottenham picked up the versatile Gonzalo Castro from Bayer Leverkusen for £12.75m. Lazio offloaded Christian Ledesma to Real Madrid for £11.5m and allowed Inter Milan to purchase a co-ownership in Valon Behrami for £7.75m. A more comprehensive screenshot below showcases some “blasts from the past” and their moves. https://preview.redd.it/b7j4vof1nfd51.png?width=1228&format=png&auto=webp&s=cecca5f3b8f838e63ad8f33f100f521b87e4fe2c However, we should always expect some managerial casualties by this point of the season and looks like had to wait until December for our first ones, with Preston and Tranmere both sacking their managers on 8th December, Middlesbrough following suit by sacking Gareth Southgate a day later after a 1-0 away loss to Newcastle. His replacement, Tony Mowbray, has done little to turn their form around with just 1 win and 2 draws in his 9 games in charge, including an FA Cup 3rd round exit to Bolton, with the club languishing in 19th in the league, 3 points from safety. Perhaps the biggest talking point though is the form of Chelsea, widely expected to be strong title challengers this season, they have underperformed badly, finding themselves in 10th place in the league. Avram Grant was sacked on December 23rd, the club being linked with Javier Aguirre, Juande Ramos and Louis van Gaal to fill the vacancy, as well as bookies’ favourite Marcelo Lippi. In the meantime, Steve Clarke will take charge of the club, being appointed manager on Christmas Day. And Steve Clarke lasts all of one day in the job! A 3-1 Boxing Day loss away to Man Utd, with the team going 3-0 down inside 13 minutes, has led to the players to immediately lose confidence with him and he was sacked immediately. https://preview.redd.it/jfkr6s43nfd51.png?width=1237&format=png&auto=webp&s=ebd5551a5f65038ce797df9edc316e24ea241805 His replacement is indeed World Class 59-year-old Marcelo Lippi, whose reign begins on New Year’s Eve. Let’s see if he lasts a little longer… Man Utd now lead the league by 7 points after 23 games with Arsenal in 2nd place on 48 points and Man City massively overperforming to claim 3rd place. Still a long way to go, of course. Sunderland’s hopes of remaining in the topflight are looking slim as they sit rock bottom with 13 points, 7 from safety. Kevin Doyle is showing that he doesn’t miss former strike partner Leroy Lita as he storms to the top of top goal scorer charts with a 17 goals for Reading. https://preview.redd.it/r2v9iw24nfd51.png?width=753&format=png&auto=webp&s=8152d3cdc3760db219a0ba30924ad178f0e7f82c No shocks in the FA Cup 3rd round as all higher league teams beat their lower league opposition; Liverpool, Man Utd, Bolton, Derby and Arsenal overcoming their Premier League opponents, but the 4th round is where it starts to get exciting. Championship Wolves knock out Premier League Bolton whilst Arsenal are eliminated by Premier League strugglers Fulham. Newcastle do superbly to eliminate league leaders Man Utd away from home, 2-0. League Two Peterborough do excellently away to Wigan to take them to a replay at their London Road stadium. Peterborough sit 1 point of the top of the League Two table with a game in hand. The League Cup has been a mixed catalogue, with at least three Premier League teams falling at their first hurdle: the 2nd round. However, the 3rd round provides less upsets and business is resumed, Chelsea being the biggest casualty after high-flying Man City dump them out. Not much more surprising in the 4th round. The dream for League 2 Bradford ends with a 3-0 away loss to Bolton Wanderers and League 1 Nottingham Forest fall at home to Everton. Is anybody surprised that the quarter finals are contested by eight Prem teams? Newcastle, Man Utd, Everton and Arsenal dispatch Bolton, Liverpool, West Ham and Aston Villa to reach the two-legged semis. Everton vs Newcastle, leg 1 Incredible drama at Goodison Park where a dubious 9th minute Yakubu goal is wiped out by a simply untouchable Michael Owen who nets himself an unanswered hat-trick by the 69th minute. However, Everton rally late on and 2 goals in 70 seconds from Mikel Arteta and Tim Cahill ensure the spoils are shared at full-time, 3-3. Arsenal vs Man Utd, leg 2 A dominant Arsenal might feel disappointed to only be leaving with a 2-1 win here. Paul Scholes slotted him in the 36th minute against the run of play but Arsenal would equalise on the stroke of half-time, a goal kick pumped upfield by Jens Lehmann is flicked on by Gilberto Silva into the path of Eduardo who smashes him on the stroke of half-time. Galvanised, they would take the initiative 10minutes into the second half, Barnetta playing a corner to the edge of the box where Maxi Rodriguez’s deflected shot would find its way to Gallas to fire home. Newcastle vs Everton, leg 2 More of a formality this time round as Newcastle made no mistake putting Everton to bed. Two goals from Emre complemented Cani’s opener to see Newcastle win 3-0 and go through 6-3 on aggregate. Man Utd vs Arsenal, leg 2 If the Everton vs Newcastle first leg was thrilling, Man Utd and Arsenal went all out to surpass it here. Trailing 2-1 from the first leg, Paul Scholes once again opened the scoring for Man Utd, breaking from midfield to slot home Ronaldo’s through ball, who himself would go on to put Man Utd ahead on aggregate after a one-two in the box with Rooney, smashing home from an angle. Gilberto Silva’s excellently guided finish in the 35th minute, after Patrice Evra’s poor clearance, meant the teams went in level on aggregate at half time. Who knows what was said at the break, but both teams came out firing in a frantic 10 minute spell: Max Rodriguez finishing off a good Arsenal counter-attack two minutes into the second half but the lead was short-lived as Ronaldo fired in another wonderful finish from an angle barely two minutes later, Scholes threading the ball through after his initial free-kick was cleared back to him. Ronaldo then turned provider after a good run down the right, lifting to the ball into Michael Carrick to head home and lead 5-4 on aggregate, Carrick in turn injuring Bakary Sagna in the process. Excellent trickery on the left with from Barnetta left Gary Neville for dead before a delightfully whipped ball into the box left it on a plate for Fàbregas to fire home his fifth goal of the season. Arsenal lead on away goals, but they don’t come into effect until after a spell of extra time. (editor note: because stupid rules are stupid) Indeed the game does go to extra time, both teams battle fervently until the very last. As the clock strikes 121:15, Arsenal are on the brink and Man Utd get a corner, goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar joining the attack. A ball whipped across goal to the back stick and Patrice Evra climbs highest above William Gallas to nod home a late, late winner. Arsenal fans are furious! Where was the final whistle? Their time-wasting tactics came back to haunt them in the end. 5-3 final score, Man Utd win the tie 6-5 on aggregate. Newcastle vs Man Utd is scheduled for February 24th. A quick look at the Champions League now as the group stages are complete and nothing too shocking. Chelsea, Liverpool, Man Utd and Arsenal all top their respective groups. The biggest shock is that holders AC Milan crash out of the group stages after finishing bottom of their group behind Celtic, Benfica and Spartak Moscow. There will be no European football for them this season. They didn’t even have the consolation of a European trophy earlier as Sevilla beat them 1-0 in the European Super Cup, a solitary goal from Alexandr Kerzhakov enough to seal victory for Los Palanganas. As if they needed further insult to injury, AC Milan would also go on to lose the Club World Championship final to Boca Juniors 4-2 on penalties after a dull 0-0 draw. A summary of the group stage: https://preview.redd.it/q5x8l738nfd51.png?width=1237&format=png&auto=webp&s=391f9d39713d764bbe9a6a38205fb7e63ff5d422 Celtic’s reward for topping their group is a first leg away trip to Valencia, while Real Madrid’s second-place goal-difference finish means they play Chelsea in arguably the pick of the ties, despite Chelsea’s poor league form. https://preview.redd.it/7nhpdcq8nfd51.png?width=368&format=png&auto=webp&s=1773335cf0e559e175ace846f45bcd9eeaa69d53 We’ll look back at the UEFA Cup later on as there are too many teams to cover initially. The draw for the 1st round knockouts is here: https://preview.redd.it/rcixg5ebnfd51.png?width=511&format=png&auto=webp&s=94044e38c22b12d73af7f64f729a5abd5556c8fd In other news, Charlton and Sheffield United lead the way, aiming for an instant return to the top division, whilst Hull prop up the Championship table. Top scorers Plymouth would do well to plug their leaky defence if they want to make a push for the play-offs while second-lowest goal scorers Stoke City show that you can achieve success by keeping it tight. QPR’s overachievements (predicted 18th, currently 4th) are largely overshadowed by Scunthorpe’s sensation form: predicted to finish bottom, currently lying in 5th place, Bradley Wright-Phillips and Martin Paterson with 19 league goals between them for The Iron. Big shoutouts to Bury in League who are defying expectations from a 20th position prediction to leading the table, as well as Morecambe, up 16 positions to 5th. Conversely, automatic promotion hopefuls Brentford should hold their heads in shame at being just 3 points above the relegation zone whilst Exeter and York must be wondering how they’re going to turn their seasons around if they want to get back into playoff contention. A summary of every league and their position relative to media prediction is below: The media always know best... Notes: Crawley Town deducted 6 points due to ongoing financial irregularities. They would otherwise be top of the league on Goal Difference! Leeds United also started the season with a 15-point deduction. They would be 7th currently if they didn’t have the reduction. Onwards to April! 03 – Tuesday 1st April 2008 April Fool’s Day is here but it’s no joke in the Premier League where Man Utd have romped to a 10-point lead over second place Arsenal (albeit having played 2 extra games). Tottenham Hotspur continue to drop into obscurity as they hit 14th position (form guide, 20th: DLLLL) whilst Wigan have climbed out of the relegation zone, Fulham replacing them. Man City’s fine form continues as they find themselves 5th with only 1 point separating them and Liverpool and Portsmouth above them. Leroy Lita, incensed at Kevin Doyle’s trash talk a few months ago, has come back with aplomb to claim top spot ahead of the Irishman in the race for the Golden Boot. Cani is staking a claim for signing-of-the-season at Newcastle, leading the assists chart with 13. Middlesbrough’s poor disciplinary record is one of the reasons they’re 19th in the league – 81 yellows and 7 reds. Chelsea’s lack of fight for the title exemplified by them being the only team without a red card to their name this season. Too nice? Mike Dean is staking a claim for most hated reference in the league – 102 yellow cards and 13 red cards issued this season so far, the most in both categories. In the league leagues, Charlton have guaranteed a playoff place as they lead the Championship by 5 points, Leyton Orient are already relegated from League One, Bury have secured a play-off place in League Two and Farsley are relegated from Blue Square Premier. Otherwise, it’s very much all to play for across the board. Onto Europe where the Quarter Finals of the Euro Cup are as follows: https://preview.redd.it/uaq9to8hnfd51.png?width=447&format=png&auto=webp&s=9ea308119c2bdf13fcbbd1b31076cbc00344b6c7 But the major talking points lie with the Champions League 1st Knockout Round. https://preview.redd.it/5ue3picinfd51.png?width=358&format=png&auto=webp&s=cc4cb0db600abef2f29df72b2900e07d2df706ea Cagey games like Ajax/Liverpool (Steven Gerrard missed a penalty) and Real Madrid/Chelsea (Andriy Shevchenko sent off) were very much overshadowed by the game of the round: Valencia vs Celtic. Benoît Pedretti put Celtic 1-0 up after a lovely slide-rule pass from Scott Brown – his first ever goal for Celtic before they were undone 2minutes later by some simple play from Valencia. Cañizares pumps the ball long to Joaquín on the wing who skips past Lee Naylor before sliding in Nikola Zigic to equalise. Some fine work from Shunsuke Nakamura and Maciej Zurawski slips in Scott Brown to retake the lead but their fine work is undone by a harsh decision as Mark Wilson’s tackle on Rubén Baraja is deemed a penalty to Valencia on the stroke of half-time. David Villa’s initial effort is saved smartly by Artur Boruc, but he reacts fastest the rebound to take the times in at half-time level. That goal spurred Villa on as his 48th minute free kick took a huge deflection off the wall to wrong-foot Boruc but Celtic would respond well with Nakamura skipping past his man to slot home an equaliser. Iván Helguera, still reeling from believing Nakamura’s goal was offside, loses concentration and misses the interception on Nakamura’s through ball as Aiden McGeady follows in from the edge of the box and buries it high into the net for a famous 4-3 away victory for the Scottish team. https://preview.redd.it/6mae0gqjnfd51.png?width=360&format=png&auto=webp&s=8ddab317065b6004747726803bece9a2eed35a88 Celtic certainly proved they were no one-trick ponies either by repeating the trick in the second leg, a first half hat-trick from David Villa not enough to stop Celtic’s four unanswered second half goals. A five-star performance from Liverpool at Anfield saw them overcome ten-man Ajax, while Sergio Ramos’ away goal was enough to eliminate Chelsea. Rodrigo Palacio turned on the style for PSV with a hat-trick in a 4-0 home win. Here’s how the Quarter Finalists line-up: https://preview.redd.it/6u218snknfd51.png?width=370&format=png&auto=webp&s=a7701906f068f4faedd563b068749f2152f44cca The FA cup charges on and some more scalps were taken with Blackburn beating Chelsea away from home. However, the last of the Football League sides were all knocked out in the 5th round so it’s an all-Premier League affair from now on. https://preview.redd.it/136pdn4lnfd51.png?width=427&format=png&auto=webp&s=177f2630fe0523a42c37c3fceb8358bcae82c9ec The 6th round sees a late winner from local boy Shola Ameobi after Robbie Keane had cancelled out Michael Owen’s first-half goal. The 6th round was notable for not having any of the traditional giants of the English game in it. The FA cup will find it’s way to either Blackburn, Newcastle, Derby or Portsmouth this year, four very different corners of the country. The Semi Finals, to be played at Wembley Stadium of course, will be: Derby vs Blackburn Newcastle vs Portsmouth As Chelsea’s poor form has been a theme lately this season, we should probably check out how Marcelo Lippi is getting on… Yep, you guessed it, he was sacked! A 2-1 away loss to Liverpool back in March and Abramovich swings the axe once more, replacing him with somebody that nobody at the bookies banked on: Javier Irureta. The former Atletico Madrid and Athletic Bilbao midfielder leaves his post at Betis to take the most dangerous seat in English football right now. Now, after leaving you all hanging after the dramatic League Cup semi-finals, I can reveal that the winner of the League Cup final is… Newcastle United! The teams lined up like so: https://preview.redd.it/h9ms357mnfd51.png?width=838&format=png&auto=webp&s=27c0a1dcd724485fc814c0bd48dd787749e9a7eb (editor note: I had a chuckle at Newcastle’s backline: Shay, Faye, Beye, Tay, Enrique*. Yes, simple things amuse me) Still, this was a closely fought battle with both teams spurning great opportunities to score, but in the end first half goals from Michael Owen and Joey Barton proved too much for Man Utd, despite a bundled second half goal from Louis Saha. Final score, 2-1. And so, into the final stretch we go before the players prepare for Euro 2008… Please click here to read on: Reasons Why I Still Play FM08 – The First Five Years (Year 1, Part 2) If you have any questions thus far, I'll be happy to provide answers where possible, provided they're not spoilers for the end of the season. |
TL;DR: I tried making a mathematical model to predict premier league results which can be applied to predict Fantasy Football Points. It thinks you should probably have Tomori, Lundstram, TAA, Abraham and Wilson. submitted by blubbersassafras to FantasyPL [link] [comments] Hi everyone! I’m a Mathematics and Statistics student experimenting with Premier League data as a computational data analysis project. For about a month now, I’ve been testing methods of analysing the accuracy of mathematical models that estimate premier league scores, and this algorithm can be applied with some effect to a larger FPL algorithm I;ve created. I want to preface this by pointing out that this post should NOT be taken as anything close to an absolute truth or a good guide for transfers by any means. There is a lot of data that I don’t have access to, and my project is arguably imperfect in several ways. It’s still a work in progress. I’m just doing it because I get off on shit like this. However, I have made some findings that could be useful in directly comparing two players and deciding which to bring in for a run of fixtures. Warning: this is long and should only be read fully if you're as bored on the IB as I clearly am. What my method does NOT incorporate:
What my method does incorporate:
Some interesting "findings":
This is the bit where I explain the details of my method. I don’t blame you if don’t want to read it, it gets a bit mathsy. Over the last few weeks I’ve spent many hours tinkering around with different methods I’ve settled on the most predictively accurate I could formulate. On a fundamental level, my method works by firstly determining four ongoing variables for each team: offensive strength at home, offensive strength away from home, defensive strength at home and defensive strength away from home. Each of these is a numerical value, such that (mean expected goals in the premier league) x (offensive strength at home of home team) x (defensive strength away from home of away team) would give a mean expected goals value for the home team to score and thus for the away team to concede. These expected scores can be modelled as a Poisson Distribution. I explored the probability of using a zero-inflated Poisson Distribution but I was surprised to find this unnecessary. I will refer to this value as hExG (Home expected goals), and its away equivalent as aExG. For an example of estimating how many points a given player will score, I will assume that Trent Alexander-Arnold is playing away from home against Man United. The first step is to determine what proportion of the team’s strike-force that that player occupies. I found that the most accurate way to do this was to look at their last 5 games on Understat, and divide their xG by their teams’ combined xG, in those games. Trent’s xG over his last 5 games is approximately 0.86, and Liverpool’s is 11.04. So, we can assume that Trent will score a proportion of about (0.86/11.04≈)0**.**078 of Liverpool’s expected goals in any given fixture. Note that this does not differentiate between how well a player compares to the rest of his team at home, because I was unable to find sufficient evidence that such a differential significant enough to consider quantitively exists (e.g. Mané seems to perform better at home than Salah and worse away this season and this is leading people to choose him over Salah for good runs of home fixtures. Last season, however, the opposite was true, so we can attribute this difference to random data variance). His xA over the same period is 1.77, and Liverpool’s is 7.69, so we can guess that he will be responsible for a proportion of 0.23 of Liverpool’s expected assists. We must also take into account that only 75% of goals have an assist in the PL, so we must multiply the amount of points we expect him to score from assists by 0.75 after assuming that every goal is assisted. Since Trent is a defender, we must also give him 4 points multiplied by the probability that Liverpool will keep a clean sheet and -1 points multiplied by the probability of Liverpool conceding more than 1 goal, then multiply it by 2 for conceding more than 3 goals, and by 3 for more than 5 goals etc, both of which I determine using a python function. The formula for the points a defender scores away from home can be expressed as: Prob(Clean Sheet) = e^(-Opponent's Expected Goals), due to Poisson Dist. If we put in the values for Trent away against Man United, this gives: 1.56 * (6 * 0.86 / 11.04 + 3 * 1.77 / 7.69 * 0.75) + 4 * 0.32 - 0.33 + 2 = 4.5 So, on average, we can expect Trent to score approximately 4.5 points against Man United. Through this project, after attempting to compile different statistics to determine how well a team plays in a game, I settled on simply using teams’ xG in each game – I couldn’t obtain any higher accuracy than by using this very elementary method. If you don’t know what xG is, it’s a statistic that compiles the probabilities of each shot taken by a team, based on a variety of information about the shot. The shots sum up to an ‘expected goals’ value that the team has in the game, and it has been shown that this value correlates remarkably well with goals scored. In my opinion it is the shots stat to rule all shots stats, because it determines with unique accuracy the quantitively quality of chances that players get. However, it comes with its problems: there is no way of separating penalties, which are more randomly distributed than shots in general, from other types of shots, so teams’ and especially players’ xG that have recently taken penalties will often be slightly inflated for this reason. The statistic also does not take into account how clinical strikers are, but this in my opinion is an overstated criticism. It is very rare for strikers to underperform vs their xG at a consistent rate, such as to be consistently more clinical than the typical PL striker. Indeed, the only major PL goal-scorer that I can find who has overperformed their xG by ~10% or more than in every season they’ve played is Eden Hazard, and I’m not worried about him. If you thought the analysis so far was boring, it’s about to get worse, as I explain how I estimate the strengths of teams. I will explain the algorithm in stages. The first is the most basic step. As already mentioned, I create 4 datasets for each team – home and away attacking and defensive strengths. I look at the xG of each team in each game in the last 2 seasons, and append each dataset with the value divided by the average value. One can visualise this as a very spiky performance line, which I then smooth out by weighting results around a point in time using a normal distribution. To take into account the opponents’ strength, I do the same thing again but this time divide by the opponents’ strength rating as well. Then I repeat this again. And again. Etc. Eventually the values that the algorithm predicts tend towards a constant, which is my algorithm’s evaluation of the strength of each team. Or at least that’s how it works in theory – in practice the attacking numbers slowly decrease and the defensive numbers slowly decrease, but the ratio of mean attacking strength to mean defensive strength tends towards a constant, so when one multiplies the mean goals by the strength values of each team this doesn’t affect the output. I have commented my incredibly messy Python code for this section below if anyone is interested. How accurate is my algorithm? My algorithm gives the correct goal count prediction for a team about 36% of the time and gets the goal count right plus/minus one goal about 82% of the time. This doesn’t sound that impressive, but the first of those stats is 3% better than Mark Lawrenson’s predictions over the same period of time as my algorithm draws it data, so while better models surely exist, it’s not too bad. I’m also pleased with the distribution of goals the algorithm outputs, which maps quite closely to the real-life distribution. Graph of accuracy of goals distribution - AKA why I have opted against a zero-inflated Poisson model Current raw team strength evaluations (note that each of these columns is weighted a bit randomly, so should only be used for inter-team comparison rather than intra-team comparison):
Just for fun, I've decided to calculate my team's expected points for next week: Pope (2.27) Tomori (4.67) TAA (4.50) Soyuncu (3.72) Maddison (4.47) Mount (4.24) Sterling (4.91) KDB (4.46) Auba (4.3) Abraham (4.59) Wilson (6.93 - yes, really (Norwich can't defend away from home)) Total = 49.09 without bonus pts, so better than GW8 :'( Any constructive criticism on my method is more than welcome - it is, after all, a work in progress :) def FormFit(performances): matrix = deepcopy(performances) for performance in matrix: if performance[1] >= 380: performance.append(1) else: performance.append(NSV) for index0, performance0 in enumerate(matrix): WeightSum = 0 Form = 1 Sum = 0 for index1, performance1 in enumerate(matrix): Weight = (1 / (SD * (2 * math.pi) ** 0.5) * math.e ** -((index1 - index0) ** 2 / (2 * SD ** 2))) * \ performance1[3] Sum += Weight * performance1[2] WeightSum += Weight performance0[2] = Sum / WeightSum return matrix OHFirstPass = {team: [] for team in Teams} OAFirstPass = {team: [] for team in Teams} DHFirstPass = {team: [] for team in Teams} DAFirstPass = {team: [] for team in Teams} for team in Teams: OHFirstPass[team] = FormFit(OffenceHomePerformances[team]) OAFirstPass[team] = FormFit(OffenceAwayPerformances[team]) DHFirstPass[team] = FormFit(DefenceHomePerformances[team]) DAFirstPass[team] = FormFit(DefenceAwayPerformances[team]) def StrengthFit(performances, opponentForms): MatchList = [{'Team': 0, 'Opponent': 0, 'TeamPerformance': 0, 'OpponentForm': 0} for index in range(len(df))] FittedPerformances = {team: [] for team in Teams} FittedForms = {team: [] for team in Teams} for team in Teams: for performance in performances[team]: MatchList[performance[1]]['Team'] = team MatchList[performance[1]]['TeamPerformance'] = performance[2] for form in opponentForms[team]: MatchList[form[1]]['Opponent'] = team MatchList[form[1]]['OpponentForm'] = form[2] for index, match in enumerate(MatchList): FittedPerformances[match['Team']].append([0, index, match['TeamPerformance'] / match['OpponentForm']]) for team in Teams: FittedForms[team] = FormFit(FittedPerformances[team]) return FittedForms global OHRecursive, DARecursive, OARecursive, DHRecursive OHRecursive = StrengthFit(OffenceHomePerformances, DAFirstPass) OARecursive = StrengthFit(OffenceAwayPerformances, DHFirstPass) DARecursive = StrengthFit(DefenceAwayPerformances, OHFirstPass) DHRecursive = StrengthFit(DefenceHomePerformances, OAFirstPass) for repeat in range(10): OHRecursive = StrengthFit(OffenceHomePerformances, DARecursive) DARecursive = StrengthFit(DefenceAwayPerformances, OHRecursive) OARecursive = StrengthFit(OffenceAwayPerformances, DHRecursive) DHRecursive = StrengthFit(DefenceHomePerformances, OARecursive) for i in sorted( [[team, OHRecursive[team][-1][2], OARecursive[team][-1][2], DHRecursive[team][-1][2], DARecursive[team][-1][2]] for team in SeasonTeams], key=lambda i: i[1] / i[3] + i[2] / i[4])[::-1]: print(i[0], OHRecursive[i[0]][-1][2], OARecursive[i[0]][-1][2], DHRecursive[i[0]][-1][2], DARecursive[i[0]][-1][2])EDIT - Thanks for the kind feedback everyone, I've recieved some really useful comments and my first gold! Glad to be part of this community. I look forward to updating you all on my project at some point in the future, including how accurate it's been between now and whenever I do so, when I feel I have a significant enough amount of progress! |
WARNING: VERY LONG POST. READ AT YOUR OWN LEISURE. submitted by digestives27 to footballmanagergames [link] [comments] https://preview.redd.it/byiz3alsqfd51.png?width=616&format=png&auto=webp&s=6b2b46167c4e53216c515a2601366a0f68e39555 NB: This is part TWO of a TWO-part series. If you haven’t yet read part ONE, please click here. Sunday 1st June 2008 The leagues are complete, the European competitions are decided, it’s time to see the damage done. Premier League We’ll start with the Premier League and, as expected, Man Utd held on to their strong advantage to retain the title, the top-scoring Reds finishing 1 goal and 6 points ahead of Arsenal. Liverpool and Man City claim the remaining Champions League places, whilst Portsmouth finished a point ahead of Everton to claim the first available UEFA Cup place. Fulham would’ve needed a mathematical miracle to have survived relegation, and Middlesbrough were already related going into the final day so a draw with Wigan meant little to them, but Wigan were already safe thanks in part to what was essentially a relegation play-off match between Birmingham and Sunderland. A win for either team would see them survive but a draw would not be enough for Sunderland. David Connolly stepped up and scored a highly contentious goal for Sunderland in a tightly contested game. Birmingham City couldn’t believe what they believed was an offside goal was allowed to stand and replays have since shown that they may have had every right to feel aggrieved about that goal. They did not, however, do enough to get back into the match and although an equaliser would’ve seen them survive, they could not muster one and now drop down into the Championship. Kevin Doyle has the last laugh in his ongoing feud with Leroy, pipping him to the Golden Boot for Reading with 25 goals to Lita’s 24. Andy Johnson rounds off the top 3 with 23 goals for Everton. Cani’s 16 assists see him take the non-existent playmaker of the year award, 3 clear of John Carew. I shall forever call this the Playmaker Award now. The league table is as follows: https://preview.redd.it/a1ngygktqfd51.png?width=844&format=png&auto=webp&s=5c2369d745ec5ef9adca0149a6452b39ac24ba94 Overachievers: Man City, Derby County, West Ham Underachievers: Tottenham, Chelsea, Bolton, Middlesbrough West Ham seal European football through the Euro Vase, aka Intertoto Cup, by virtue of the fact that apparently neither Everton or Chelsea, nor Blackburn bothered to apply. As we know, Portsmouth secured European football through 5th place but wait… Newcastle and Derby are also in Europe?! This can only mean one thing… FA Cup Derby comfortably defeated Blackburn 3-1 at Wembley while Newcastle played out a dramatic 3-3 draw with Portsmouth. The game would be settled by penalties, with Portsmouth scoring their first 2 and Newcastle missing them both. Nerves got the better of the Pompey players as Newcastle scored their next 3 and Portsmouth missed all of them. Incredible scenes in the capital. https://preview.redd.it/8ijwjicuqfd51.png?width=841&format=png&auto=webp&s=f088b1a22b1aa57508725805c0cf6cc968b82901 Not to be outdone, Derby and Newcastle would contest a fierce final themselves. James Milner wins the header from the goalkeeper’s free kick to nod down to Barton who returns a through ball for Milner to slot home in the 22nd minute. However, Derby would hit back on the brink of half-time, in part thanks for a huge stroke of good fortune: David Jones’ free kick on the edge of the box taking a huge deflection off the wall to wrong-foot Shay Given. Deadlocked at 90 minutes, the game moved into extra time. More free kick fortune for Derby as Ulrik Yttergård Jenssen’s freekick deflects off the wall as well and into the path of Daniel Fredheim Holm who lashed home high into the net. However with the clock pushing 122 minutes, Derby go on the attack instead of taking it the corner flag. They would be punished with a flowing Newcastle counterattack, Nicky Butt feeding Derek Boateng who flights a ball to the back post for an unmarked Claudio Caçapa to nod home a dramatic late equaliser. The penalty shootout would be quick and painless. Derby’s players, mentally crushed from conceding such a late goal and dissolved of all confidence, missed all 3 of their penalties to concede the FA Cup to Newcastle United. https://preview.redd.it/ee35dfnvqfd51.png?width=842&format=png&auto=webp&s=592ce72a26e286ece94ed1939cc7a56cb3889c6a Consolation for Derby is that, because Newcastle already secured European football through their League Cup victory, they will also be playing in Europe thanks to being FA Cup runners up. Incredible for a team that was predicted to be relegated this season. Championship Charlton return to the top division, hanging on to top spot despite losing to West Brom on a final day, as Sheffield United could only muster a draw at home to Southampton. Watford, West Brom, QPR and Southampton make up the playoff hopefuls whilst Hull, Sheffield Wednesday and Colchester all drop down into League One. All three relegated teams’ fates were sealed before the final day, so Hull’s 2-0 win at home to Ipswich was in vain. Stoke and Crystal Palace played each other in a play-off decider, with Stoke knowing that any win would secure them 6th place. Palace needed a win against Stoke and a favour from title-chasing Sheffield United against Southampton to leapfrog both Stoke and Southampton into 6th. As such, Southampton needed to better Stoke’s result to secure the playoffs. As it transpired, Crystal Palace’s dramatic 90th minute winner away to Stoke was not enough as Southampton played out an entertaining 2-2 draw with Sheffield United. Massive credit to Scunthorpe who were predicted to finish rock bottom this season and defied all expectations by finishing 9th, just 3 points off the playoffs. Unbelievable effort from QPR too, who flouted their 18th place prediction by finishing 5th in the playoff places. Marlon King would finish top scorer for Watford with 30 goals, well clear of second place István Ferenczi, Kevin Kyle picking up the Playmaker Award with 14 assists. Playoff Semi Finals – leg 1 QPR 1 – 1 West Brom Southampton 2 – 0 Watford Playoff Semi Finals – leg 2 West Brom 2 – 0 QPR << West Brom win 3-1 on aggregate Watford 2 – 1 Southampton << Southampton win 3-2 on aggregate Playoff Final Southampton 1 – 2 West Brom A cagey 2-1 win for West Brom as Chris Brunt scores a late winner from a set piece. Sherjill MacDonald may well have offside for the opener as Zoltan Gera played a lovely ball in to the near post and Southampton may well have a right to be upset with referee Lee Probert. If the build-up to the equaliser was scrappy, the finish certainly wasn’t: a ball lifted over the top by Jason Euell is despatched exquisitely on the volley by David McGoldrick. Chris Brunt would have the last laugh in this one, sticking a 20yard free kick into the top corner to send West Bromwich Albion back into the Premier League. https://preview.redd.it/0yrrfjr4rfd51.png?width=844&format=png&auto=webp&s=81c1fb45847ee4d66475e7fdcc29174856bbf490 Overachievers: QPR, Scunthorpe, Barnsley Underachievers: Preston, Sheffield Wednesday, Cardiff City, Colchester United League One Business as expected for the top two as Nottingham Forest win the league and Swansea City seal automatic promotion. Yeovil needed favours on the final day to usurp Swansea but did themselves none in the process by drawing in what transpired to be a dead rubber against Bristol Rovers. Doncaster needed to better Carlisle’s result to go up but instead both teams lost, and Carlisle held onto 6th place. Brighton could’ve taken advantage of that slip but lost to champions Nottingham Forest, whilst Oldham could’ve shocked everybody but ultimately lost to Southend instead. All four relegated teams were already down going into the final day: Northampton, Leeds, Tranmere and Leyton Orient. Frazier Campbell of Wallsall and Marvin Williams of Yeovil would share the Golden Boot between them with 32 goals, 4 clear of veteran striker Tore André Flo. Brian Howard’s impressive displays for Yeovil meant he claimed the Playmaker Award with 20 assists. Playoff Semi Finals – leg 1 Luton 2 – 1 Walsall Carlisle 1 – 3 Yeovil Playoff Semi Finals – leg 2 Walsall 0 – 0 Luton << Luton win 2-1 on aggregate Yeovil 3 – 1 << Yeovil win 6-2 on aggregate Playoff Final Luton 4 – 1 Yeovil << Luton promoted after extra time An open-ended affair with chances aplenty for both sides, Luton taking the lead inside the first 5 minutes, full-back Alan Goodall whipping a lovely ball into the near post for Sam Parkin to tuck away. Yeovil would be reduced to ten me early in the second half, Terrell Forbes hospital pass clearance met by the head of Luton’s Chris Hackett who nodded into the path of striker Drew Talbot. Talbot was unable to get his shot away clearly as Matthew Rose stuck out a leg to bring Talbot down and was sent off for a professional foul, drawing large protests from the Yeovil players. Still, Yeovil pressed and five minutes later they’d find an unlikely equaliser. Brian Howard, standing over a free kick 30 yards out, goes for the audacious and gets a huge slice of luck as the free kick clatters off the wall, sends the keeper the wrong way and flies into the empty net. Brave Yeovil would hold out the 90 minutes but unfortunately, Luton would make the extra man count in extra time, substitute Sol Davis starting the procession with a delightful free kick on the edge of the box. Tidy finishes from David Edwards and Willie Gibson rounded off a fine performance from Luton as they sealed their place in next season’s Championship. https://preview.redd.it/bkaziqu8rfd51.png?width=843&format=png&auto=webp&s=c55d9f1700bfaa285ca402f45f7d697b20801452 Overachievers: Walsall, Brighton, Cheltenham, Yeovil Underachievers: Leeds, Tranmere, Millwall Maybe slightly harsh to put Leeds in there with a 15-point deduction, but without it they would’ve finished 10th which is still way below expectations. League Two Impressive Bury romped to a surprise League Two victory, 5 points clear of Peterborough who in turn were 6 points clear of Chesterfield. On-loan youngster Chedwyn Evans’ 24 league goals complementing striker partner Andy Bishop’s 22 league goals to good effect. MK Dons’ Jemal Johnson would score 4 goals in a 5-2 away thriller at Brentford to snatch the Golden Boot away from Morecambe’s Michael Twiss, who must’ve hoped his two goals against Barnet would’ve been enough, Johnson finishing the season on 25 goals. Kevin McBride of Darlington wins the Playmaker Award. Grimsby could’ve been relegated on the last day had they, as they did, lost to Hereford but in the end it mattered not as Barnet and Mansfield, who only needed a win to try and survive, both suffered heavy defeats to drop out of the Football League. Playoff Semi Final – leg 1 Shrewsbury 1 – 2 Darlington Macclesfield 0 – 2 Morecambe Playoff Semi Final – leg 2 Darlington 1 – 1 Shrewsbury << Darlington win 3-1 on aggregate Morecambe 3 – 2 Macclesfield << Morecambe win 5-2 on aggregate Playoff final An incredible event as teams predicted to finish 12th and 21st met in the playoff final. Morecambe’s firepower really should’ve seen them through here, but it was Darlington who took an early lead through Gregg Blundell. Darlington must’ve feared the worst when top scorer Pawel Abbott was taken off injured after the half-hour mark. It took Morecambe until the 79th minute to get off the mark through, Jamie Forrester providing the breakthrough. Smart thinking from goalkeeper Steven Drench sees Forrester run through a gap the size of Jupiter between the two centre backs to collect the long punt forward and slot home. Darlington would somehow have the last laugh though, Tommy Wright slotting him neatly 3 minutes later for a famous win, taking Darlington up to League One https://preview.redd.it/m8t0l57crfd51.png?width=844&format=png&auto=webp&s=6f94715ce63781bdc9085c33b619229cb10d57c0 Overachievers: Morecambe, Macclesfield, Accrington Stanley, Darlington, Bury Underachievers: Bradford, Rotherham, Brentford, MK Dons, Rochdale, Grimsby, Barnet, Mansfield Honestly, take your pick. Crazy season in League Two. Non-League Oxford won the Conference Premier, 9 points ahead of the playoff hopefuls. Rushden & Diamonds steamrollered Stevenage 4-0 in the final, who themselves had reached the final via a 90th minute winner against Crawley, who themselves had an excellent season after being predicted to finish 19th and instead finished 2nd, even with a 6-point deduction. Simeon Jackson wins top goal scorer with 33 league goals for Rushden & Diamonds. Overachievers: Salisbury, Histon, Crawley, Rushden & Diamonds Underachievers: Exeter, York, Torquay, Ebbsfleet, Kidderminster, Burton https://preview.redd.it/cz3nwj2erfd51.png?width=851&format=png&auto=webp&s=af2562e64a445924f67c6fae2a98cb245648cad7 Southport win the Conference North and Boston United win the playoff final, beating Kettering on penalties. Alfreton, Hyde and Vauxhall are all relegated. Lewes win the Conference South and Dorchester Town win the playoff final, beating Braintree on penalties. Havant & Waterlooville, Hayes & Yeading and Fisher Athletic are all relegated. League round-up. We’ve already talked about the overachievers and underachievers, so let’s quickly compare the media predictions to the teams’ actual finishing positions. Should we castigate the media? Or should be laud and slate the teams who, for better or worse, defied expectations? The final position is denoted to the right of the team, with the change from the prediction one over. What do the media know, eh? The game also has its own season summary for each league which pretty much covers everything I’ve already shared but for those interested, see below: https://preview.redd.it/d1u1vdgkrfd51.png?width=853&format=png&auto=webp&s=87c6b9ad71e0461ce708fa9ab1cf51acb2113f2a UEFA Cup It seems like forever ago since we saw European competition. I will skip ahead, so here are the First and Second Knockout Round results. First Round https://preview.redd.it/zm64vwrlrfd51.png?width=478&format=png&auto=webp&s=a730b92e911d7d70aaff43e11de4dd290b7b561b Second Round https://preview.redd.it/n85jm85nrfd51.png?width=481&format=png&auto=webp&s=0bfac290a1058ea2edb979e18314d41a7f753bd7 Gritty performances throughout. For those of you wondering why FC Bayern are in the UEFA Cup it’s because they finished 4th in the Bundesliga in 06/07 behind champions VfB Stuttgart, 2nd place Schalke and 3rd place Werder Bremen. They entered at the UEFA Cup first round, essentially a final qualifying round. In-game, they defeated FC Twente 5-1 on aggregate to reach the group stage. They finished 3rd in their group, behind Fiorentina and Bolton. Quarter Finals All relatively straight forward in the Quarter Finals too, Bayern and Tottenham progress comfortably whilst Porto and Fiorentina had to do a bit of digging in to get the job done. FC Bayern (6) 3 - 0 (1) Werder Bremen Dinamo Kiev (2) 2 - 2 (4) Porto Tottenham (5) 1 - 1 (2) Blackburn Fiorentina (3) 0 - 0 (2) Girondins Bordeaux Semi Finals Bayern and Fiorentina met again in the Semi Finals to relive their group match (which was a 1-1 draw). The Semi Final would prove to be hotly contested again, Bayern stealing the victory in the 90th minute through Bastian Schweinsteiger, although replays show he may well have been offside. Luca Toni and Adrian Mutu were the other goal scorers. The second leg lived up to the billing as well, Bayern taking the lead mid-way through the first half through Miroslav Klose’s smart run and finish. Mark van Bommel added an unlikely second on the night through a sublime freekick which left Fiorentina needing 4 goals to go through. Adrian Mutu led a one-man crusade with a brace in the 63rd and 69th minute respectively before substitute Massimo Gobbi’s tidy 73rd minute finish set up a nervy finale. However, La Viola couldn’t add to their tally and Bayern reached the final. A tight contest in the other match was lifted with Steed Malbranque’s goal on the stroke of half-time, simply sumptuous freekick from the corner of the box, lifted over the wall and into the back of the net on the near side. Some fine work from José Bosingwa down the right-hand side allowed him to whip a cross into the far post for Raúl Meireles to head in an equaliser to ensure the spoils were shared going into the second leg. Robbie Keane scored his 25th goal of the season here with a cool finish, showing that you don’t need to blast the ball to score, Tottenham now sitting pretty knowing that Porto needed to score twice to progress. A moment of madness, however, from Didier Zokora left them in a spot of bother. Zokora was shown a straight red card on the brink of half-time, his second of the season, after catching Malkhaz Asatiani with his elbow, referee Stuart Dougal showing no hesitation in sending the Ivorian off. However, Porto were unable to even pluck out an equaliser, let alone a winner and Tottenham progress. FC Bayern (4) 2 - 3 (4) Fiorentina << FC Bayern advance on away goals Porto (1) 0 - 1 (2) Tottenham Final Bayern were utterly ruthless in the final, showing no mercy to Tottenham in a 3-0 demolishing, all of the goals coming in the first half courtesy of Luca Toni and a brace from Miroslav Klose. The lack of defensive cover in the midfield really cost them and Kevin-Prince Boateng had his work cut out trying to fill-in in Zokora’s absence, indeed getting himself sent off in the 79th minute for a second bookable offence. https://preview.redd.it/itis2karrfd51.png?width=844&format=png&auto=webp&s=7d0c4d4a8dc0081c25d84af5d35b3e46dea10924 Miroslav Klose’s two goals in the final means he takes home the Golden Boot with 12 goals, edging out RC Lens’ Aruna Dindane and team-mate Luca Toni by one goal. Riccardo Montolivo of Fiorentina picks up the Playmaker Award with 8 assists. Champions League Now, for what you’ve all been waiting for – the Champions League! We left you with the Quarter Final line-ups: Get ready for mayhem... None of the teams would disappoint in this round either. Liverpool beating Real Madrid 2-1 away in the first leg only to almost throw it away with a 2-1 loss at home, thanks for Raúl’s 90th minute goal. Liverpool may well have been questioning just why the final whistle hadn’t already blown, but Jamie Carragher would be the extra time hero though, scoring a scrappy goal after a corner was failed to be cleared by Madrid. Inter Milan’s first leg away goal helped them on their way to beating Man Utd over two legs, Adriano powering home from an indirect free kick opportunity. Paul Scholes would level the tie up when they met again in Italy, but former Arsenal man Patrick Vieira would seal the tie for Inter with a wonderful 30-yard screamer into the top corner. A contender for match-of-the-competition as Arsenal overcame Barcelona in a 10-goal feast. Thierry Henry’s sub 5-minute brace against his former club, including one after just 18 seconds, was pegged back by Robin van Persie’s own brace and the Gunners would lead 3-2 at half-time thanks to “wonderkid” Nicklas Bendtner. Bendtner would be at it again shortly after half-time, thanks in part to even more craftsmanship from Francesc Fàbregas. A headed goal from William Gallas at a corner put Arsenal 5-2 up and looking comfortable but Barcelona went on the attack the corresponding kick off, Xavi Hernández sliding Ronaldinho in to make it 5-3, Jens Lehmann going walkabouts by all accounts. Bendtner would complete has hattrick on 70 minutes though, slotting home after a neat turn in the corner of the box, sending Andrea Barzagli to another dimension. Barcelona would secure their 5th away goal though, Thierry Henry completing his own hat-trick after William Gallas failed to deal with a ball over the tip. Final score 6-4. And breathe. The second leg was less entertaining, but Thierry Henry would put his former club to the sword again with two more goals and, despite Rafael Márquez being sent off for an astonishing elbow to Bakary Sagna’s face, Barcelona held out for the win on away goals. 2-0 on the night, 6-6 on aggregate. The most disgraceful part of the night was the players surrounding referee Thorsten Kinhöfer after the red card. Pundits are still perplexed as to what they were complaining about. Finally onto Celtic, who produced the most breath-taking First Knockout Round ties against Valencia would continue to produce high entertainment value against PSV. Celtic held the advantage after a 1-1 draw in Eindhoven, but PSV would not go down without a fight. Rodrigo Palacio opened the scoring after Scott Brown needlessly lost the ball and some poor play from goalkeeper Artur Boruc, less than 45seconds into the match. Maciej Zurawski would dig his goalkeeper out of a hole 3 minutes later, beating Heurelho Gomes at his near post before Rodrigo hit back again on 8 minutes, capitalising on another poor error from Artur Boruc. John de Jong would add to icing to a rich and wholesome cake, flicking the ball into the far corner of the net beyond Boruc’s reach and PSV looked comfortable leading 4-2 on aggregate, knowing Celtic now needed 3 goals to progress. PSV would lose key midfielder Edison Méndez to injury on 27 minutes but it would take until the second half for Celtic to take advantage, Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink finishing off an attack before Maciej Zurawski would set up a frantic last 5 minutes after getting on the end of Lee Naylor’s inch-perfect cross. Celtic couldn’t produce one more moment of magic though and the tie would finish 4-4 on aggregate, PSV going through by virtue of away goals. Real Madrid (3) 2 - 2 (4) Liverpool Man Utd (1) 1 - 1 (2) Inter Arsenal (6) 0 - 2 (6) Barcelona << Barcelona advance on away goals PSV (4) 3 - 3 (4) Celtic << PSV advance on away goals Semi Finals Could the Semi Finals produce the same magic? Liverpool were paired up against Inter Milan and Barcelona were drawn against PSV. Barcelona all but ended PSV hopes of an underdog victory, smashing them 4-0 in the first leg at home, Thierry Henry and Ronaldinho both scoring braces, Ronaldinho’s both coming from penalties (and both when Henry was on a hat-trick so he can probably consider himself unlucky to be allowed to take one of them). With Edison Méndez still missing, Sebastián Battaglia was asked to step in but he was easily over-run by the Barcelona midfield. PSV showed incredible fight immediately in the return fixture, going 2-0 up inside the first 7 minutes through Palacio’s lob and Ismael Aissati’s smart finish, but Barcelona soon calmed everything down, scoring 4 unanswered goals in return before half-time courtesy of Barzagli, two from Henry and a brilliant Ronaldinho free kick.. Gastón Fernández scored again late in the second half, but with the tie already done and dusted, it was more for pride than anything else. Barcelona win 4-3 on the night and 8-3 on aggregate. Liverpool hosted Inter Milan at Anfield for the first leg of the other semi final and took a first half-lead through a stunning John Arne Riise free kick. Steven Gerrard forced Júlio César into an own goal after initially saving Ryan Babel’s long-range effort before Fernando Torres turned provider for Ryan Babel to breakaway and make it 3-0. Zlatan Ibrahimović gave Inter Milan some hope with a late away goal, pouncing on a rare error from Jamie Carragher in the 88th minute. Liverpool were in good form going into the return leg, having battered fierce rivals Man Utd 4-0 at home at the weekend but it was Inter Milan who dominated this game for long periods, really putting the Liverpool team to the sword. Their dominance paid off in the 21st minute when Ibrahimović retrieved Maicon’s pinpoint pass and slotted into the bottom corner. Torres would ease the pressure on Liverpool with an equaliser at the start of the second half, his 20th goal of the season passed into the bottom corner; the keeper probably should’ve done better with it though. Inter claimed offside, but I’m not convinced. Incensed, Inter went on the attack immediately, both literally and figuratively, injuring Torres before Ibrahimović fed Adriano who had the vision to pick out Esteban Cambiasso to restore Inter’s lead on the night. A great counterattack. Inter would make Liverpool pay once more for sloppy defending when Steve Finnan was beaten to the ball too easily by Adriano who cut it back for Maxwell to fire home. Pepe Reina will be disappointed when he looks back on that, as he really should be saving those kinds of shots. 3-1 on the night and unbelievably 4-4 on aggregate. Extra time beckoned but Adriano was not interested in penalties, whipping a delightful ball around the corner for his strike partner David Suazo, clean through on goal to slot past a helpless Reina. Liverpool would go all out offensive from then until the final whistle but couldn’t muster one last goal to salvage the result and Inter go through to final, 4-1 on the night, 5-4 on aggregate. Liverpool (4) 1 - 4 (5) Inter Barcelona (8) 4 - 3 (3) PSV Final And so for the final. Inter Milan vs Barcelona. The world held high hopes after the last few rounds: they wanted goals. They were not disappointed. Strong. Barcelona opened the scoring on 23 minutes, emerging “wonderkid” Lionel Messi slotting Samuel Eto’o through to score his 20th goal of the season. The lead wouldn’t last too long though, as Ibrahimović fed Suazo to equaliser on 31 minutes. Eto’o would restore the lead again soon after, Deco sliding a lovely pass through the defence for Eto’o to bury. Controversy followed in the second half. Xavi loses the ball to Maxwell inside the Inter half who in turn goes on a mazy run towards goal exchanging passes with Cambiasso along the way. He is allegedly obstructed by Zambrotta outside the penalty arc, but replays show that it’s a blatant dive. To make matters worse, the referee inexplicably gives a penalty! Ibrahimović slots it without question. 2-2. 63 minutes and Puyol is needlessly dragged out of position to close down Stankovic who instead slips in Ibrahimović for his second of the game. Minutes later, a poor throw-in from Zambrotta gifts the ball to Ibrahimović to seal his hat-trick and put the game to bed, Inter holding out for a 4-2 win in the final against Barcelona! https://preview.redd.it/h8a5m6o4sfd51.png?width=842&format=png&auto=webp&s=b75fe5a7f131b27119bfecdadf612ff7bab575ee Despite the result, Ibrahimović would finish runner up to on 14 goals to Thierry Henry and Rodrigo Palacio in the Golden Boot race, the latter pair netting 15 goals a-piece. Andrés Iniesta would take home the Playmaker Award with 8 assists ahead of team-mate Ronaldinho’s 7. Despite an average rating of 7.83, Ronaldinho would also finish runner-up to Ibrahimović in the Champions League best player, with Henry rounding off the top 3. Now, because does not save an accessible history of stats and results, they are essentially wiped as the season ends, so I decided to end each 4th game file on June 1st. The game resets around about the 24th or 25th but I wanted to stop the game after the season had finished and before any international competitions began. But the year is 2008 so we all know what’s coming… https://preview.redd.it/77mkbzd5sfd51.png?width=890&format=png&auto=webp&s=2b0d8ccafdf04b8dc03fdc1204ea9a21df93e15b This does mean I’m going to have to go into the game file for Year 2, but I’ll keep everything else a secret. Euro 2008 deserves to be inside the 07/08 season. I do have all the results for the other international tournaments akin to this which make up the Confederations Cup competitors, so I will give a very brief oversight into those as well as they happen. I’m not going to go into how each team qualified for the tournament unless you specifically ask about it in the comments. Let’s look at the groups, with the help of some expert MS Paint skills to display their current world rankings too. https://preview.redd.it/gjbu0xo6sfd51.png?width=275&format=png&auto=webp&s=a4f9acbbe0a8ab7fba779689c4137c37b137793c The most notable changes are that Denmark, England, Scotland and Finland all qualified for this edition and Spain, French, Russia and Poland, who all qualified in the real Euro 2008, miss out. Hosts Switzerland and Austria naturally have terrible ratings due to not playing many competitive internationals as they didn’t need to qualify for their own tournament. Group B looks tough, and the Scots may well fancy an upset in Group D. Editors predictions: England. Not just because I’m biased, but because on paper they have the squad to do it. The Golden Generation may not have succeeded in real life, but this is stats-based fantasy. Football’s coming home! Failing that, and with France and Spain both missing, it’s anyone’s to take. I’m putting money on a Ronaldo-backed Portugal. I will run through them Group by Group, even though it won’t strictly be in the order. All will be well again come the Knockout Rounds. (editor note: a picture of all the groups is at the bottom. I had to cut back to 20 images) Group A Croatia and Sweden played out an entertaining 2-2 draw that didn’t get going until the last 30 minutes. Jurica Vranjes thought he’d snatched a late 87th minute for Croatia until Marcus Allbäck equalised 2 minutes later. Two early goals for Denmark were enough to see off Switzerland despite themselves pulling a goal back before half-time, a 2-1 finish. The second round of fixtures produced even more drama, a Tranquillo Barnetta hat-trick for Switzerland helping to sink Sweden 4-3 in a back-and-forth game, Gelson Fernandes eventually settling the contest for the Swiss. An Eduardo-inspired Croatia took the game to Denmark and a late Nicklas Bendtner goal wasn’t enough to stop Croatia winning 3-1. Any win for Croatia against Switzerland sends them through. A draw would also suffice. Switzerland need to win, although a draw would do if Sweden could beat Denmark. Any positive Denmark result paired with a Croatia win sees them progress, or even a win and a Croatia/Swiss draw. Sweden must beat Denmark and hope Croatia win. If the Swiss beat Croatia, they need to win and hope for a goal difference swing. Drama all round as Sweden’s tournament hopes end with a 2-1 defeat to Denmark. Switzerland know they realistically need to win but can only muster a 2-2 draw with Croatia. Denmark top the group, Croatia are runners up. Group B Czech Republic and Austria open the tournament with an entertaining 2-2 draw, Austria snatching a 90th minute equaliser through Steffen Hofmann after a mistake from Zdenek Grygera. Turkey and Portugal would step it up a notch by playing out a 3-2 game which, in truth, Portugal were always in control of. 3-0 up inside 21minutes, Turkey made a second half comeback but the 2nd goal in the 89th minute was too little, too late. Goals from Deco and Tomas Rosicky in the first half ensured the spoils were shared in a game where the Czech Republic dominated Portugal for large portions of the game and will be disappointed to only draw 1-1. (editor note: the game seems to think Portugal completed 200% of their crosses in this match…) Turkey, on the other hand, turned their dominance into a 2-0 win over Austria. Portugal need to beat Austria to secure top spot whereas Austria know they need a big win and some good fortune for a draw in the other game. Any winner of Turkey/Czech Republic will qualify, but a draw for Turkey should be enough, barring a miracle from Austria. It’s feasible that Portugal could still be knocked out, though very unlikely. And as it happens, Portugal make light work of Austria, Maniche and Cristiano Ronaldo scoring first half goals to seal the tie 2-0 in an otherwise boring match. Czech Republic would be made to pay for not getting the winner against Portugal, being torn apart comprehensively by a relentless Turkey side with braces for both Nihat and Halil Altintop, 4-0 the final score line. Portugal top the group, Turkey are runners up. Group C The last group to get going, but no lack of entertainment here, with Romania cruising to a 2-0 win against Greece. All of the drama came in the much-anticipated England/Germany match though and it met all expectations. Darren Bent’s headed opener was cancelled out by Miroslav Klose pouncing on Paul Robinson’s fumble, but Wayne Rooney would restore England’s lead halfway through the first half. Bayern’s Lukas Podolski pulled it level again before half-time before the teams seemed set to see out a 2-2 draw. However, deep into stoppage time at the end of 90 minutes, up steps David Beckham to do what David Beckham does best – dispatch freekicks into the top corner. 3-2. There was still time after the restart for Steven Gerrard to be shown a straight-red for hacking down Klose with two-feet. Germany would take their revenge out on Greece in the next game, securing a 4-2 victory, whilst England would maintain their good form by persevering for a late 2-0 win against Romania. England are already through and Greece cannot qualify so their final game is a dead rubber, other than Greece trying not to finish bottom and England trying to assure top spot. The winner of Germany/Romania will go through, but a draw will be enough for Germany by virtue of Goal Difference. England consign Greece to 4th place in the group with a routine 2-0 win, goals from Wayne Rooney and Shaun Wright-Phillips enough to see them off. A cagey first-half in the Germany/Romania match became a much more open-ended affair after Daniel Niculae’s brilliant 47th minute opener, a sublime solo run culminating in a lobbed finish. Miroslav Klose fired back 10 minutes later with 2 goals in quick succession to swing the tie but Romania, not prepared to lie down, equalised again through Eric Bicfalvi. Romania would do the unthinkable though, Adrian Mutu bending a delightful goal into the corner to secure a 3-2 victory for Romania. England top the group, Romania are runners up. Group D Italy kicked off the group against Finland with a nervy win, having gone 1-0 down to a 60th minute penalty from Ari Nyman. Filippo Inzaghi pulled it level in the 82nd minute before Antonin Cassano’s stoppage time winner stole all the points from Finland. Scotland were less keen to roll over though and will be disappointed to have thrown away a 3-1 lead at the 85th minute, Wesley Sneijder and Roy Makaay with late goals to snatch a 3-3 draw. Holland vs Italy was billed as the one to watch in this group, and rightly so, both teams amassing almost 30 shots between them, but with both keepers in good form, the match would be tied 1-1, Riccardo Montolivo cancelled out Robin van Persie’s first half strike. Scotland have certainly found their shooting boots at this tournament after putting 4 past Finland, but they were made to work for the victory with the Finns taking the lead and later equalising through Mika Ääritalo’s brace. James McFadden’s strike would retake the lead before Barry Ferguson put the icing on the cake of a 4-2 win. Scotland need any result against Italy to go through. A loss through, coupled with a likely Holland win overly Finland, would send them crashing out. Finland cannot progress. Holland must win to go through, as must Italy. Holland do indeed get their win against Finland, dominating from start to finish, although the score line should really have been bigger than 2-1. Scotland’s hopes of sneaking out of the group were dealt an immediate blow as they went 1-0 down to Alessandro Del Piero’s header inside 45 seconds. Alberto Gilardino would double the lead in the 20th minute and although Kenny Miller pulled one back in the second half, they couldn’t find a second goal to escape the group. Final score 2-1 to Italy. Italy top the group, Holland are runners up. Summary https://preview.redd.it/o41tr52jtfd51.png?width=848&format=png&auto=webp&s=e3c96a5bda7862b3e04e55ada618d0e7358e0d8c Quarter Finals Turkey – Denmark Croatia – Portugal England – Holland Italy – Romania No real humdingers here as all of the teams tightened up a lot. Turkey did away with Denmark 2-0 in a game that the Danes will be disappointed to have not scored in. Nihat and an own goal from Per Krøldrup sealed the game. Portugal were perhaps the better team in their tie against Croatia but still had to work hard to secure a 2-1 victory, Eduardo’s first half strike cancelled out by Maniche and Ronaldo in the second. More late, late drama in this one as Frank Lampard scored a trademark goal, arriving from deep to sweep home a Wright-Phillips cross. England must’ve thought that’d be enough but Robin van Persie struck early into stoppage time to level the tie up 1-1. But cometh the 94th minute, cometh the man: Holland do not deal with a long clearance properly and Wright-Phillips skips past his man on the wing to lay the ball into the path of the onrushing Lampard who buries it high into the far corner. Holland complain to the linesman but really, they should be looking at themselves for some shoddy defending. Romania will be disappointed they had to take Italy all the way to penalties to beat them, having been arguably the better team throughout. 1-1 at full time but a comfortable 4-2 shootout victory as their excellent tournament marches on, the only sour point being Stefan Radu’s 121st minute red card for a horrific tackle on Antonio Cassano. Turkey 2-0 Denmark Croatia 1-2 Portugal England 2-1 Holland Italy 1-1 Romania << Romania advance on penalties Semi Finals Turkey – Romania Portugal – England One thing guaranteed in this tournament now is that there will be an outsider in the final. Turkey left it late, but a brace from Nihat would prove enough to put Romania to the sword and end their dream run. Romania might look back and feel like they could’ve done better with both goals though. Manchester United teammates Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney did battle in this one, both getting their names on the scoresheet with clinical finishes. There would be nothing to settle the two sides until the very end: penalties. Hugo Viana, Nuno Valente, Jorge Andrade all scored whilst Gareth Barry, John Terry and Steven Gerrard did likewise. After Miguel fired home, Michael Carrick would see his penalty saved by goalkeeper Ricardo. However, some Paul Robinson heroics against Ricardo Carvalho gave Rio Ferdinand a chance to get back into the shootout. The pressure was too much though, and he slammed his penalty against the inside of the post to see Portugal through to the final, a final which Deco will miss with suspension after hacking Wright-Phillips down with two feet in 120th minute for an early bath. Turkey 2-0 Romania Portugal 1-1 England << Portugal advance on penalties Final No Third Place Playoff in the Euros, straight into the final where Turkey meet Portugal, looking for an upset. Nihat and Mehmet Aurélio’s persistence forced the breakthrough on 20 minutes but a smart short freekick routine 2 minutes later from Portugal saw Maniche hit a bending daisy cutter into the bottom corner to equalise. Into the second half and Mehmet Topuz played one of the balls of the tournament from deep, around the defence and into the path of Nihat who didn’t need to break stride to hit an unbelievable shot on the half-volley. Rumour has it that Nihat lost Ricardo Carvalho so well, he is still searching for Nihat to this day. Turkey would hold on to their 2-1 advantage until the final whistle to become unlikely European Champions 2008. https://preview.redd.it/qx6ak4upsfd51.png?width=1423&format=png&auto=webp&s=52e9400ba3f2294178b459f89492370503ef814a And so that concludes the first season back of Reasons Why I Still Play FM08, also unofficially called What Could Have Been. This grew to be significantly longer than I expected, and I thoroughly enjoyed writing it, even if it did take me well over 15 hours to do so. If anybody has any specific questions about any aspects of this particular game, please feel free to ask and I’ll do my best to answer them, whether it’s information about non-league clubs, club finances, world rankings, wonderkid regens etc. I will also happily run through competitions like the African Cup of Nations and the Olympics, although competitions like the Asian Cup, Gold Cup, Copa América have yet to happen on this file. I have at least 5 seasons worth of game files now, and seasons 2-5 are all structured the same in terms of save dates: September 1st, December 1st, March 1st and June 1st. Congratulations if you got this far, I applaud your perseverance. I hope you enjoyed it. See you soon for Year 2. ~ dige |
Arsenal vs Watford: Prediction, tips and odds as Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang looks to finish season with Golden Boot . By Michael Golson; 24 Jul 2020, 18:06; THERE is very little at stake for Watford v Arsenal match preview and score prediction. By Admin Martin - 15 September 2019, 9:57. Finally, football is back for Arsenal after the seemingly endless international break and they have a great opportunity of collecting all three points against bottom side Watford at Vicarage Road later today. Arsenal will be without Alexandre Lacazette but will still be able to field a formidable Arsenal vs Watford Correct Score Predictions. There is no chance Watford can get a big margin win here, so they will surely be relegated by the end of the day. Arsenal will play to end one of their worst seasons on a good note, so will be looking to fire from the start. Arsenal to win 2-1 on Sunday. Watford vs Arsenal Prediction was posted on: September 9, 2019. Our prediction for this Premier League match: Watford. Match Time & Date: 15/09/2019. 08:30 AM. Prediction: 1-2. Arsenal. Watford and Arsenal face each other at Vicarage Road on Matchday 5 in what is expected to be one of the most exciting games of Sunday’s program. The Hornets are after their first win of the season, whilst the Arsenal vs Watford Prediction was posted on: July 23, 2020. Our prediction for this Premier League match: Arsenal. Match Time & Date: 26/07/2020. 08:00 AM. Prediction: 1-2. Watford. Arsenal will be with one eye on the FA Cup final clash when they take on Watford at their Emirates Stadium on the last day of the season. The Gunners have little to play for in Sunday’s showdown, while the What is WhatstheScore.com?. WTS.com is simply the best livescore site in English.. Follow all football games live results, look up sports betting stats, learn about the team lineups of clubs and view the schedules of streamed football matches.All this and more is possible on WhatstheScore.com. Our services also allow you to check out videos of goals and highlights. Arsenal vs Watford: Prediction Arteta’s men lost 1-0 on the road the last match-day, against Aston Villa, which effectively put them out of contention for the European spots. In the meantime, Mullins’s men lost 0-4 at home against Manchester City. As things stand, the Hornets have the slight upper hand. Watford have lost five of their six Premier League home games against Arsenal, coming from behind to win the other 2-1 in October 2017. Arsenal have won their last three Premier League meetings Arsenal vs Watford - 3:2 (Home Win) England - Premier League (soccer) 26. Jul 2020 18:00. FREE Soccer Prediction 3-1 . Both Teams Score? Yes . Under or Over 2.5 Over . MATHEMATICAL PROBABILITY. Home (49.7%) Draw (24.7%) Away (25.6%) BETTING ODDS (click & add to your account) Last games of Arsenal. W. W. L. W. D. W. W. W. L. D. Date Outcome Home vs Away League; 1. Oct : Draw (0-0) Liverpool Preview: Watford vs. Arsenal - prediction, team news, lineups By Andrew Sinclair | 1y Sports Mole previews Sunday's Premier League clash between Watford and Arsenal, including predictions, team
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Watford vs Arsenal: Match Odds, Betting Tips & Predictions:https://www.oddsmarket.com/tips/football/watford-vs-arsenal-match-odds-betting-tips-predictions/90... Football Premier League match Prediction between Arsenal vs Watford.Sports prediction by PARI is the only channel who will provide you all kind of Sports mat... Prediction based on PS4 PRO Gameplay of PES 2019 for the English Premier League Gameweek 34, 2018/19 Season match between Watford & Arsenal which will be pla... Click "Show more" to see the music and more! 👇👇👇 Arsenal vs Watford FIFA 20 Predicts: Premier League Matchday 38 #ARSWAT Welcome back to the series "FIFA 20 Prediction Matches”. Arsenal vs Watford PREDICTED Lineup, Tactics & Formation Pepe To Score His First Arsenal Goal? #Arsenal #ArsenalVSWatford #PremierLeague Arsenal play away ... For full Watford vs Arsenal predictions, click here ️ https://footballpredictions.net/watford-v-arsenal-predictions-betting-tipsVisit the link above for all... Subscribe for more
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