You don’t need to have read many of my little notelets to appreciate that I hold the entire statistical world, industry, profession, whatever vaulted title you wish to bestow upon it, in total and absolute fucking contempt. It’s all bollocks. Furthermore it is very biased bollocks. And very prejudicial, which is its purpose. To prejudice the unsuspecting statistics reader (are there such people?) into the view of those who have paid for the analysis to occur. If, by some amazing failure of the numerists to actually achieve the desired outcome, then that data would simply never be published.

There is but one exception to the ‘all statistics is bollocks’ rule. And that is football. Where, should you care to replay entire matches in slo-mo, you can count all the passes that Manchester City (just f’rexample, nothing significant there) made in a match. You could plot your own ‘heat map’ of how many chances in the opponents penalty area, the combined strike team of the most expensive side ever produced could fuck up and squander.

But really, your time would be better spent in awe and wonder at the glory and splendour of (eg) a Tottenham performance.

To demonstrate this, I’ll pick a random game… hmmmm… so many to choose from… let’s say, Spurs vs City, last night, at the Lane, 5.30. Just randomly. By chance. Plucked out’a thin air.

Manchester City were dominant. Created no less than 55 chances on goal. Fifty-fucking-five (having a ‘f’ day today). That’s fairly fluent in frequency and indeed creativity. Spurs, on the other hand, at the other end perhaps, created a mere 4. City had 98% of possession. Passed the ball 3,872 times and enjoyed 27 corners. Spurs made 6 passes. (Some of these figures may suffer from slight exaggeration due to exuberance).

But they all fucking counted.

Passing the ball around in that very ‘Pep way’ is actually footballing masturbation. Mildly gratifying, gets you nowhere, feels great at the time but is unrewarding and unsatisfying. With definitely no happy ending for City as the wankers (ha, ha, haaa…) lost 2 nil.

Spurs, on the other hand, won 2 nil. Don’t need a computer for that one.

The team, MY team, were simply magnificent. All of them. The ‘usual suspects’ of Kane and Son were as remarkably sensational as they are every week. The now injured Alderweireld simply brilliant. But the Spurs performance, their attitude, their virtual re-birth, can pretty much be summed up in one word.

Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg.

Statisticians may argue that its 3 words, possibly 2 with a hyphen. But they’re all tossers (see above). Hojbjerg was blessed with a completely unpronounceable name for a reason. Not sure what it is, but its very important. And during the game you’d barely notice his influence unless you were watching very closely. Yet he has become our most important player since his arrival from Southampton. The best 15 million pounds I’ve ever spent.

Kevin de Bruyne? Who’s he?

Exceptionally happy, TOP-OF-THE-TABLE Sunday

A xxxx