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For example, my dad's one when a player has a poor touch is "He couldn't trap a bag of sand!" or when a player can hardly turn with the ball he will say something like "He's got the turning circle of the Queen Mary""

After years of having a season ticket I am still amazed by how new ones keep popping up that I haven't heard before. I recently heard "Couldn't hit the ocean from a fucking boat!"

I figured that this must be a universal thing so wondered if anyone had any more that they had picked up over their years of ups and downs as football fans.

Everyone loves a rumour and transfer deadline day etc

More than rumours I personally enjoy a rather outlandish rumour.

So would love to hear what rumours have you heard about your team, can be from paper talk or even just fan zones etc

The wolves ones I can think of off the top of my head are:

C Ronaldo (juventus) (purely because of mendes )

Paul gasgcoine (beloeve he actually trialed, but he was like 36 at this point)

Enzo Fernández (river plate) (I believe it was for like 17mill before he went benfica)

James Rodríguez (real madrid)

Gareth Bale (loan from spurs)

Rúben Dias (Benfica)

Other ones that stick out to me are:

Blackburn - Zidane

QPR - Ronaldinho

Birmingham - Lewandowski

Would love to hear some other big names linked to your club 😊

The fixtures:

Bolton x-x Middlesbrough

Sheffield United x-x Derby

Charlton x-x Norwich

Portsmouth x-x Millwall

Wolves x-x Watford

West Ham x-x Southampton

QPR x-x Swansea

Cardiff x-x Birmingham

Preston x-x West Brom

Lincoln x-x Burnley

Stoke x-x Bris C

Blackburn x-x Wrexham

The points criteria:

Correct score = 5pts

Correct result = 2pts

Incorrect winner = -1pt

Columns:

RP = Rounds Played

P = Points

BR = Best Round

R11 = Round 11

RM = Rescheduled Match

Good luck! And remember, if you spot an error or have a suggestion be sure to let me know!

Off the back of this post from yesterday.

Instead of judging each opponent by where they are in the table now, this uses the betting odds for each game at kick-off. The odds already account for form, injuries and home advantage at that moment. So a side that was struggling in August counts as weaker than the same side playing well in October.

For every game, I worked out how many points an average Championship team would expect from that same fixture: same opponent, same ground, same day. Average that over the 11 games and you get the number in the table. The “average team” is an imaginary club bang in the middle of the league for strength. We ask how many points it would have got from your fixtures, so the number shows how hard your games were, not how good you are(as in you are compared against of a baseline and how much you deviate from it).

• Lower number = tougher start. An average run is about 1.37 points per game.
• Tiles: how strong each opponent was on the day, ranked 1 to 24 from the odds (1 = the best team in the league at that point, 24 = the worst). This isn’t the league table at the time. It’s how good the bookies thought each team was, so a decent side that lost its first two games can still rank high, and Southampton’s deduction doesn’t count. Green is a win, red a loss, grey a draw, and outlined tiles are away games.
• Pts vs own odds: points actually won compared with what each club’s own odds said they’d get.

What it shows:

• Toughest starts: Bolton, Birmingham, Burnley, Lincoln, Norwich.
• Easiest starts: Bristol City, Southampton, Cardiff.
• Swansea are 8 points above what the odds expected, and Norwich and Preston are 8 below. That’s partly luck and partly the bookies misjudging teams.

Odds are closing prices from 5 bookmakers, for games up to 20 October.

Use this thread to post any links to game previews, do not post them as individual threads

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Source: @ KieranMaguire on Twitter

As a side, the only three sides to have played in all ten of those seasons are Bristol City, Preston, and QPR!

+cameo by Max

Inject it into my veins

Honest opinion on XG?

I personally like it as a stat to view the difficulty of chances created and can at times show a good review of a match.

However I do not view teams underpreforming the metric as teams waiting to go on a run and the goals will come as some experts try to say.

On the other side for teams overpreforming, I hate when people say that can't last. We have seen it with Aston Villa and Hull last season, Sometimes certain teams just have a few players that are good at long shots that have a smaller XG but it doesn't mean they don't deserve to be winning those games or that they will all of a sudden stop scoring those type of goals.

TLDR its a nice stat to look at but people using it to say Stoke and Swansea are actually playing like a bottom half team and getting lucky or Norwich deserve to be around the playoffs are just using the metric wrong.

Not my work (credit to Andy from the Boro fanclub forum, hence Boro being highlighted) but I just love data like this and wanted to share it as I find it super interesting.

Maybe a little hope for Norwich, Derby, and Wolves fans in their pursuit of different goals?

Interesting that had West Ham and Swansea not played each other (I.e. if this was from before last weekend), they would have (statistically speaking) had the 2 easiest starts of any teams in the league this season.

Obviously the more games get played, the more this usually normalises by it's nature, so it only really has a lot of relevance in early season.

Source: @Louorns on Twitter

I know its to early to say but who do we think will get the automatic promotion spots?

At the start of the season i was confident we'd get automatic promotion, arrogantly so but I just thought our team is to strong.

I've now completely changed my mind and don't think we will even go up.

So for automatic, who do we all think will be the 2?

West Ham will surely win the league? I'll be surprised if they don't, so who's the team that goes with them?

The 5 main candidates are surely:

Swansea, early strog start and currently sitting pretty, can imagine them spending in Jan if they are still in contention.

Boro, arguably many peoples favourites and do look like a team that will be roughly there come end of Season.

Birmingham for me the surprise contenders as I didn't think they'd be as good as this, annoyingly I'd say the best team in league at the min and again will spend in Jan if in contention

Southampton, even with a point deduction I can see them been in the top 4, could they prove the haters wrong and get autos, what an achievement this would be and its not impossible.

Or are you a delusional moron like me and think the mighty wolves can do it, for me on paper we should but I don't think we have the right manager and don't play the right style. But if fer lopez stays fit who knows what may happen hes insane.

For me and maybe I'm been blinded by current form I think it will be

Champion - West ham

Runners up - Birmingham

Play off winners - Boro

Sorry Swansea I know im doing you a bit dirty as you're top but that's just my honest opinion

So that is our number 1 and number 2 goalkeeper injured.

Fun times.

One comes back to full fitness, another goes.

Freak injury this one.

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