Recently on the website football365.com, regular pundit John Nicholson wrote a diatribe against the modern obsession with statistics and claimed that they can only illuminate pundits and the fans on the approaches of teams rather than yielding any light on what actually happens. He warned against the obsession to equate possession stats with performance and said that what is important is how the team uses that possession. He didn’t go as far as to extol the age old adage that the only statistic that matters is how many goals each side scored, but he did deny the priority that statistics seem to have taken in modern football analysis when saying that “no stats will ever prove that Team A plays better football than Team B but they can illuminate how they choose to play and what the consequences of those choices are”.

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Yesterday’s clash between Man Utd and Chelsea was the first genuine title clash of the season. With the title race looking to be a scrap between the Manchester clubs and Chelsea (Arsenal and Tottenham both have a lot to prove to suggest that they can compete with those three), Man Utd went to Stamford Bridge needing points with Chelsea having set an impressive pace so far this season. Chelsea so far this season had showed a flamboyance to go with the famed Champions League winning resilience. New signings Hazard and Oscar have combined with the excellent Mata and the improving Torres to play with a zip and pace that has been missing from previously more bombastic Chelsea sides. Man Utd haven’t struggled for goals either – nor should they with such a plethora of goalscorers in their squad – but defensive frailties (especially in the first halves of games) has made their season a flawed one so far. With two sides designed to attack, this match was set to be entertaining, and it certainly disappoint in that regard.

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So diving is a cancer in football. The other thing that’s cancerous is stupid sensationalist responses to diving. There are two counts of this: firstly there’s the lacking perspective angle of the likes of Tony Pulis who thinks that a yellow card offence is worthy of a 3 match ban, then there’s the ‘blame the foreigners’ angle of any old school “hoof it oop t’ bloody pitch” punter.  Both angles are deeply floored and their silliness dilutes any attempts that football organizations might be making to cure this cancer.

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This weekend’s Premier League action saw wins for all of last year’s top 5 as the elite are all finding form after the opening skirmishes. Chelsea continue to lead the way as goals from Torres, Lampard, Hazard and Ivanovic marked a ferocious response after falling behind to Grant Holt’s opener. The movement between the likes of Oscar, Hazard and most of all Mata was mesmeric at times. The interplay leading to Lampard’s goal in particular showed that this year’s Chelsea crop have the players to play the intelligent, possession based football that chairman Abramovich has for so long craved. They remain four points clear at the top and are carrying plenty of momentum having so far remained unbeaten this season.

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It was an important day in the Barclays Premier League for various reasons. Two weeks since the fateful report regarding the Hillsborough tragedy in 1989, the Man Utd Liverpool rivalry took on a more poignant significance. Fiery recent clashes including the Suarez-Evra saga and the ignoble chants of Utd fans last weekend raised fears that this solemn period for Liverpool would be tarnished by another controversy of some sort. Both managers were keen to install calm before the match and the now occurrent handshake between Evra and Suarez seemed a result of their pleas, as much as the improved behaviour of both sets of fans – Pool fans have in the past shouted similarly disgraceful chants about the Munich air disaster of 1958.

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When Rodgers was hired as the new boss at Liverpool everyone concerned knew it was going to be a gamble. The Northern Irishman’s Barcelona inspired philosophy of keeping the ball and probing until spaces open to employ a pass and move attack worked wonders at Swansea. The football played by the Welsh team was scintillating and most importantly effective. But in going to the Merseyside giants Rodgers chose to take on a job of intense pressure and one where managers have not often been given much time. And time is something that former Swans manager will surely need at the five time European Champions.

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So it’s back. The Premier League resumes its normal service of thrills and spills with Fulham, Swansea and West Brom thrilling and Liverpool, Norwich and QPR spilling. The annual analysis of who’s going to challenge for the title and who’s going to be relegated, based on just 90 minutes of football, has already begun. Lack of fitness, teams yet to gel and form yet to be really established, various punters will already know that Norwich are going to suffer second season syndrome, City are going to struggle to cope with the added pressure of being champions and Liverpool fans are already beginning to call for Brendan Rodgers’ head. Insane? Yes. Inevitable? Of course. In reality we won’t really know the pattern of the season till the end of October. An Arsenal season ticket holder once told me that there’s no point evaluating the start of the season till the ten match point, by which time the general quality of each team should be beginning to pan out over the isolated dips and flips in form that can happen on any given weekend. But first weekend judgements are inevitable such is the unquenched thirst for pseudo-punditry that has been going unfulfilled for the summer months. So what am I going to do? Yep, here comes some pseudo punditry based on the isolated gameweek one matches which finish with Fulham as the champions and Liverpool in the relegation zone.

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Amid Robin van Persie’s transfer from Arsenal to Man Utd and Luka Modric’s imminent move away from Spurs to Real Madrid, questions are again to be raised over what exactly motivates footballers and the choices they make. The life of a top level footballer seems pretty surreal – taken out of school early to end up being paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to play a game two times a week in front of thousands of spectators with their lives lived in the glare of the paparazzi, it’s hardly your average life. More intriguing still is how people, the fans, react to each of their decisions when it comes to their footballing career. Looking at Arsenal you can see varying responses to their players’ fleeing – fans respected and supported Cesc Fabregas in his long dreamed of move to Barcelona but castigated Samir Nasri for a perceived mercenary’s lack of loyalty to the Gooner cause. With van Persie’s departure comes a genuine despondency and slight anger – the man who admirably lead the Arsenal from the doldrums of despair at the start of last season to the relative success of third place this season all of a sudden reveals his ambitions do not match those of the club, the club who spent only around £40 million to buy three international attackers. Arsenal fans seem more perplexed by van Persie’s now infamous statement than understanding or aggrieved. So what actually was it that motivated van Persie to leave? What is that motivates players in any of their decisions these days? It surely can’t be as simple as money can it? Don’t they earn enough?

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I read Paul Little on F365 today bemoan Roy Hodgson’s conservativeness at Euro 2012 in comparison to Stuart Pearce’s more extravagant GB team at the Olympics. The argument was that if Pearce could make a quickly assembled team play winning attractive football, why was Hodgson so adamant that fear induced defensive organization was the way to go for the Euros? Little was particularly keen to point out that such were the low expectations around England going into the Euros that he essentially had a free shot at the tournament – the opportunity was there to experiment with new expressive formations and players rather than revert to a model based on stoic defensiveness. Pearce’s GB side have been refreshing. Playing a possession orientated 4-3-3 with Ramsey, Allen and Cleverly controlling the ball in the midfield and the likes of Sturridge, Bellamy and Sinclair providing pace and guile in the attacking third, GB have been able to control games and employ speedy counterattacks to decent effect. Their defence has been at times ropey but this is perhaps due to a lack of availability of the better GB defenders and Pearce’s insistence on Richards actually being a good defender. But otherwise GB, since their being outplayed by Brazil, have been good to watch and impressive in qualifying top from a tricky group. So why couldn’t England have played a similar 4-3-3 and have been similarly attractive on the eye at the Euros?

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Last summer it seemed that Malaga were poised to become the biggest threat to el Classico dominance in La Liga. Sheikh al Thani bought the kind of funds needed to pose a threat to the dominance of Real Madrid and Barcelona whose dominance is partly fuelled by the disproportionately large shares of television money that the two great clubs annually receive in comparison to other Spanish clubs. With Valencia prevented from genuinely challenging them for a number of years by their perennially precarious financial situation, Malaga had the foreign investment that is probably needed to genuinely challenge. The signings of Toulalan, Joaquin, Mathijsen and Santi Cazorla from Villarreal among others, were a signal of intent. With former Villarreal and Real Madrid Pelligrini in charge, Malaga were certainly building a team to gain entry to the Champions League. And they did. Well they finished 4^th allowing them the chance to enter the competition via what can be the tricky playoffs (they may end up having to play Italy’s fourth best team (Udinese) to qualify). So the first step towards challenging for the title should be taken – Champions League football. And yet, this summer has seen zero transfers in with rumours that they are unable to pay wages and owe other clubs money from transfers. There are rumours that they are going to have to sell their best players to raise funds to eradicate these quite serious problems – Cazorla has notably been linked with a move to Arsenal in the last couple of days.

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