Tuesday Hoddle of Coffee, Monday Fixtures Review, January 3, 2017

Short Hoddle today because Tactics Tuesday is on the way.

The good news is that someone, Liverpool in this case, from the top six finally dropped points.

The bad news is that it still managed to be a disappointing today because City managed to play an hour with ten men and still win 2-1 against Burnley.

The positive, I suppose, is that City’s GD won’t be helped much at all in a fixture where you’d think they could have padded it out a bit more and, as close as this season is shaping up to be between second and sixth, goal differential may be a huge deal come May.

On to the links:

Deep xG: Stop taking long goal kicks.

A terminally ill 5-year-old Sunderland fan won the BBC’s Goal of the Month for December.

The emergence of the Chinese Super League could be awful for smaller European domestic leagues.

This Guardiola-is-unhinged take is a little on the hot side, but not totally unreasonable.

To be fair to Pep, Fernandinho’s red card does leave him in a terrible position with regards to midfield options.