Thursday Hoddle of Coffee, Soccer News and Notes, April 13, 2017

Hey all, sorry to miss yesterday—I was sick Tuesday night (really, it was Tuesday) and basically slept from 7pm Tuesday till about 7:15 yesterday morning. Soooo no Hoddle. Sorry. Blame my sinuses.

In happier news, the Lesters lost yesterday—this is happy news because if United finishes outside the top four and wins the Europa League (which looks entirely possible) and Leicester somehow wins the UCL, the fourth placed EPL team would fall down to the Europa League. And if that happened, you know that somehow we would be the team in fourth.

I don’t want to have to worry about these stupid scenarios. So Lester losing is happy. Don’t let us down next week, Atletico.

Links

This profile on Granit Xhaka had some interesting background on Arsenal’s red-card-happy midfielder.

Caley was at FiveThirtyEight this week talking about how wide open this year’s Champions League is.

The Guardian also featured Caley in a recent piece on the advanced stats revolution coming to soccer.

Don’t compare Paulo Dybala to Lionel Messi.