IFFHS RELEASES THE TOP WORLD SOCCER - FOOTBALL CLUBS FOR 2013

The FIFA backed "IFFHS" ( International Football Federation of History & Statistics ) has published its rankings for the "Best World Football Club" for 2013. The top place is not a surprise as Bayern Munich virtually won every important title. Its the first time since IFFHS has been established that a German Club reaches the Nº 1 spotIn the Spanish Football case the top Spanish Club is Real

SPANISH CUP - COPA DEL REY - RESULTS WEDNESDAY MATCHES

Four Spanish Cup - Copa del Rey - 1ºst leg games scheduled tonight with the following final results - scores & all the goalscorers.





Madrid 2º Division Club - & "big Club Killer - Alcorcon won RCD Espanyol 1 - 0. Terrible game from Espanyol which was way below its habitual First Division level, while Alcorcon put in a great performance & could have scored more in the second half. The Alcorcon

XABI ALONSO TO STAY AT REAL MADRID | WILL RENEW HIS CONTRACT

Huge sigh of relief for Real Madrid Directives, the Technical Staff, the squad & the fan base after Spanish International midfielder & 32 year old player Xabi Alonso announced formally his intention to continue at the Club & renew contract.




The wait has been long, & perhaps with hindsight over exaggerated. The very latest was that Xabi Alonso would leave due to "personal reasons", however in

SPANISH CUP - COPA DEL REY | FINAL RESULT 1-1 DRAW VALENCIA - ATLETICO DE MADRID

Spanish Cup - Copa del Rey - advances this week with the last 16 Clubs stage & the 1ºst leg matches. Tonight the first of the 8 schedule Spanish Cup encounters was between Valencia CF & Atletico de Madrid. The final result 1 - 1 in extremis that gives  Atletico de Madrid an important away goal advantage with the 2º leg to be played in Madrid.




Valencia & Atletico were cautious for most of the

ANGEL DI MARIA "GRABS HIS BALLS" & HIS FUTURE AT REAL MADRID

Just got back home after a few more days off enjoying the last end of the Festive Season. My relative surprise was to see todays Spanish Sports papers in complete unison after a Football Player grabbed his nuts. 

Now you may think that grabbing ones "balls" is a fairly common masculine habit, you are correct, but that "primitive" action magnifies itself if you're Real Madrid player Angel Di

A brief update

Happy holidays everyone; it's been a while. For those not on Twitter, I was away in Costa Rica over the break without much - if any - internet access hence the lack of posts around these electronic pages. Well, actually, that's only the main reason, not the only one. In truth I've become a bit disillusioned with the fantasy game the past couple of months, partly due to my other commitments which make copying data at 2am somewhat less appealing, partly due to a lack of excitement in this year's game and finally due to the constant frustration I have with today's internet culture.

This blog is a labour of love and aside from the small amount of money I made from the pre-season guide many of you graciously purchased, I don't get much out of this beyond the enjoyment of interacting with readers and hopefully helping a few of you to gain a couple of extra fantasy points every now and then. While some of that enjoyment remains, I feel it has waned over time and there's only so many posts you can write whose only comments are nit-picking spelling mistakes or challenging your whole approach without any kind of factual basis before you start to question why exactly you are doing what you do.

I like to consider myself a man of science (particularly that of a dismal nature) yet in reality I lack the discipline of a true scientist who can keep going with failure after failure in pursuit of some defined goal. Though I'm somewhat old fashioned compared to some of my peers, one miserable attribute I have inherited on my Generation Y chromosome is the need for 'results' and while the current iteration of the model is reasonably good in this area, pushing it to the next level of accuracy is going to take a significant amount of work (if indeed it's even possible). The development of such a model follows the path of many other projects where the returns of the initial investment are vast but then diminish over time. As a clunky analogy, I've picked up the gold nuggets lying on a river bed, or drilled the top layer of oil, and all that remains is to get very dirty with heavy machinery that will take years to get even a fraction of the progress enjoyed in the early days. This probably also follows something of the 80/20 principle where 80% accuracy was achieved with 20% work and now I'm faced with doing 80% of the work for only a 20% improvement (and in reality it's probably more extreme than that).

Anyway, this all won't mean much as things will essentially carry on as they have over the past couple of weeks. I will continue to update the data tables every week and post a gameweek preview but I'm taking a break from the research side and thus the number of extra posts will decline. I might suddenly be inspired and rattle off a post every day for a week but right now that looks unlikely and I wanted to be honest with you all, most of whom have been incredibly generous with your support of this site over the years.

I will continue to be somewhat active on Twitter so please feel free to get in touch there (@plfantasy), though if it's to criticize the results of the model, I'm almost certain to not respond (again, I'm not a real scientist so no peer review here).

Thanks for your continued support and hopefully I'll be back with a vengeance when I feel I have something worth saying.

SPANISH FOOTBALL , NEYMAR & 2014

Happy 2014 to all the readers & hope you had a great entry into the New Year with celebration & good vibes. Spanish Football with Liga gets back on course this weekend with Round 18.Most teams are back training already, with FC Barcelona back tonight with a recovered Messi & Victor Valdes. Real Madrid defeated Paris St Germain in Doha ( Qatar ) 1 - 0 with goal from Jese in a Friendly put together