The Wildcard Weekend

After one of the more bizarre regular seasons I have seen we finally get to the still fresh "Wildcard Weekend".  After a referee lockout threatened to make a mockery of the game in the first 3 weeks of the season, once the proper officials came back the season really took off due to some fantastic games with the 49ers shutting out the Jets and the Patriots scoring 31 points in the final quarter against the Bills in week 4.

The season continued to grow with Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III picking up record after record for rookie quarterbacks showing that they were worth being picked first and second in the 2012 draft.  And coming in to the final week of December all eyes were on Washington and thankfully not due to the 'Fiscal Cliff'.  The Dallas Cowboys turned up to FedEx Field needing a win to get into the post season but were defeated by new generation that has Washington atop the NFC East for the first time this millennium. There's Griffin -- the vocal leader, the Heisman Trophy winner, the team captain. And there's Morris -- the out-of-nowhere sixth-rounder from Florida Atlantic who merely ran for 200 yards and three touchdowns in the division-clincher and broke the franchise single-season rushing record.

And after another season of my Browns failing to get a .500 record, I need to look at away from the Browns  this weekend so here is what I think will happen this weekend. (I have put the home team first)

The Joys of January

The first weekend in January means a lot of different things to different people, for me it is all about the wonder that is knockout football.  This year we get the Third round of the FA Cup and the NFL's Wildcard weekend on the same weekend and I am going to be glued to both of them. Today I will be talking about the FA Cup, tomorrow I will talk about the NFL.

The Third Round is likable to many due to the chances of some David v Goliath matches as well as some genuine close matches. The habit of one or two lower division teams knocking out bigger teams will make them everyone's favourites for a while, Bradford have been riding on the success of the their league cup giant killings which have increased the attendances and spread the money to a team that need it.
Bradford are only two games against an out of form Villa away from a trip to Wembley this season and while a few may of thought they could of down well in the JPT and got a trip there, the possibility of going there twice is now more than just a flight of fancy.

The weekend also divides the viewing public with pretty much everyone cheering on the "Plucky Underdogs" against the "Football Business's" unless your team is the Football Business in question.  They will want to see an upset, so here are 5 matches to watch and 5 not to watch look for that glorious upset

"You'd have to be a real dope to mess it up"

Being a Manchester United fan it is hard to hide to write this piece with showing my contempt for Chelsea and Rafa Benitez but I will try and keep it to just facts so it doesn't come across much.

Just a few hours after Queens Park Rangers boss Harry Redknapp says only "a real dope" would fail as manager of west London rivals Chelsea, Chelsea lost at home 1-0 to QPR thanks to a Shaun Wright-Phillips goal, some backs to the wall defending by QPR and a questionable offside decision.

Chelsea dominated throughout but could not break down QPR's packed defence and looked a very different team to the side that put Villa to the sword in there last home.  that is because it was Chelsea made 5 changes from the starting XI that beat Everton at the weekend and 4 from the starting XI, albeit one enforced due to Cech's injury.

Rafa Benitez is famous for his rotation of his squads and so far has yet to name the same starting XI two games in a row and the two times they have lost is when he has made the most changes (4 - West Ham, 5 - QPR), the question is this damaging his teams chances of the title?

How to find out who is the best team?

There are many tried and tested methods of determining who is the best team overall, be it league or cup there are so many different variations that you could easily spend hours if not days comparing an contrasting between them.

My personal favourite is 'The Unofficial Football World Championships' is strips away all pretense of a fair system and stumps for the simplest system 'If you beat the current holder, you become the holder'.  For a more read then beginners guide on the UFWC site here.

Without knowing the UFWC I would be surprised, if you would be able to guess the current holder of the title and the greatest team of all time.  It is North Korea (some say DPR Korea) and Scotland respectively  they have defended the title for the whole of this year propelling themselves to 20th in the overall rankings.  For those who want to more about the UFWC, have a read of the end of year review here, it is worth a read.

After a discussion about this at work I was left with wondering if I applied the same logic to English league football, I then did some looking around on the interweb and no-one had done that yet.  So I set about trying to workout how to do this, I decided upon doing just the 20 years of Premier League first as all the match data was easily available on the internet.  I have now created the 'The Unofficial Premier League Champions' or UPLC.

It is Back

As it is a new year I though i would bring back the blog, after a bumper year of sport 2012 has left us and 2013 has begun.  We have already crowned the first 2013 world champion as Phil 'The Power' Taylor won his 16th world darts title by beating Michael van Gerwen 7-4 in an absorbing PDC World Championship final.

The main reason this is back is for me to have the ability to rant about sport again but I did this mainly to show the world what I did when i was bored over the Christmas Period, more on that in the next post.


I will try and post daily but don't hold me to that and will also get some trivia questions going as well throughout the return of the blog.

All there is left to say is I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I will get from writing it.


Trivia Question 1 (Answer will be given with the next trivia question)

Can you name the 3 football teams that have 4 separate spans in the English Premier League?