Last Target on the Last Day

After a week of suggesting that Wigan will roll over against us, Sir Alex's comments on Bolton have the media up in arms at his "mind games". Take this, from The Guardian:

Sir Alex Ferguson expressed strong misgivings about the closing stages of the Premier League title race last night by publicly questioning whether Bolton Wanderers were treating tomorrow's game at Chelsea as seriously as Wigan Athletic were approaching theirs against Manchester United. Ferguson has been alarmed by sightings of Gary Megson's players on a night out, as well as enjoying the hospitality at Chester races, and he pointedly asked what kind of performance Bolton would be able to muster after going "out all week celebrating".

His remarks brought an immediate denial from Bolton, where the strong suspicion is that Ferguson is once again trying to manipulate the headlines at a crucial point of the season, this time to gee up Chelsea's opponents. The United manager is on the verge of his 10th title in 16 seasons - and United's 17th in total - and he was noticeably keen to make his point as he painted the impression of a demob-happy Bolton side already looking forward to the summer break.

Sir Alex is "trying to manipulate the headlines" is he? Seems to me that he's just trying to redress the balance. Given the number of stories about Wigan against the absolute lack of stories about Bolton it seems to me that there is a stronger case to suggest that there is a media conspiracy to "manipulate the headlines" in Chelsea's favour (of course I'm not suggesting a spoken conspiracy, there's no need for that, the anti-man utd bias is so ingrained it doesn't need to be spoken). It seems like gross hypocrisy to slag off Sir Alex for doing precisely what all the papers have been doing all week. It is this sentence from Sir Alex which should have been given more weight by the writer, "All you wonderful people in the press have been talking about the integrity of Wigan but nobody has questioned or even mentioned Bolton", rather than his comments on Bolton.

The Daily Mail goes even further towards the land of stupid by calling it a war of words:

Chelsea manager Avram Grant today accused Sir Alex Ferguson of showing Bolton a lack of respect in a desperate bid to get an edge in the title race.

Two things need to be noted here; 1) that the words that have been coming out of the Chelsea camp all week have been, on these terms, disrespectful to Wigan; and 2) that Avram Grant didn't actually say anything like that - actual quote from same article:

He [Avram Grant] said: "We know Sir Alex, I like him and respect him but we know why he says things sometimes. I don't think he knows what's going on at Bolton unless he wants to be the manager there.

"I think no team in England will approach a game thinking it's not important and Bolton will try to give their best."

Gary Megson says all the right things in response:

"We would love to end Chelsea's unbeaten run at Stamford Bridge and it is something that we will be trying to do.

"It would mean that we would go into the summer on the back of five great results and show that we have got some momentum going."

and here:

Megson replied that it was a normal get-together and argued that Bolton are not safe, although it would take an extraordinary sequence of wildly improbable results to send them down. "The players went out together as they have done in the past on a Monday night," he said. "I can assure Sir Alex and everyone else that we will be giving it our best shot."

As does Steve Bruce:

"I've enjoyed the whole spotlight on our club this week, the mass of people who want to see the game, the attention. It's the big time again and we want to play our part, but all I can be is as professional as I can be.

"Wigan are the club that employs me, so what do I say to my team - 'By the way, lads, just roll over'? I would like to think that in the Premier League and myself personally there is an integrity and honesty that sees that you do your job, so I don't even think about things like that."

He also has a few other things to say about his time at Man Utd, including this story:

Avram Grant may wish to avert his gaze from Steve Bruce's attempt to define why the manager in the opposition dugout at Wigan tomorrow stands on the threshold of a 10th title. "They will never, ever be able to bottle it up or explain it," said Bruce, whose best stab at doing so dated from one of his first games in a United shirt in 1987, when he asked one of his own full-backs to give him some cover.

"Alex pulled me over," Bruce recalled, "and asked me: 'What are you doing that for, son?' We are Manchester United and that is your man – you don't have any cover if you are good enough to play here."

and some comparisons between the current side and his side:

"What the current side have is a lot of depth so that when they have got three or four injuries the rotation system comes in. The strength in depth is better than it has ever been," Bruce said. "But the team itself? The team in '94 could match anything skill-wise and fighting-wise.

"When you face bully-boy tactics – to have people like Ince, Keane and Robson and Cantona and Hughes – there were some really strong individuals. They were fierce. They were a great team to play in. Me and Pally [Gary Pallister] used to have conversations about the weather because we would not see the ball for half an hour."

There's some transfer speculation in The Mail:

Manchester United are lining up a move for Sevilla's prolific striker Luis Fabiano.
United's European scout Martin Ferguson has watched the Brazilian several times this season and, as Sportsmail revealed in January, recommended that his brother Sir Alex signs him.
Chief scout Jim Lawlor has added his support and coach Mike Phelan went to Spain to watch the 27-year-old during Sevilla's 3-0 win over Racing Santander on Wednesday.
Sevilla, who are in fifth place and struggling to qualify for the Champions League, claim it would cost £44million to sign Fabiano, but the player and sources close to the club believe the fee would be only £7m.

Ronaldo is, surprisingly, the best player in the league statistically speaking:

...what is our method? We take every player action and use something called a multivariate Poisson log-normal model to work out the correlations between all of the different actions. With these correlations, we know how important good passes are for scoring goals, bad passes are for conceding goals and so on.

This allows us to look at each player in turn. The computer work required to do this gives an insight into why you cannot do it with the naked eye.

You have to simulate the entire league season with the player in the team and with an average player in the same position. This involves doing it again and again and again. And again.

Now, some fans look at our data and are convinced that they know better than the model who has done well and who hasn't. But think what this means - that they have watched not only this player but every other in every game and can integrate that information in their head.

Before we can move from the model to the ranking, there are a couple more decisions that need to be made. First, should we adjust the numbers to reflect the different time spent on the pitch by each player?

We think that staying in the first team is part of being player of the season, so we did. Second, we can either look at a player's contribution to his team, or place him in an average team. The first approach really rates players who perform comparatively well in poor teams. The second rates more highly players who play in good teams. We use this second approach.

So what was the result? No prizes for guessing the winner - Cristiano Ronaldo wins easily, as he did last year. More surprisingly, the runner-up is David James. The large amount of time spent on the pitch is one reason he came close to winning the whole thing. Tomasz Kuszczak, of Manchester United, would have been player of the season if he had played as much as James.

On a slower day I would probably end on this absolutely ridiculous story:

The Chelsea first-team coach has called for the establishment of a championship play-off to replace the use of goal difference to separate teams who finish locked together at the end of the season, even joking that next week's Champions League final could become a winner-takes-all event.
“I prefer the system in Italy [Grant is wrong here, they've changed the system],” Grant said. “You play a play-off if you're level and it is decided on that. I have interest now to say that it should be like in Italy, but I like it anyway. Sometimes you score more goals against weaker teams. If you have the same points, you are at the same level. Let's go to Moscow and it can be winner takes all.”

However, there is a stupider story, it's this quote from our old friend Stevie G:

"I cannot see myself ever leaving Liverpool now, and what I would dearly love is to lead this club to the next level that I believe we are capable of reaching," he told the club's website.

"I have won trophies here but there is one I am missing and I want that before I finish playing.

"I do not want to look back and say I have never been in a title race.

"I can see that the team is getting stronger and stronger and I can see that we are going forward. I feel that we are getting closer and I really believe that."

Scouse humour...