Tottenham Hotspur v West Ham United - Premier League

The Lead

Andy Carroll is a good striker. I repeat: Andy Carroll is a good striker. He’s still scoring at a good rate, his career-average goals per game is 0.33, he’s would be a valuable addition to any decent, mid-level football club. He could even be an asset at a bigger team with the right coaching in the right system.

The one enormous blemish on his career, oddly, is that £35 million transfer fee Liverpool FC paid Newcastle United on the 31st of January, 2011. This fee, which was double transfermarkt’s estimated top end value at £17.5, had all the hallmarks of a last-minute, inflated deal. Liverpool wanted to buy, Newcastle were reluctant to sell, a deadline was fast approaching, LFC needed to replace Fernando Torres.

Now Carroll may have had a strong hand in this, but likely this was an arrangement strictly between clubs. By the standards of the loss of value, it was a terrible deal for Liverpool, and in some ways just as bad for Carroll, who, despite the evidence he’s still a very good player, must wear the “flop” albatross for the rest of his career.

Particularly as he now has another ignoble number stapled to his career: £20 million. That’s the total decline in value on Carroll’s transfer fee in the past two and a half years, as Liverpool are reportedly working to sell Carroll to his loanee club West Ham for 15 million.

It’s hard to believe football people would be dull enough to spend that kind of money on appearances alone, and to some extent the situation isn’t as simple as it seems. Liverpool’s former director of football Damian Comolli defended the Carroll deal this way:

“The way we looked at it, we were selling two players – Fernando Torres and Ryan Babel – and we were bringing two in – Suarez and Carroll – and we were making a profit and the wage bill was coming down considerably as well. It was a four-player deal.

“Chelsea kept bidding higher and higher for Torres. The difference between their first and final bid is double.

“They [FSG] asked me what the risks were and I said if things don’t go well you’ll lose something on Andy, but it is difficult to measure whether you will make money if things go well because Liverpool aren’t a selling club and he could be here for the next 10 years.”

So at least in relative terms, the deal came off well. And in picking up Suarez for substantially less money, a player whose personality issues haven’t affected his ability to score, LFC’s gamble worked at least in part.

But it’s hard to believe that, despite humming and hawing about hidden “key performance indicators” that made Carroll worth that pile of cash, Liverpool wasn’t fooled by something as simple as means regression. That the season-and-a-half of goals Carroll enjoyed at Newcastle before his move may have been boosted a bit by luck, that it was from a relatively small sample, 2/3rds of which came while Newcastle was playing out of the Championship, an ostensibly easier league in which to score goals.

That misread wasn’t Carroll’s fault, and yet the 24 year-old will pay for it the rest of his career.

Sure, the Spurs actually won because of Tim Duncan’s innate Tim Duncanness, but they definitely couldn’t have done it without this guy, I guess. Way to go, this guy.

(via CJ Fogler)

URL Weaver: Walkoff Wacky

Giants splash game is tight tho

Giants splash game is tight tho

Baseball is the weirdest game. The season is so long that early season games seem almost meaningless. By the time September rolls around, even the most dramatic May walkoff victory is long forgotten. Just one of one-sixty-two, another victory of 90 if you’re a playoff team.

But in May, late-inning heroics fuel the game. It is the value of the unexpected that keeps so many of us coming back. You never really know what you’ll see – every at bat presents a fresh opportunity for amazement.

Last night, just a random Tuesday night in May, supplied more than its share of amazement. No baseball fan could ask for much more from a Tuesday night in late May. We saw walkoffs a plenty, dramatic home runs as precursor to those walkoff shots, great pitching performances and another historic night from a young player who already has a fair bit of history to his name.

It was baseball and it was awesome.

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2,000 Acts Of Hope Charitable Initiative With The Los Angeles Kings

With the bevy of rumours, reports and general speculation over Bryan Colangelo’s job status running rampant over the last few weeks, we’ve already had plenty of time to assess Colangelo’s actions and words recently. On that note, I’m not going to spend any time on Colangelo’s conference call with the media from earlier today after it was announced that he was being relieved of his General Manager duties.

Having said that, new Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment CEO Tim Leiweke held a much more candid media call on Tuesday morning that is worth talking about, so here are some talking points from that call..

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stafford-run2

Matthew Stafford is an odd guy. No, not because of his innovative offseason workout habits. You party on, Matty.

He’s intriguing because with OTAs beginning for most teams now and with the NFL offseason clock quickly clicking towards training camps (oh gawd move faster please thanks), projecting what Stafford we’ll see in 2013 is difficult. He’s not unique in that sense, especially among his quarterback peers. Often unless your last name is Rodgers or Brady or Brees or Manning (arguably both Mannings, but definitely Peyton), there’s little need for concern. The rest, though, usually have at least one lingering question mark.

For Stafford, his best efforts to create apprehension could actually be beneficial and result in fine fantasy value.

Oh, and money. That too.

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reunionSpending all day – every day – immersed in sports is a bit like working at Pizza Hut and eating nothing but pizza. If one is unburdened by such matters as personal health and waistline size, pizza is a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, too much of a wonderful thing is likely to leave one no longer believing the wonderful thing to be all that wonderful.

Sports are really, really great. However, the more time you spend reading and writing about a topic, the greater the chance its ugly little cracks and cobwebs will begin to emerge. This is why, over time, the focus of writers and fans alike becomes embittered by the more negative aspects of sports. The cheating. The discrimination. The exploitation. The inequality. It all becomes overwhelming. We forget why sports are so great, and why they fascinated us long before we grew caustic to what they could offer. And so, that’s where The Week In Sports Happiness comes into play.

Every week, I’ll present the ten things that are making me happy from the world of sports. It might be a particular article, it could be a winning streak, it may even be an animated GIF. No matter what, it’s from sports, it made me feel good inside, and I hope it does the same for you.

Without further ado, sports the good:

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Here are 8 GIFs of pre-rendered cut scenes that EA Sports showed off today, highlighting their new IGNITE game engine . They look good. Not in-game footage, but good. BTW, what is up with the legs in NBA Live?

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Patrick Roy

Not all successful junior coaches are cut out to coach pro hockey, but a certain type should expect to have an even tougher time: “name” junior coaches.

I bring this up in light of the news over the past day or two from Adrian Dater of the Denver Post that Patrick Roy is very likely to be named the head coach of the Colorado Avalanche. Dater relays the news from Stéphane Roy, Patrick’s brother:

“They’re discussing the final details of an arrangement. Colorado is going to be very happy. Patrick is looking for a new challenge,” said Stephane Roy, the younger brother of his famous sibling.

And:

Stephane Roy, who played briefly in the NHL, posted on his Facebook page Monday night, “For all my friends I’d like you to know before the official news spreads that my older brother will be the new coach of the Colorado Avalanch(sic).”

So yeah, it sounds like this is happening.

Roy may very well go to Colorado and succeed, but I can think of a few reasons to be skeptical. Read the rest of this entry »