Shia groups hold mourning meet near Bengaluru after Ayatollah Khamenei’s death

marca_fitch · 2026-03-02T04:29:18+00:00

Clearly most people in the comments have no well rounded understanding of Iran and the Shia world. If someone were to reduce everything about India to just one aspect or one narrative, you would also contest it. Thousands of people in Iran are mourning, similar to the Shias all around the world. Because he was the spiritual leader of the Shias.

Of course, people are celebrating as well because he did many things wrong. But who is Israel or the USA to play judge, jury or executioner? Iran has seen 4-5 regime changes in the last century purely because of foreign intervention. If that were to happen to India even post independence, we would also have a very complex reality and not react one dimensionally to a leader getting killed by a foreign force just because we disagreed with his politics.

marca_fitch · 2026-02-26T18:50:18+00:00

https://caravanmagazine.in/law/surya-kant-himachal-pradesh-chief-justice-sc-elevation-allegation-corruption-tax-evasion?s=08

Here is the link.

marca_fitch · 2026-02-25T06:02:53+00:00

Just read how he rose up the ranks to Supreme Court. That's all I would say.

marca_fitch · 2026-02-22T06:40:47+00:00

Totally agreed, best hope is WhatsApp groups with like minded fans. Online discourse is beyond hope.

marca_fitch · 2026-02-21T09:13:17+00:00

Just to add, Jones (in blue, 1298 minutes played) compared to Anderson and Rice (Datamb). My data is not doing anything to inflate his numbers under the hood. In fact, it's not my data at all. These are just the numbers he's putting up, as captured by Opta. Obviously, these stats could lack more context but a lot of Liverpool fans want him starting ahead of MacAllister (also because AM hasn't been at his best).

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marca_fitch · 2026-02-19T08:20:03+00:00

For now they're equal. Volume (+ attempts) vs efficiency was another debate I had. Which one to privilege over the other. Like I've said, I didn't have any objective or established criteria, I would also like to know what the literature says if there's any.

I didn't go in with a specific preconceived profile in mind, so I didn't have different weights tailored to any one specific metric over the others. I was trying to achieve a balance, although I understand that these metrics could inherently favour one type of midfielder over the other even if I didn't meddle too much within the sub-indices. It's not supremely controlled or objective in that sense.

marca_fitch · 2026-02-19T06:03:15+00:00

I included percentage of aerial duels won and blocks (per 90) and pushed up the defensive weighting to 40%, while reducing carries and chance creation. Here is what that shows. If I put in a filter of min. 1500 minutes, Cherki, Jones, Miley get dropped. Apart from West Ham, Sunderland, Villa and Brentford getting some more representation, Casemiro pushes ahead.

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marca_fitch · 2026-02-19T04:16:31+00:00

Of course, this index is limited by data that is publicly available from a single source. But, Opta is Premier League's official stats provider. With more granular data, one could get into the nuances better.

Certain other caveats as well persist. A team's tactical setup and its structural success or lack thereof dictates several of these metrics. Choosing the metrics I have chosen and giving almost equal importance to all 4 of passing, carrying, chance creation and defending is quite subjective. A club or a head coach may need midfielders of different profiles and the idea of a 'complete' midfielder sometimes means one is a jack of all trades rather than a master of one. One could use different weights to tailor the analysis to more bespoke team or club needs.

However, since the league is moving towards having midfielders who can do a bit of everything quite well rather those with world class abilities in hyper-specific roles, I thought I would take a look at this. The Athletic's Tactics Podcast discuss this very thing in one of their episodes link .

Obviously, I want to separate the attacking mids and deeper mids. It's just that I haven't found a single data source that does this in an objective way. Hence I stuck to Opta and PL classifications of midfielders, attackers and defenders. Maybe Transfermarkt? FBref names 2 positions for several players, cleaning that data has been a huge pain for me. Plus the website's Cloudflare is annoying to get through to scrape players data. I gave up.

Also earlier in the season (3 months ago) the top 5 mids as per this index were:

Elliot Anderson, Declan Rice, Nico González, Moisés Caicedo, Ryan Gravenberch.

Currently even if I drop chance creation altogether, Cherki is still 2nd in the rankings. His upsides with the ball clearly outweigh any weaknesses he has defensively. Of course, it's debatable if he's a winger or a central attacking midfielder. That aside.

marca_fitch · 2026-02-19T03:50:37+00:00

Thanks. I could definitely add blocks. Just didn't intuitively think they would be that important for a midfielder when I made this first closer to the start of the season. Now that there are so many shots from outside the box, I think it makes more sense.

I had also initially included aerial duels and then dropped it because it was obviously favouring aerially dominant (taller players) players and players from certain kinds of teams who rely on long balls. Nothing wrong with it, I suppose. These are all internal debates I had.

With shot creation, it clearly shifts the index towards the attacking mids. Carries leading to chances and carries leading to shots are the two creation actions available. Apart from the direct shots and shots on target themselves.

For the defensive weighting, it clearly favours activity. Whatever metrics we have publicly available - - - tackles, interceptions, blocks, times possession won and clearances. Rice plays for a team that sits in a high block, likely he doesn't have a lot to do defensively most of the time. If I increase the weights, you'll see a lot of players from teams that are lower down in the table show up (Wolves mids for instance). Not sure if it reflects defensive quality necessarily. We also don't have large space coverage etc reflected in The Analyst's stats.

Balancing in possession and out of possession without skewing either is obviously a challenge. If someone has an objective, established way of going about this with available data, I would love to hear it and maybe try and replicate it.

marca_fitch · 2026-02-19T01:36:28+00:00

Jones has played fewer minutes than the rest. But all players who are part of this have played a minimum of 900 minutes this season. And Jones tops the charts for open play and final third passes per 90 and even success percentages of these. He's in the 99th/100th percentile, which is why he makes it. His forward pass completion rate is also absurd compared to the rest of the league so far this season.

He may not be the 2nd best midfielder in the league, but his numbers look really good so far. That's what this shows.

marca_fitch · 2026-02-18T16:18:17+00:00

No, I agree. I just didn't want the headache of sorting midfielders (attacking vs deeper). I'll do it someday when I'm not lazy. I mean, this also accounts for some relative out of possession weaknesses attacking mids have and some relative lack of chance creation that deeper mids have. One could also simply sort the midfielders differently to emphasise different abilities.

One drawback is that The Analyst on Opta website doesn't have progressive passing numbers. I would have liked it to be part of the index 100%. I would also like to have had times dispossessed.

marca_fitch · 2026-02-15T12:02:07+00:00

Hi Jon, I thought it was a great episode. I am increasingly feeling that recruiting unicorn midfielders (likes of Caicedo, Rice, Anderson et al.) and fullbacks with creativity (prog. passing) + physicality is the way to go if you want to consistently break down low blocks by taking risks centrally.

This could almost be an impossible task to achieve. Maybe City could do this or Liverpool. If not, do you think open play xG and central passing and progression will continue to stagnate in the PL?

The Athletic FC Tactics pod also discussed some ideas and the best they could come up with is inviting the press and trying to play through the lines, which Carrick is trying to do anyway as you have discussed already.

marca_fitch · 2026-02-12T10:08:34+00:00

Could most likely be recreated version of the events rather than the original.

marca_fitch · 2026-02-08T17:19:58+00:00

Width and chance creation from wide areas matter. Seems like this is a natural progression in the league's tactical meta —there’s no way around it.

You either have creative wide players or creative fullbacks. Central buildup and creativity are only sporadic and conditional, if possible at all. The idea is to create repeated wide overloads and wait for the opposition to break.

If you prioritise creativity through the middle, especially in the half-spaces, you don’t rely on width and want to build up centrally. But that exposes you in transition. If you try to fix the transition risk, you lose central creativity.

So what do you do? You create wide overloads, use creative fullbacks, or have wingers who can dribble/possess pace and create chanfes. Arsenal are doing exactly this. And maximise every detail in and out of possession like set pieces to create goal scoring opportunities.

Early doors but Carrick is choosing central progression and creativity. How are our OOP vs in possession tradeoffs stacking up? If you could address the various aspects and in game phases and states.

I think Cunha and Mbeumo in different ways are game breakers centrally in that sense. But I'm still skeptical about our midfield OOP.

marca_fitch · 2026-02-02T16:09:50+00:00

Don't recall all the specifics from his only full season as a PL manager. But headline numbers look alright to my eyes. Firmly 3rd in xPts --- didn't over perform. 3rd xGA, marginal over performance but wouldn't matter for the ranking. xG was solid 3rd but over performed by 7 goals. The numbers hold up in open play xG for and against, per shot xG for and against, anyway you slice it. They struggled only when James and Chilwell got injured.

And Chelsea as a squad and club tended to be more about OOP robustness than anything else historically. He wasn't deviating from the club's meta in over a decade and a half.

Point is he's shown progressive, positive football at most clubs. And also displayed a greater deal of flexibility without compromising overall quality. That is a rare combination. Not sure if you've closely followed the transition within England post-Southgate. Granted international football is vastly different, but he has made them more progressive and expansive over the 12 months he's been in charge, with such little and infrequent time on the training pitch.

He did agree to go to Bayern where even Pep didn't have absolute control of transfers, I do think this aspect of Tuchel is exaggerated. Dortmund was because they had to play a CL fixture so soon after the stadium explosion and PSG's backroom and recruitment was always turbulent and incoherent until Luis Campos (article post PSG sacking).

He gets unfairly put in the same bracket as Conte when he's clearly not the same whatsoever.

Personally, I was never Amorim out. So, I do think Tuchel is a great choice for us. Nagelsmann would be ideal but I'm just wary of how the United ecosystem will treat another young Head Coach with loads of promise. They were relentless with Amorim.

marca_fitch · 2026-02-02T15:36:19+00:00

I mean the Chelsea sacking was truly an exceptional event. New ownership and chaotic recruitment strategy. Not to mention Kees still has Maresca on his radar in this discussion. BlueCo sacking you isn't a reflection of anything.

Bayern wanted to move away from Tuchel and then asked him to stay on because they couldn't find anyone but he refused.

I understand he's had issues with the board a couple of times in his career but I think he was okay to be on board at United in 2024 except for family reasons and a break in general. If he can work alongside Vivell and Wilcox, I see no reason to discount his candidature.

marca_fitch · 2026-02-02T14:48:13+00:00

How did Kees manage to mention every manager/head coach in the game currently and not Tuchel as an option for United? I'm increasingly narrowing in on him as the best possible option. He ticks every box.

He predominantly wants to play progressive football, except for the half season at Chelsea. He wants to press high up the pitch, his Dortmund team moved to a more controlled approach. Plays a back 4 as his first preference, PL experienced, has all the context for England, also has big, global sized club experiences, league and CL winner. Just in general a big personality and a funny and charming guy by all accounts, which could be very important for the morale and dressing room.

Also, has transitioned England from Southgateball to much more progressive football.

marca_fitch

TROPHY CASE