craigkillie

That was borne out when he posted some stuff on here about Scottish football after the demise of Rangers. Just a combination of ludicrous assertions and total fantasy.

The UEFA article says "The group-winners of the European Qualifiers will qualify directly for the UEFA EURO or the FIFA World Cup, whereas the second-placed teams will either qualify directly or participate in play-off matches (together with UEFA Nations League teams for qualification to the UEFA EURO)." The bolded part suggests to me that there won't be Nations League teams involved in the World Cup play-offs.

I think the changes are fine, but it's not clear how it's going to work for the World Cup qualifying. They've said that the 12 group winners will automatically qualify, while runners-up will either qualify directly or go into the play-offs, and it also implies that there is no longer a Nations League route for the WC. However, given that Europe has 16 spots for the World Cup, that would leave 12 teams playing off for 4 places. Does that mean that the 4 best runners-up might get a bye to a final, and the other 8 runners-up will play in a semi?

Che Adams would score lots of goals in our league because he's an English Premier League striker at the top of his game. McBurnie would be as much of a big lump here as he has been at every other level of football in the last five years or so.

No, they were nine points clear.

Man City had a game in hand, and won 18 of their 19 games between then and the end of the season. Liverpool lost one more game in the whole season, and that was away to Man City, and they won each of their last nine matches. In no way can that be described as a collapse. EDIT: Liverpool were also only ever nine points clear at the top that season - Spurs were 2nd at the point they were 10 ahead of City.

Also never had that once.

Maybe it's my pampered West End lifestyle, but in my experience of nearly 15 years studying/working/living in Glasgow I haven't once experienced any of this "what school did you go to" stuff.

No getting away from how absolutely awful Sibbick's initial touch was there.

It's a total dive from Bushiri, but funny nonetheless.

That is the usual definition of "signed" in all fairness.

It is impossible for more than one of the bottom six clubs to pick up no points at all post-split. My post was not about individual clubs, my post was about the collective of bottom six clubs. I don't see any other way to make this point to be honest, I thought it was pretty self-evident. The reason that teams end up in the bottom six is because they have picked up fewer points per game than the teams in the top six, and clearly the average number of points per game between these six clubs must be below the average number of points per game across the league. However, after the split, the average number of points per game for these clubs will naturally increase since this set of 6 clubs will no longer be able to "lose" points to the top six clubs. The total number of points won by bottom six sides on an average post-split weekend will obviously be higher than the total number of points won by bottom six sides on an average pre-split weekend, because if that wasn't true then those clubs wouldn't be in the bottom six in the first place.

Apart from the previous excellent post from DC92 already proving my point, it's also worth adding that although there are a finite number of points available, that finite number is still usually going to be larger than the number of points those same teams would take over 5 fixtures each against top half clubs. There are a total of 30 post-split matches, and in those post-split matches, the clubs in the top six tend to reduce their PPG compared to the first 33 weeks and the clubs in the bottom six tend to increase their PPG compared to the first 33. The reasons behind that should be blindingly obvious.

It doesn't matter whether you buy it or not, it's true.

The split means that clubs down the bottom always pick up more points in the latter part of the season.