EPL Match Week 2 - CleanSheet Recap

In Today’s CleanSheet:

• Headlines 📌

• Current Situation📈📉

• Hot Topic 🔥🔥🔥- Double-Click

• Off Island 🏝️ - Area’s of interest outside the PL

• Best Bets 💰- Predictions & Results

Headlines 📌

• Best Result of Match Week 2. 4-1 Brighton & Hove Albion over Wolves. Several matches to choose from but The Seagulls dominating on the road to take them to top of the table stood out. This team has sold several players for mega money recently but have restocked with great young talent, and speed. Thats 8 goals in 2 matches for BHA with 6 different players scoring, Solly March with 3.

• Biggest Disappointment. Fulham. Everton was a disappointment again, but to be the biggest disappointment you need to have higher expectations. Fulham scratched out a win on the road last week, had a West London Derby game at home, and a chance to go top of the table. Instead, they got run off the pitch 3-0. Yes, the questionable red card influenced the outcome, but Fulham have now been outshot 19-37 over 2 matches.

• Refereeing & VAR. Shouldn’t replay get it right? Evidently not. It’s not been a good start to the season for Refs as talked about last week in the CleanSheet. Both the referee and VAR missed a blatant penalty at the end of Man U v Wolves. As a result, the trio of refs were dropped for this week's matches.

• Seeing Yellow & Red. After no red cards in Match Week 1, Week 2 saw 5 red cards. The average number of red cards given in a season is 50, 1 in every 8 games or so. However, the “average” is deceiving. 1998-2016 averaged well over 50 red cards per season, topping out at 75 in 2006. Since 2017, red cards have not topped 50 per season. Last season there were 29 red cards given.

  • This season has seen a focus on time wasting. Any time-wasting infraction results in a yellow card. Two Yellow’s = Red. Close to 90 Yellow cards have been given this season, more than average. Will this impact the number of reds this year? It happened to Arsenal Monday. Here is a link to all cards given by team and season in the PL since 1992.

• Chelsea. The $1B team has 1 Win in their last 14 matches going back to last season. The Blues recently spent a record transfer fee of $150M for Caicedo. In Caicedo’s debut for Chelsea (#25) he struggled, and it looks like BHA fans are already having fun with it on social media.

Current Situation 📈📉

• Rising. BHA, Brentford, Tottenham.

• Falling. Everton, Wolves, Chelsea.

Hot Topic 🔥🔥🔥

As Ted Lasso once asked, How Many Countries are In This Country (20sec watch).  Celtic FC is located in Glasgow, Scotland and while not “officially” off island, they do have a long history of winning soccer matches (11 of last 12 Scottish League Titles) and getting in fights with England, including this weekend.

In June 2023 Angelos Postecoglou became Tottenham’s manager. “Ange” is an Australian who has won everywhere he’s been, most recently at Celtic FC, where he was Scottish League Manager of the year in 2022 and won the Scottish “Treble” in 2023. Celtic fans were not happy losing Ange.

Fast forward to The Spurs big win over Man United 2-0 this last weekend, and Tottenham fans were literally singing the praises of their new manager. It was reported Spurs fans came up with “a new chant” (23sec). One problem, it's the song Celtic fans came up with, and this pissed them off (2 min read). “There’s F*@& all new about it…Typical English, steal everything - land and now football chants”. Seems the battle continues on from the days of William Wallace in the 1300s. 

Off Island 🏝️

Messi. Joins last place Inter Miami. Team wins mid-season tournament of best teams in MLS and Liga MX, all but one game on road. 10 goals. 7 Matches. 44th trophy of career.  

• With Messi, Inter Miami claimed the Leagues Cup. Now what? - ESPN

• All 10 goals of Messi so far - amazing (90 seconds)

  

Best Bets 💰

2-3 on the weekend, basically breaking even on $.