Adopt a team

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With a busy schedule of late, I didn't see much action last weekend and then with the international break in play I've been struggling for inspiration. Like all resourceful bloggers I have stolen settled on an idea for the next few weeks of action. Taking a page from my favourite NFL podcast (Grantland), I am going to "adopt" two teams each week and focus coverage on them in the lead up to their games (ideally against each other which allows a more comprehensive review after the game). The idea being that trying to cover 20 teams on your own is (a) difficult and (b) leads to average coverage of all teams rather than great coverage of some. I would suggest this idea works best in all media, though of course a lot of local news is terrible, but that tends to be because it panders to ridiculous local interests and biases rather than because it's a flawed principle.

The schedule for each team will run roughly from Tuesday - Tuesday and try to feature (as much as possible), a review of the season to date, player highlights, future forecasts and then a review of their game with a light touch on their tactics.1

At least for the first few weeks, I have tried to pick two teams who are facing each other, with the below being the initial schedule.2 I will either give this week's teams a bit more attention or look at a more general topic in the coming days if anything jumps out as a I catch up on the data:

Gameweek 8 - Arsenal and Hull
Gameweek 9 - Burnley and Everton
Gameweek 10 - Newcastle and Liverpool
Gameweek 11 - QPR and Man City
Gameweek 12 - Chelsea and West Brom
Gameweek 13/14 - Man Utd and Stoke



1. I am far from a tactical expert, and so while that doesn't seem to stop many throwing around their "trequartistas", "registas" and other sexy, international names for fairly mundane concepts, I will try and keep things in my wheel house ↩

2. The teams have been selected on which games I have televised here in Canada ↩

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Unknown said…
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December 10, 2014 at 7:09 AM
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