Football Daily | Goodison Park’s derby days go out with a bang for Everton and Liverpool

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As assorted boots, fists, water bottles, yellow and red cards, a policeman’s helmet and various expletives not suitable for a family football email emerged from a cartoon cloud of dust soundtracked by a baying mob in one corner of Goodison Park moments after the final whistle of Wednesday’s Merseyside derby, TNT Sports co-commentator Rio Ferdinand sounded very morose. “Nobody wants to see this,” he mournfully intoned, providing a level of insight into the human condition and fan culture that really ought to preclude him from ever being handsomely paid to enhance the TV viewer’s experience of what’s happening on a football pitch again. Needless to say, Football Daily is of the opinion that Rio enjoys a heated post-match stramash as much as the next football fan and was probably only saying what he thought his bosses would want to hear. The same bosses, presumably, who quickly posted an almost four-minute long clip of these “scenes nobody wants to see” on their YouTube channel, because they knew perfectly well that everybody who hadn’t been watching them unfold in real time would be desperate to watch them later.

Whisper it, but did VAR have a pretty decent night at Goodison? It correctly allowed the marvellous James Tarkowski goal to stand. And the delay in adjudication certainly helped build the atmosphere. Heck, I’ll even give VAR credit for the handbags and sh!thousery that followed. Well done, VAR” – Mike Wilner.

Further to reflections on the length of club allegiance (Football Daily letters passim), on Saturday I am taking my five-year-old grandson to his first match, Reading v Rotherham … leading to accusations of mistreatment from several friends. I’m hoping it will lead to lifelong support for Reading. Although sadly I would settle for the club still being in existence next season” – Alan Giles.

Love the new xP metric (yesterday’s Football Daily). But isn’t it just a reformulation of the TFB (Tortured Fan Base) metric? TFB clubs always have the highest xP, regardless of recent results. The xP and TFB are not constant as Manchester United and Spurs prove (as xP can be always 0.00 during the Fergie years but growing since, while Spurs range between 0.2 and 0.7). You don’t mention the value range of xP (0.00 – 1.00 like xG?), but it’s easy to think of it as xG = TFB/100” – David Cavallo.

I had to double take on yesterday’s News, Bits and Bobs (full email edition) when reading that ‘Kai Havertz is set to miss the rest of the season with hamstring-twang, leaving Arsenal without a recognised centre forward’. This would suggest that Arsenal had a recognised centre forward prior to Kai Havertz suffering hamstring-twang” – Mike Wrall (and others).

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