Correlation and Causality: English Clubs in Europe

So, Let's Start with the Facts

Last season we lost Man City to Barcelona in the Round of 16, Chelsea to Paris, Arsenal to AS Monaco, and Liverpool to Basle at the Group Stage. This season we've seen Arsenal beaten by Dinamo Zagreb and Olympiakos, Liverpool have struggled against FC Sion and Bordeaux, City lost at home to Juventus, Chelsea went down to Porto, and Manchester United struggled against PSV. What's the common factor?

Well, There is One Obvious Thing

They're all from the Premier League. There must be something wrong with the Premier League! Or must there be...?
The Argument For...

Well, the middle and bottom teams in the Premier League are a whole cut above the teams in the middle and bottom of Serie A and La Liga, that's certainly true. No team at the bottom end of La Liga has Cabaye or Payet or Shaqiri or M'Vila or Wijnaldum or Gokhan Inler. That makes the league campaigns tougher, and maybe it tires our players out relative to the freshness of Madrid and Barca. Maybe there's something to that. But maybe those leagues are more tactical and technical, and the EPL is a bit brutish and our teams don't adapt, but then again the EPL has always been like that, so why are we suddenly so much worse? Is the problem actually, perhaps, that the EPL isn't good enough, and that winning a game in the Champions League is harder? How do you possibly account for a squad of Sanchezs and Ozils being unable to overcome a squad of Cambiassos and Brown Ideyes on their home turf? Seriously, how do you?

The Argument Against...

Well, essentially, is Manchester City's suckiness actually related to Arsenal's? Well, actually, Arsenal in Europe suck the way they've been sucking for years. If it was something to do with the landscape of the EPL today, you'd expect a downward trend, but this Arsenal is the same as the old Arsenal. Remove them from the equation and you have a City side that's a bit of a mess, a United side who could not be more dull, and a Chelsea side that's falling apart.

 Correlation & Causality
It's tempting to see a link and assume it has salience. In fact, it's totally natural, you do it without meaning to, but that doesn't mean there's any substance to it. Yes Arsenal and Man City and United and Liverpool and Chelsea all suck simultaneously, but that doesn't mean that there is a unifying cause. Arsenal don't necessarily suck for the same reason Chelsea suck, and Chelsea's sucking may have nothing to do with Liverpool's sucking. I'm not saying there's no correlation, but I'm also not claiming there is any.



John Carver : the Intersection of Ignorance and Incompetence

The John Carver View...

"I still think I'm the best coach in the league..."

For Those Who Aren't Familiar with his Time in Charge...

When JC was given the job, in January - his team was 13 points from the coveted 40 point safety line, and had half a season in which to amass roughly four victories. From his first sixteen league games John "the best coach in the league" Carver has won TWO, drawn THREE, and lost ELEVEN (as well as being knocked out of the FA Cup by Leicester).

So, How Does a Remotely Rational Creature Reconcile THAT?

Obviously, he isn't the best coach in the league - let's clear that right up. The numbers are not very ambiguous in this respect. How then, could JC possibly believe that he is better than, say, Jose Mourinho, or, that he is not, in fact, the worst coach in the Premier League (which his minus 19 goal difference and 2-to-12 ratio of wins to losses proclaim him to be).

Part One - Impressions versus Numbers

Actually, it's quite a simple and common theme. The numbers (which are fairly unequivocal) don't bear as much weight in JC's impression of JC, as his (let's face it) delusional self-impressions. In his head, he is Jose x Pep (with a little dash of the great Sean Dyche, and a smackerel of Louis Van Gaal). You can lose a whole lot before losing ever becomes your fault. I've lost about 100 games with my FIFA Ultimate Team, but I don't think I've ever been to blame for any of them (here's an approximate list of reasons for most of my failures; the game "conned" me, the ref made a bullshit call, my players, I was pretty hungover, miscellaneous environmental factors). I can easily imagine the list of excuses JC has for the results is endless, and, to be fair, the team isn't that great, the fans are pissed off, the weather has been a bit dodgy, one or two of the goals might even have been offside...

Part Two - He's So Stupid, He Thinks He's Good

And, rather than being a daft exaggeration, that's pretty much the argument I'm going with here (and, what is more, I shall be citing EVIDENCE - and I don't just mean assorted quotes from his press conferences). The short title of the article I'm going to cite is "Unskilled and Unaware of It" (it's a quite well-known article by Justin Kruger & David Dunning of Cornell University that was published in the late 90s - in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology volume 77 - and which looked into whether there was a general correlation between incompetence and obliviousness), but the long title reads like this "Unskilled and Unaware of It : How Difficulty in Recognising One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments". Interesting, I wonder if this is remotely applicable...

Part Three - Unskilled and (very very very clearly) Unaware of It

To quote the abstract of the Kruger/Dunning study (and save myself the bother of having to try and put it unnecessarily in my own words) : "People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it." : In other words - you need a certain level of competence to realise that you're incompetent. My contention is that it is only because JC is so incompetent, he mistakenly believes he's much better than it's remotely reasonable for him to say he is.

Part Four - It's a bit like...

You remember when he said he was the "best coach in the league" (actual quote). You never see this sort of quote from decent managers. It's a bit like if you've never played the tuba, you probably imagine you'd pick it up in about eight minutes. Only when you actually play the tuba a bit, do you realise how hard a tuba is to get the hang of.

In Other Words...

My contention is thus...

John Carver is so useless, he doesn't have the capacity to realise his own inadequacy. He's so crap, he's not even smart enough to recognise the very obvious fact.

 

A Welcome Sense of Perspective...

THE UNBEATEN RUN GOES ON!

Can anyone stop this seemingly unstoppable footballing machine??

The FACTS...

Well, since the somewhat disappointing/catastrophic conclusion of World Cup 2014 (disappointing? catastrophic? try telling that to Costa Rica...) England are COMPLETELY UNBEATEN/reborn/amaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing. Seriously, look at the results...

ENGLAND 1-0 NORWAY

SWITZERLAND 0-2 ENGLAND

ENGLAND 5-0 SAN MARINO

ESTONIA 0-1 ENGLAND

ENGLAND 3-1 SLOVENIA

SCOTLAND 1-3 ENGLAND
ENGLAND 4-0 LITHUANIA 

ITALY 1-1 ENGLAND

...And, as Wayne Rooney said, the team has had some "great victories". The 5 goal San Marino haul was a particular highlight for me...If you can achieve a scoreline like that at this level, where there are no easy games (even against a side that hasn't won in 11 years), then you're basically World Champions already...

EIGHT WHOLE MATCHES!!!

As many as that! We can say then, with certainty, that England are much much much improved. Can't we? Or, maybe, just maybe, does it take MORE than 8 games to demonstrate improvement? More than that, was it ever an issue that England couldn't beat Lithuania? It's 12 years since England won a game at major tournament against a genuinely half-decent side. Whether or not we win against San Marino is besides the point. Getting to the tournaments isn't often a problem. The problem is, we want to think we've learned anything at all from the last eight games. Unfortunately, the way I see it, there's piss all to learn...
It Works Like This
You see a thing, you process it, you form a conclusion. You see a game, you 'analyse' it, you arrive at a judgement of what you've seen. Useless info should be treated as if it wasn't info at all, but we don't do that. We try to make something out it. As with England, all we have is these eight games of evidence, so we turn them into much more than what they can reasonably support, which is almost nothing. They are spectacularly uninformative considering they seeeeeem like an abundance of data...
One Good Performance
Against Switzerland, England did as well as they've done against any reasonable side in the last few years, and suddenly we were talked about as being unstoppable. If you take that result out, the list looks like this...

ENGLAND 1-0 NORWAY

ENGLAND 5-0 SAN MARINO

ESTONIA 0-1 ENGLAND

ENGLAND 3-1 SLOVENIA

SCOTLAND 1-3 ENGLAND
ENGLAND 4-0 LITHUANIA 

ITALY 1-1 ENGLAND
...Now, could you honestly say that twelve months ago this set of results would be remotely surprising? Beating Norway, San Marino, Estonia, Slovenia, Scotland and Lithuania, before failing to beat a pretty decent top-1o ranking side - is there anything new in that? It seems like an abundance of data, really it's just 90 minutes of something slightly different, and seven games' worth of coincidence. We happen to have drawn a particularly hopeless qualifying group, and we're beating teams that have an average FIFA World Ranking of 86.5 (Norway - 70, San Marino - 181, Estonia - 87, Slovenia - 48, Scotland - 39, Lithuania - 94*) - making it the equivalent of 6 consecutive wins against Mozambique (which would look something like this...)

ENGLAND 1-0 MOZAMBIQUE

ENGLAND 5-0 MOZAMBIQUE

MOZAMBIQUE 0-1 ENGLAND

ENGLAND 3-1 MOZAMBIQUE

MOZAMBIQUE 1-3 ENGLAND
ENGLAND 4-0 MOZAMBIQUE
In fact, if you factor in Italy (10) and Switzerland (12), the average is 67.6, or, if you prefer...

ENGLAND 1-0 BURKINA FASO

BURKINA FASO 0-2 ENGLAND

ENGLAND 5-0 BURKINA FASO

BURKINA FASO 0-1 ENGLAND

ENGLAND 3-1 BURKINA FASO

BURKINA FASO1-3 ENGLAND
ENGLAND 4-0 BURKINA FASO

BURKINA FASO 1-1 ENGLAND
...And personally, I'm not that bowled over by a 1-1 draw against Burkina Faso (even if it was away from home). 
Let's Just Wait and See...
Who knows where this journey will end? In triumph? In glory? Well, probably not. We don't really do triumph or glory. We've a history of making ONE major final out of all the tournaments we've ever entered. We've a history of making a further TWO semi-finals. Aaaand we've got a recent history of sucking quite hard. Anyone else who would just be happy if we made it past the group stage this time? Yeah, me too...

*rankings accurate as of 12/03/2015

My Gambling Thesis

In "A Brief Intro to Gut Forecasting" I talked a bit about what information we draw on when making predictions. Let's be honest, if someone asks you how you think a game will go, you can usually answer within a second. Thought only occasionally actually comes into it. But what I now want to know is - what good is thinking? How does it really help? 

The best-selling book turned Brad Pitt flick "Moneyball" is about how using a numbers-dependent approach to player acquisitions allowed Billy Beane to take the Oakland A’s, with a relatively tiny budget, and make them competitive against the big guns (the equivalent of making Stoke competitive against Barcelona). The key to the "Moneyball" approach was recognising that the most important stat for any baseball player, the one you prize above all others, is something called On-Base Percentage. In essence, this stat was found to correlate most strongly with victories. Knowing that it was OBP, rather than bicep circumference or body shape, that really mattered, the A's were able to pick up a squad of players disregarded by other teams for their unusual technique, their oddly shaped monobrows, or their club feet. What this shows is that predicting outcomes becomes less of vague, if you can figure out what numbers matter, and how to use them. 

So, let’s apply this to the sport we love. Let's go with Shots on Target - did it matter to Monaco that they had none when they qualified ahead of Arsenal for the UCL last-eight? Clearly not. Did it matter the next evening for Leeds when they had 8 shots to Fulham's 27, and beat them 3-0? What about form? Did Villa's 4 goals away from home all season tell you they were about to stuff Sunderland 4-0 on their own turf last weekend? I'm just saying, the numbers are useless unless you know which ones matter, and what they're telling you. Numbers alone aren't worth bubkiss.

So, we arrive at the point. You can crunch the numbers, check the form guides, you might even come to believe that it's the weather that best predicts outcomes. But really, nothing reliably does. You're just guessing anyway, and crunching the stats doesn't really get you any closer than just throwing your hat on a stick (unless you know which numbers you really need to crunch). At the start of any game you have three outcomes - home win, draw, away win - and you don't know, and you can't know, which is going to occur.

The "Bundesliga Route" - aka "Why are English teams struggling in Europe?"

This is pretty much what everyone is talking about - http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/31842700 - so obviously we couldn't help weighing in with our three or four cents...

In the last five years, the Bundesliga has produced 40% of UCL finalists. 

Well, we obviously need to start doing whatever they're doing, and what are they doing? Well, as you'll no doubt have heard, after sucking giant balls at Euro 2000, they went back to the drawing board, investing huge sums in youth. The consequence? Well, you tell me. 40% of finalists is the strongest showing from any single nation. And that stat isn't a fabrication. Look, you've got - 

Bayern Munich (2010) - lost to Inter Milan

Bayern Munich (2012) - lost to Chelsea

Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund (2013) - Bayern won 2-1

Spain has provided 30% of finalists in that time - 

Barcelona (2011) - beat Manchester United

Real Madrid and Atletico (2014) - Real won 4-1 AET

How can we not look on enviously at that success??

The "Bundesliga Route"

We have two details here - the 40% stat, and the investments in youth which have apparently yielded it. Although, what have they actually yielded? Is the Bundesliga route - a) investment in youth? or b) creating a system that gives a distinct advantage to one superclub? Indeed, for all that enviable "investment in youth" did Leverkusen or Schalke ever for a second enter your mind as potential winners? Almost certainly not. Indeed, please go ahead and name their starting XIs. What Germany has produced, for all the investment in youth you can bang on about, is Bayern Munchen. Presently they sit atop the Bundesliga with an 11 point lead. In February alone they had 8 and 6-nil domestic victories. Last season's margin of victory in the title race was a meagre 19 points (over 34 games) and they only failed to win 5 times. 

"Sluggishness"

How come, asked the Sky pundits, Man City, Arsenal and Chelsea looked so sluggish compared to their rivals? Well, maybe it's a coincidence. Or, perhaps it's down to playing regularly competitive fixtures. Chelsea, you see, have to work to overcome their opponents in the EPL. When the EPL doles out it's masses of TV revenues, it doles them out evenly. In Spain, in Germany, all the cash stays at the top. If the smaller clubs want a piece, they have to produce a player that Bayern, Real, or Barca think is worth stealing. When a rival appears (think Borussia Dortmund three/four years ago) they are quickly gutted and left to slide down the table. Is this the laudable "Bundesliga Route" we're supposed to be envious of?

 
Bayern have knocked English teams out of the Champions League five times since 2009

BAYERN have done this. Have Schalke? No. Have Leverkusen? Er...nope. How are those two doing in this seasons competition? Oh, they're out. What about Dort...them too, huh? How interesting. One side (Bayern) might be going strong, but the rest are Tottenham-equivalent also-rans (on a good day). What about Spain then? They've got Atletico now! But, doesn't anyone feel Atletico sort of resemble Dortmund a bit? One great season where they burst through and became contenders, followed by gradual slipping away. 

The Gutting

Chelsea have already come in and stolen everyone. But, how can they do that? I mean, after all, Chelsea were knocked out by La Liga Champions Atletico last season! Unfortunately, Chelsea have the sort of money that moves an Atletico Madrid player from a Bentley into a private jet. Can they just waltz in and poach Real Madrid players at will? No. Because Real Madrid is a team that pays over £800,000 a week to two individuals. But what about Spanish involvement in this years competition? Well, Atleti, Barca and Real all soldier on. And their other team? Oh, you mean Atletic Bilbao! Yeah, you'd be forgiven for forgetting they were ever even in it (incidentally, as of the conclusion of the group stage, and despite being placed in the weakest group, they're totally not in it). 

What Are We Really Saying?

There are four really top top clubs in Europe at the moment - Bayern, Real, Barca, and sort-of (hanging on the edge) PSG. Sure, it's a disgrace for Arsenal to lose to Monaco. But the others are big, tough teams who get to basically play training fixtures at a domestic level as they trot out and smash 8 past some poorly-paid bunch of future Charlton reserves. Is this the league we really want? Is this honestly what we're actually envious of? 

Who's to Blame?

PART ONE - TELLING A STORY
Who's To Blame? 

The question was (and will be) were Man City rubbish, or were Burnley really good? Well, let's break it down. If Man City are good, and Burnley are good, Man City wins. Man City must be bad before Burnley winning becomes a plausible outcome. So, Man City must have been bad. How good Burnley have to be depends on two things - how far off it Man City are, and 'other factors'. Yeah, that nice vague set of variables that are pretty impossible to put a value on. Will it be a deflection, a shitty offside call, an appalling red card or just a dodgy bounce? 

Putting it Together...

In seeking to produce sense you'll try and stick two clauses together. If Man City were crap, you need something that comes before this (a cause). You need to be able to make sense of this crapness, so the crapness needs an explanation (prefferably a simple one). If Man City play like you expect, then no explanation is needed - that's Man City just being Man City. But Man City performed contrary to said explanation, please feel free to try and explain why...

Your Options

You might want to blame Manuel Pellegrini, but what is he really in charge of? He tells them how to play. If their playing style doesn't work, that's his error (sort of). He also needs to retain the confidence and belief of the players, so that they will confidently do what he says and trust his judgement, and therefore play his way. He doesn't seem to have lost this belief, not obviously. But he got the style wrong, and he didn't change it. What about transfers? What about bringing the right players in to begin with, giving himself the right tools to work with? Well, he's got flops knocking around all over the place - but the real problem is the hit-and-miss, slapdash approach to flinging a squad together. Silva compliments Aguero, but Dzeko doesn't fit with them at all, Dzeko would be better as a target man for a counter-attacking team. Then you have Navas who just innocuously runs up and down in straight lines, and then there's Silva's position, out wide, where he can fail to consistently affect the game and also doesn't protect his full-back at all. There's Fernandinho and Toure, both whom can tackle, but what are their primary roles? On Football Manager your centre midfield needs four things to work - a creator, a holder, an aggressor, and a runner - what does Man City's midfield have? I don't think either of them is creating, nobody is holding, the other roles are vaguely split between the two. So there are tactical problems, and personnel issues, and we can blame Pellegrini partially for one and largely for the other - there are long-term and short-term causes. But, they still win most of their games. Even with these issues, it's usually still not enough to halt City. 

Other Factors

Well, let's be honest, George Boyd hits one in a million like that. It so happens that this one smashes into the back of the net, and it's a real beautiful strike. But it wasn't tactical genius from Dyche, if you were thinking of blaming him for the result. He was responsible for Burnley's compact approach, but Dyche was only indirectly responsible for the goal. His involvement extended to keeping Boyd out there long enough to get it. A tame free-kick is flung in, and Kompany happens to get there, happens to head it to Boyd, he happens to hit a beauty. If that comes back off the post, the game probably ends a draw - no-one is having good chances up to that stage. But Pellegrini wasn't at fault for that goal. He might've been partially at fault for poor general play. But then again, as we've said, his tactics usually get the job done. Since this is the case, do we have to look at the individuals? Sergio Aguero didn't seem to be at the races, Dzeko was totally anonymous, Bony spurned the only chance he got. Pellegrini can't force them to play the way he wants them to play, he just sends them out there. But what if it's competition neglect? What if he's totally failed to account for Burnley's strengths? To adjust to their approach? 
So, Your Choices So Far...
Pellegrini, for a number of reasons. Sean Dyche (sort of). Luck. Competition Neglect. Which is it? 
PART TWO - WYSIATI

Who Watched the Madrid Game in Midweek?

It was quite amazing, and fairly similar, in that one team had all the talent. So, to begin with, Madrid must have sucked quite a lot, and in fact they sucked a whole freaking load. But there is always one person, one factor that people want to hold over the others - (was it that Burnley were crap, or City were good?) - well, it has to have been both. Were Madrid crap, or were Schalke amazing? Madrid were awful, Schalke didn't actually have to be that good, and had they been better, they would've scored more and gone through. With an average crop of players they came up against a team in crisis. 
The Madrid Conundrum...
Here's an approximate list of everything that's been blamed for Madrid's current malaise 
 Carlo Ancelotti (relaxed management style, tactical mistakes/tweaks), Gareth Bale (failure to settle, lack of confidence, lack of ingratiation with teammates), Ronaldo winning the Ballon d'Or, absence of Sergio Ramos, disastrous form of the hapless calamity that is Iker Cassilas, Luka Modric's lack of match fitness, the lack of a holding midfielder, the chairman, Ronaldo throwing a moody, and the Illuminati. 
Which Do You Like Best?
Let's take Carlo - he didn't bag La Liga last season, but he took home the Champions League, he led them to a run of 22 consecutive wins this season - but suddenly his leniency on the players has turned them into a bunch of incompetent twits? He has moved things around recently, but he can't surely have gone from an all-conquering system to one which forces Bale to be anonymous and Toni Kroos to become about as useful as a telephone box in centre-mid. Cassilas sucked all the way through the 22 game run, Modric has been missing for a long while, Ronaldo still found the net twice on Tuesday, and they haven't lost or gained anyone (apart from innocuous Brazilians and Norwegian twelve-year-olds) in January, so the squad is still in tact. 
Err...
Now imagine that a situation arises in which the squad needs a bit of discipline (which Ancelotti doesn't provide), and Bale begins to drain of confidence (the media get on his back, and his being an important part of the attack this is obviously an issue), Ronaldo takes his eye off the ball a little at roughly the same time, the defence struggles in Ramos' absence, thereby exposing Iker Cassilas (who falls flat on his arse in the face of everything that comes his way - but whose awful collapse in form was masked previously by their potent attack, which forced oppositions to curb their attacking enthusiasm to protect the goal), with the consequence that points are lost and vital confidence is sapped, and the Illuminati keep doing Illuminati type shit. Take all of these factors together (problems at both ends and in the dugout), and you get an explanation for the disgraceful home display against a team that is near enough the equal of West Ham. You're welcome to say one factor causes another, but they're all just things that happened. Possibilities that became realities. 

What We Don't Know

Iker Cassilas' sucky form has been blamed on his becoming a father, and it might have been a factor (it almost certainly wasn't, he's sucked for a long time before he became Papa Iker), it could be all sorts of things - who knows what his mental state is really like? Who knows if the problem is really mental or physical? A fully qualified shrink couldn't tell you conclusively what's happened to him, and yet we're totally at ease with throwing our guesses into the ring. Who knows if there's anything wrong with Ronaldo at all? How can Bale failing to integrate suddenly be a problem after twenty-odd months at the club? Think of everything we don't know about Gareth Bale's universe. We're trying to stick a story together with fragments, using the small bits of info we do have and ignoring all that we don't know. We know almost nothing about Gareth Bale's life. However, we, as human beings, are super talented as whacking together believable, coherent stories with fragments of info, as I shall now demonstrate...

Read the Following Description...

You are assessing the suitability of this random guy I just invented, called Jim, for a management position. Read the following description, and use the space provided to evaluate the candidate...

Jim is a very, very nice guy. He is authoritative, intelligent, and respected...

________________________

Now answer the follow-up question...

HOW IS THAT ENOUGH INFORMATION?

I might've cut out another sentence that came after. I could've said 'intelligent, and respected, although he is a paranoid schizophrenic, who likes biting and traipses blood around the office - oh, and don't let him near the scissors'. 

Your Knowledge has Limits, but You Usually Have to Tell it as Much

You don't know all you think you know, and also often don't realise you don't know enough. It's called What You See Is All There Is (WYSIATI); the pervasive tendency to ignore what you don't know, and settle for working only with what you do. You go by the WYSIATI principle when you evaluate Jim's credentials on a very brief account of his personality. You go by it when you think you know why Madrid are in freefall, when in fact, you know alarmingly little, and what you do know is secondary information gathered probably from a range of sources, and often a degree of what you know will either be fabricated or exaggerated. I honestly can't imagine a world in which that information would make it to you without suffering some distortion along the way. And this is another problem - you don't know what the reality is, where the distortion took place, so you can't evaluate the information with this in mind, you can only go on what you see. What You See Is, let's just say, All You've Got. Shame is, it's not really good enough when what you're trying to do is come up with an explanation which is right (part 1 hopefully showed how difficult this is), and which is suitably informed (part 2 hopefully showed you it usually isn't). 

Bloody Foreigners

I know I promised one thing, but I could hardly leave this alone...

Part 1 - the Tackle

It's in a grey area. It could be yellow, it could be red. But jumping at that distance, with force, on Oscar's knee is dangerous and reckless. People are confused because it doesn't fit the red card schema (two footed lunge = automatic straight red). With his weight coming down on Oscar's leg, that could've been a serious injury if his leg was on the floor. There's definite grounds for giving a red. And if you watch in real time - as you can here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcbs6dqQWQA - it looks bad, and as Jamie Carragher said, if you think your team-mate has been done, you're right to be pissed. He strangely went on to say two highly contentious things - 1) most of those Chelsea players "couldn't see it" (they're all looking at the incident, which in real-time does not look good), and 2) the Chelsea player reaction was "disgraceful". 

Part 2 - the Reaction to the Reaction

This is all from one article - read it here http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/31845015 - Carragher and McNulty both go with "disgraceful", as well as "shocking" and "ignominious". Lawro said the tackle was "not that bad" (please watch it again). Now imagine that Oscar's leg is flat on the floor, and Zlatan ends his career by basically jumping on his knee - then what would the reaction have been? "Justified", I imagine. Souness, meanwhile, bafflingly working as a pundit for Sky, said "PSG had to put up with stuff" that he finds "really, really unappealing", and that it is not "the British way of doing things" (that is a precise quote)...

Part 3 - Most of Us Don't Know What Racism Is

Let's just examine the statement...

THAT IS NOT THE BRITISH WAY OF DOING THINGS

Now, he's talking about the use of nefarious tactics. He's talking about feigning injury. He's talking, generally, under the umbrella of dishonesty. So, the statement basically boils down to...

BLOODY DISHONEST FOREIGNERS

Which is basically a UKIP slogan. He finds this sort of thing "really, really unpleasant", whereas this sort of thing is just part of the game - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygVgxYa3mlo - now trying to get someone sent off, that's "really, really unpleasant" - but deliberately trying to end someone's career? That's just fine is it? So there's the hypocracy, but there's the also the casual racism. It's a classic right wing line. There is a British way of doing things which is being soiled by these bloody foreigners coming in bringing their dishonest ways. Until they came along everyone used to rip the shit out of stadiums and kick each others knees off, which was just lovely. There is how we do it, and how they do it. They are different. They are an outgroup, and the outgroup warrants this label. We are different, distinct, we are not all just humans. 

Part 4 - Words, Actions and Opinions

Most racism is implicit, as it is here. There's a lot of use of racist language, and you do come across overtly racist sentiments, but there's a lot that bypasses our conscious awareness. The issue is with attitudes as much as behaviours. There is an implication in Souness' statement that would read in a Daily Mail article as foreigners being a virus blighting our once great nation with its noble traditions. It wilfully ignores basically all of the evidence. He is saying that British footballers were more honest in the pre-contamination era. There is no way of dressing his words up to give them even the slightest air of legitimacy. When you group people in the way he is (British = honest, non-British = dishonest) you engage in harmful (and shameful) categorisation. The worst thing about it is that there has been absolutely no outrage. If he'd have said one word wrong, outrage would've ensued. Inserting one racist word in there, and he wouldn't have a job. However, couching a racist statement in ambiguous terms means that there is no outrage, no obviously offended party. It bypasses our intuition of what constitutes a racist statement, and essentially smuggles through the essence - the ideology. We should be more vigilant, and we should have a problem with this.
Part 5 - The Essentials of Prejudice
Do you feel that this is an acceptable statement?
I PREFER GAY PEOPLE, THEY HAVE A MUCH BETTER SENSE OF HUMOUR AND A GREAT TASTE IN FASHION
Hopefully you didn't say "absolutely" in answer to my question. I now cordially invite you to think about it for a moment. What that statement says is that people of alternate sexual preferences are different. You are saying that their sexual preference tells you more about them than just their sexual preference. It tells you what they're like as people. Just because it's a positive stereotype, doesn't make it remotely valid, and it does make it an example of a harmful and reductive method of categorising the world. You are saying that a sexual preference tells you really all you need to know about a person. It's the same as...
OH, HE'S GAY? I DIDN'T REALISE HE LIKED ABBA 
One statement is as unreasonable as the other. Some gay people will have a good sense of humour, some won't. Some will have a "great taste in fashion" - others will not. Treat their sexual preference as only informing you about their sexual preference. Equally, the fact that someone is from abroad does not mean you can label them "dishonest". Some people who are not from Britain are also dishonest, and some aren't. 

Anyway, back on with the scheduled programming...

The United/Van Gaal Incongruence (aka - why people can't stop talking about them) & A Thing Called Luck

part one - das incongruence

1. THEY'RE WINNING

2. THEY'RE NOT PLAYING WELL

it really does demand an explanation...

Classifications

For a team to fit with our classification of consistent winners, they should possess the very common trait of not playing such obviously terrible football. The incongruence produces cognitive dissonance ('the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values' - credit goes to my erstwhile assistant Wikipedia for that concise, and hopefully accurate, definition). The "idea" is that a team that only loses twice in nineteen matches should be playing much much better than United are. The dissonance is genuinely discomforting. We do much prefer it when we have a classification for a thing, and it conforms to the definition. United do not. This makes us uneasy. Hence we're stuck endlessly discussing them. 

BBBBBBBBut...

United are playing an awful brand of football. "Hope Fellaini wins one of these long balls we punt up to him" is hardly acceptable for a team that has lavished £250m on new players over the past four windows. But, as we've said, this knowledge is discordant with the way the data seems to imply it actually works. If you were out in the middle of nowhere, and all you got was results, you'd think Van Gaal was doing well (well, well-ish at least).  

"People Get What They Deserve"

We inevitably want to reduce the discordance. We want things to be easily classified. We are always trying to avoid effortful thinking, and where discordance is concerned, this is inspired. We have a stereotype - "People get what they deserve" - which we preserve because it makes us optimistic. We think good things about ourselves (almost always; 90% of drivers think they're above average, etc etc), hence we are deserving, so we want to believe deserving people will be rewarded (just like with driving. We think we're good at it, so we can maintain the stereotype that only bad drivers have accidents, and then we don't waste time worrying about having accidents). Essentially, United are getting much more than their play deserves, and we don't really like it. 

So, That's the Unpleasantness...

But what's the explanation? How come they're winning and not playing well? Well, they keep a tight shape (sometimes). They have so much attacking talent, eventually some of it has to do something. No European distractions, so they have a week to prepare for most games. But mainly, David De Gea is absolutely ridiculously, sickeningly good. Even when they lose at home to Arsenal, he makes a save of the season contender or two. Oh, and luck is involved.

part two - "luck"

I Know You Don't Like That Idea Either...

"People Get What They Deserve" is the view of the world we prefer. "People Sometimes Get What They Deserve, but a lot of luck is involved all the time and all over the place" is not such an attractive view of the world. It's much much more accurate, but who cares about that? Luck is important. A great goalie is important. But there has to be luck, always. What if David De Gea dropped a bottle of salad cream on his foot? What if it missed by inches, he goes out and makes another bunch of world class saves? It was lucky either way. What if Burnley did take one of their hundreds of chances at Old Trafford the other week? Suddenly the record is worse. We'd rather believe it was "never going to happen", even though it certainly could have.

The First Three Examples of Luck and Chance Getting Involved That I Can Be Arsed To Think Of...

1. During the war Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkein became ill during the Battle of the Somme, and was invalided home - after he had left most of his battalion died, and he probably would have too. If not for his chance infection, Lord of the Rings would never have existed, and then what would've paid for Elijah Wood's jacuzzi? 

2. On a wholly uninteresting day in June 1914, a young man called Gavrilo Princip was sitting in a cafe mourning his failure to knock off the Archduke of Austria-Hungary (some guy called Franz Ferdinand), when a logistical cock up forced the Archduke's car to stop right in front of him. Princip, who happened to still be armed, got up and shot him. Now sit still and list all the other things that could've happened instead (and then do one for everything that can be plausibly said to have resulted from that chance occurrence). 

3. On November 24, a club owner from Dallas walked into a police station and shot Lee Harvey Oswald. Now, if some smart sod in the police force had bothered to stop the bloke with the gun walking in and shooting the worlds most notorious criminal in a police station on live television, we'd never have had the Oliver Stone film JFK (which is mainly worth watching for the way Kevin Costner waves his arms about). 
So...
What we're getting at is developing a view of the world that is a bit more "What if the apple hadn't fallen on Mr Isaac Whatsisface's head?", because there are loads and loads of scenarios in which it might never have happened. What if a passing friend hailed him at that moment, and all that ended up happening was Mr Newton going "ooo, delicious apple" and getting a slight vitamin boost (this is something we'd also rather not believe, that the things that have happened were not inevitable - we want to believe the present was inevitable, because it makes it feel more predictable, and we want to believe we can predict the future, because it makes it less terrifying). 

So...

There are all these factors that are beyond Van Gaal's control, and this doesn't mean they don't influence the outcome. That's something else we'd rather not believe - that people often aren't in control of their own destiny, but are at the mercy of others, whose decisions often only inadvertently influence them in the first place...

I've left off because this discussion is really just leading into the next article...

Which will be online at some point...

I have no idea when...

Your Integrity, or Your Fortune...

You've probably heard of Lance Armstrong. 

In 2015 Mr Armstrong, now 18 months on from his confession, sat down with the following baldy gentleman from the BBC for an interview. . . 

The Background

You've probably heard a bit about what Lance Armstrong did. Lance took some drugs, and won a bunch of races. He amassed a personal fortune, and raised half a million dollars for cancer research. He won this bunch of races at a time when doping was rife in the sport, and seems to have started doping as a response to dropping out of first place and being replaced by people who were doping. To survive in the race, and have any chance of winning, Lance seems to contend, he had to start doing it himself. That he doped is not to say he wasn't the best cyclist. 

The Big Question...

Lance talks about having a career, and how failing to get involved in a doping programme harmed your chances of having one. This is the same Lance Armstrong who amassed that $170m fortune, and raised all that cancer dosh. Now imagine that Lance DOESN'T dope, and winds up having a mediocre cycling career in the middle of the pack. Let's imagine, in this case, he amasses a tiny fortune, and raises some tiny pockets of dosh. It's a choice - a mediocre career + integrity versus lots of money + loss of integrity. So, here's the question, given the chance, do you want a) lots of money, or b) your 'integrity' (whatever that even is...).

What Has Value...

What do you get for keeping your integrity? What's the value of your integrity? What does it give you? Some minor satisfaction? Maybe someone will say about you "hey, you know that guy, he's got loooooads of integrity" and probably someone else will say "hey, let's talk about something else". 

The Choice...

Would you sell it? Would you sell this valueless abstract/totally negotiable non-commodity, or would you hold on to it? You can have $170m, or your integrity? If you're the baldy gentleman, apparently you'd (allegedly) choose the second option. If you're Lance Armstrong, you'd choose (as he did) the private jet...

So...
Are you a Lance, or a baldy interviewer guy?
It's just something to think about...

Plagiarism, or the Desire to Attribute Causality?

The Plagiarism Theory
10.30am(ish) - I publish a final draft of my Arsenal "Competition Neglect" piece. 
And I do this...

@DTguardian is the Twitter thingymabob of Daniel Taylor, the Guardian's chief football writer, colleague of Amy Lawrence.
At 23.51 - more than a full two days after the Arsenal-Monaco tie, but just a short twelve hours after I publically sent a link to one of her colleagues, Amy Lawrence, who happens unsurprisingly to follow him on Twitter, published the following article - link here. 

Well, so what?
Well, so I noticed some similarities. In fact when I first read her article I went 'wow, this is eerily similar to what I wrote', and then I saw who wrote it, and I made a very very small leap. But what are the similarities? 
It's mainly the "Wenger's Tactical Theories are Woefully Outdated" passage that I'm bothered with. It makes mention to the Invincibles, as I did, and in fact every argument in the section appears in my article. She mentions the Invincibles, references competition neglect ("they only concentrated on themselves"), indeed the title of this section "Wenger's Tactical Theories are Woefully Outdated" is distinctively similar to "It's not like Arsene Wenger hasn't always done this". She then goes on (as I did) to contrast the Invincibles with the current crop, before focusing (as I did) on their risky defensive strategies. 
So, what's the essence of the Plagiarism Theory?
Well, this theory wonders if there aren't just a few too many coincidences. For those who are into that sort of thing, here's a list of them...
1) a link to my article was publically posted on Daniel Taylor's Twitter page. 
2) Amy Lawrence is a colleague and follower of Taylor. 
3) 12 hours after I published my article, Lawrence publishes one. 
4) This is an article she waited a full 48 hours after the game to publish. 
5) In her Guardian article from the previous day, the subject is not even broached.
6) Feel free to browse everything she's written for the Guardian in the last few years, so much of which has been about Arsenal, and let me know if you find these theories anywhere (I didn't). 
7) The content shows remarkable overlap. Now, I'm not saying two people can't have the same ideas - but for her to suddenly develop them now, after years of watching the evidence unfold? Suddenly, 12 hours after I publish, she's realised something she should have realised years ago. 
These 7 points are the essence of the Plagiarism Theory. 
the Causality Theory
One thing happens. Another (related) thing happens. It is very very tempting to infer that one caused the other. In fact, there is a very cogent evolutionary explanation for this tendency. It goes like this...
If Frank is dead in a clearing, is it better to think that a) it is just random, or b) tigers did it? Even if there is little evidence tigers did, it is better to be wary of tigers even if they aren't there. 
Likewise, it is safer to assume there is a virus going round, than to assume someone you know dropped dead by accident.
I wrote an article, Amy Lawrence wrote a related article. It is very very tempting to see that the two events are linked. They happened soon one after the other, this increases the temptation, it does not necessarily mean that the inference is valid, indeed only Amy Lawrence knows what inspired her to write that article. 
So...

What do you think?

There's nothing else to add. 

You can make your own minds up.

I'm off for a shower and a dump.

Competition Neglect - aka "where Arsenal are going wrong"

"DISMAL ARSENAL FLOUNDER AT HOME TO MONACO"

was just one of many negative headlines of this sort that referred to Wednesday nights Champions League debacle. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone saying...

"YOU KNOW, I THINK THAT WENT WELL"
Who wasn't being totally sarcastic. 

The Background

Think back to November, when Arsenal hosted an even less highly esteemed side in the form of Belgian champions Anderlecht (who had not won in any of their previous 12 Champions League games). Having taken a 3-0 lead, Arsenal wound up carelessly conceding three late goals, giving Anderlecht a point and wrecking Arsenal's hopes of finishing first in the group. In the past four seasons (when they have faced Barcelona, Bayern Munchen - twice - and Milan) they have failed to win their group on three occasions, and have also failed to make it past the last-16. Indeed having won their group in 2011-2012, and having consequently drawn AC Milan, Arsenal travelled away for the first leg and contrived to suffer an ignominious 4-0 defeat, a deficit they ultimately couldn't recover in the return leg. Take into account the 6-0 loss suffered at Chelsea in March, the 5-1 reverse away at Liverpool a month earlier, the 8-2 to Manchester United a couple of seasons before that, and their recurring failure to make progress through the knockout stages of the Champions League, and you have a very distinctive pattern. This is a competition that, since taking over almost 20 years ago, Arsene Wenger has never won. 

Competition Neglect

Competition Neglect is an aspect of the general self-enhancing bias that affects all of us, it is both common and understandable. In essence, when a person is suffering from Competition Neglect they focus on what they know and want and are capable of, neglecting the plans and skills of others. If you think only of your strengths, and ignore the strengths of your opponent, you are exhibiting Competition Neglect. We are proposing that Competition Neglect from Arsene Wenger is the primary cause of this pattern of recurring disappointment. 

A Recurring Problem

If you look back at the Liverpool away fixture from last season, you see that Arsenal fielded a very attacking line-up when visiting the most prolific counter-attacking team in the division at that time. Against Chelsea the game was over in quarter of an hour as Arsenal were ripped apart. The way I see it, you could only overlook an attack of Sturridge, Sterling and Suarez, which is decimating teams left, right and centre, if you never take them into account in the first place. If you dismiss the opposition tactics, and send your team out to play the same way regardless, and don't reorganise when it isn't working (which Wenger noticeably doesn't - a persistent feature of Arsenal's tactical setup is its immunity to adapting based on distinctive features of developing situations), you leave yourself exposed. If you think of Arsenal's recurring disappointments in this way, they begin to make sense. It is not just that they keep failing, it is that they keep failing in the same way. 

The Invincibles

It's not like Arsene Wenger hasn't always done this. But it's different if you've got Vieira and Henry. You can keep playing your own way, you earn the right to play your own way, if the opposition is weaker than you. But if your protecting midfield player is the magnificently average Francois Coquelin, and your attacking talent is Danny Welbeck and Olivier Giroud, you can't expect to get away with it, and indeed, Arsenal clearly don't. Even when they finally did win silverware last season, it was a failure to take Hull's strengths into account that saw the game almost beyond them inside 10 minutes. 

Focusing on What You Want To Do

Arsene Wenger wants his teams to play football. He neglects the fact that Monaco don't want his team to play football. His team plays in the same way every game, without taking into consideration that the opposition will be expecting this. When was the last time you even got an inkling that Arsenal had a plan b, or that Arsene Wenger had even considered that they needed one? How often do they actually alter their strategy in any noticeable way? 

The Way Arsenal Play

To return to that Anderlecht game, Paul Merson opened the studio analysis of the tie by describing Arsenal as "tactically clueless". With the score at 3-0 Arsenal continued to throw players forward, with the consequence that the defence was left exposed to the counter attack, and the midfield players were too high up to get back effectively - as was the case for the second and third goals against Monaco, both of which resulted from breakaways when the defence was left exposed in an almost laughably incompetent manner. For the second goal, they were left with two back, and with one of them being Per Mertesacker, who is noted for his lack of explosive capabilities, it was essentially one back against a Monaco counter attack. In the end Koscielny was the only defender on the right side of the ball, with the midfield charging back ahead of him, leaving Berbatov enough time to pick his spot and bag a second away goal. There was a complete reckless disregard for Martial's pace on the break, or for Monaco's numbers and quality in attack. 
The Percentages
If you are calling a coin that is being tossed while it is in the air, and you do this enough times, and you always go with Heads, you will be right half the time. If you play the same way against every opposition, sometimes this will work, but sometimes it will not. This inflexibility equally explains Arsenal's consistent league positions - they have a squad that is good enough to win most games, but not enough to realistically challenge for the title. 

They Are Not Good Enough

This Arsenal team is not good enough to neglect the plans and skills of others. Their repeated failures, and their tactical "cluelessness", is plausibly explained by this deficiency. For those of you who want to look at the Man City game as evidence against this theory, I would point out that the players had to ask Arsene to adjust his tactics, and it worked. When he calls the shots, Arsenal falter, and they do it regularly. 

A VERY VERY BRIEF INTRO TO GUT FORECASTING

Yes, today is the day we finally talk about intuition. Yours is probably a lot less accurate than you would like to believe. Not wanting to labour this introductory paragraph, here's a 5-step guide that should give you a very very brief outline of why that is...

1. Recap of Availability

We won't waste a lot of time here. Remember how we said that it's about forming judgements based on cognitive ease ("the ease with which instances come to mind"), that's still true. Recency is highly valued, a memory will be more available if it is a memory of the weekend, rather than a memory of last month. We comfortably remember the details of Man City's 5-0 thrashing of Newcastle, whereas the 1-1 home draw with Hull from February 7th is much less available. Your gut probably said good things about Man City ahead of the Barca game, because the most available recent memory you have is of a surprisingly comfortable victory. You unwittingly ignore that the four results they achieved prior to the midweek win at Stoke in the game before last, were a 1-1 draw away at Everton, a 2-0 home loss against Arsenal, and back-to-back 1-1 draws away at Chelsea and at home to Hull City. To repeat, it's not your fault. You are designed to give much greater weight to recent events, in fact it would've taken deliberate searching of memory to even recall the Arsenal or Hull performances, and they probably feel as distant to you as they do to me. 

2. Involvement (what are the chances you'll think it through?)
When motivated to, we will carefully consider certain issues. When we lack the motivation of personal involvement, we are happy to rely first on instinct, and second on superficial cues (for details see Petty, Cacioppo & Goldman 1981). Are we that involved in a vague forecast of who will win out of Man City and Barca? Almost certainly not. In fact, as soon as we're asked;
"So, Billy, what do you think will happen tonight?"
We tend to find that an answer to the question bounces immediately into our brain, and this answer will be very seductive, and it will certainly feel valid. It's only when I remind you how quickly that answer appeared that you might realise it is not a proper consideration of all the available facts. Instead of sitting and considering the question, we're most of us pretty happy to go with whatever first comes into our brains, with some possible small amount of elaboration. If your brain instantly goes "Man City" three days after they hammered Newcastle, and Barca were beaten 1-0 at home by Malaga, then you are relying upon the bias of availability, rather than making a reasoned judgement. That you might be right is surely neither here nor there...

3. The Intervention of Confirmation Bias
Imagine instead of saying "City", you said "Brighton". You (a nameless individual) may have sat with me and watched Middlesbrough-Leeds at the weekend. We may both have had a very negative opinion of Leeds' playing style, and the dubious qualities of their hapless lone striker, Steve Morison, whose goal record this season will be initiated just as soon as he actually gets one. So, when forecasting their result in travelling to play a team that scored 4 goals at the weekend in winning at home, you may have weighed this off against your impressions of the Leeds performance, and come up with the conclusion that Brighton could be on course to get a hatful. How do you justify this prediction? Why do you even need to? Well, what if someone questions you? Immediately you'll seek substantiating evidence. Well, you focus on the fact they scored 4. You ignore their league position (which going into the game was 20th), and their failure to win in 4 league games before the weekend, and the fact Birmingham scored 3 in that match, and so only lost by 1. You also ignore that all of Brighton's goals came from a centre midfielder and a right-back. 
Likewise, if you back Barca, you play down the City 5-0 hammering at the weekend, and play up Barca's 10 consecutive wins with 34 goals scored prior to the Malaga catastrophe. The point is that you accept the bits that support your theory, and ignore or downplay the significance of stats or info that contradict it. That's not unreasonable, it is simply human.

4. Always Right, not really wrong at all
Imagine you did forecast a City victory, and now they've lost. To you the factors that affected the outcome have probably been officially recorded as unforeseeable. When reflecting on your wrongness, you will focus on the good fortune required for the Suarez opening goal, the disappointing display from the usually reliable (though recently erratic) Vincent Kompany, and the red card for Gael Clichy. All of which reduce the sense that you really made an unreasonable error. Now imagine you forecasted that comfortable Brighton win. You are a prescient, almighty psychic God (in fact, you probably already were), this outcome is just yet further evidence of your extraordinary genius. Even though you said it would be by a hatful, that doesn't matter, and you don't need to analyse the game itself for possible moments of good fortune, or the intervention of a dodgy ref. You were right, because you are great (or, of course, you were wrong, but that's hardly your fault). 

5. The Consequence of This Final Bias
It sustains an illusion - that you can accurately forecast football results. You can't. You couldn't have forecasted Gael Clichy's split second decision to jump in on Dani Alves, which halted City's march back into the match. You couldn't have forecasted the last minute Zabaleta lunge which cost a penalty, and you still couldn't have forecasted that Leo Messi (who for the last month and a half has comfortably eclipsed Cristiano Ronaldo as the games foremost talent) would miss, and even if you forecasted the Hart save, you could never have reasonably forecast Messi putting a rebound wide when it was palmed straight back down the middle to him. You couldn't have foreseen the Suarez flick bouncing back to him off Kompany for the first goal. You might've suspected Barca would dominate the chances, but you couldn't have guaranteed that they were going to take any of them, and at half-time most of us couldn't foresee a City fightback. The future is unknowable, and when it comes to football this unknowability factor seems to only go off and increase. Sometimes you are right, and because you take credit for that and deflect blame when you're wrong, you feed a misconception that you have forecasting prowess. So as soon as your gut says "Man City" you gain total confidence in that impression. You have systematically built up a mental representation of yourself as an oracle. But you aren't. You're just guessing. I think I'm an oracle, but my winnings and deposits into a Betfair account I've had running for almost five entire years now are, give or take a fiver here and there, pretty much exactly even. The money tells me I am right at a rate of chance, I tell myself that I am a prophetic prodigy with prodigious and unparalleled foresight.

So...
Just reconsider, if you think about your abilities to guess results the way I think about mine. You can't know what is going to happen - being right OR wrong involves a lot of luck. So many modifying events occur in a football match, you cannot foresee them all. You are not a prophetic prodigy with prodigious powers or foresight. But then you're not supposed to be. It is not the way the world works, it is not the way your brain works. You guess about football in a perfectly acceptable way, even if you don't want to accept it. Moderating your self-opinion, taking equal responsibility for successes and losses should help you also to moderate your confidence in your predictions, and the amount of money you are willing to back them with. Developing a healthy sense of my own shortcomings has allowed me personally to severely reduce my gambling expenses. If you want to do this as well, every time you go to place a bet or deposit cash into your Betfair account, tell yourself you've got a very decent chance of being wrong, and then save that money and get yourself an eclair.

A Deliberate Attempt to Deceive/It's Not a Dive 'cos Rooney Did It

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/31496270

First of all, we can all see that there is no contact. Let's just shake hands and agree that Thorsten Stuckmann does not touch Wayne Rooney at any moment in the event. What's amazing is that anyone thinks there is anything to debate here at all. 
So-Called Pundits Holding a So-Called Debate
Go to the clip, and listen carefully to what the "pundits" say : Lineker focuses on the "rash" challenge - which makes no contact with Wazza. Nev focuses on the same thing that Keown and Wilson focused on in commentary, that he "has to get out of the way", and goes on to say, remarkably, "If he left his leg there, that would've been a leg breaker"(for the record, we completely disagree with this assertion, unless it turns out Wazza's shins are made of biscuit), and that if he hadn't got out the way the keeper would've "snapped his leg" (which also would not have happened in the absence of shins crafted by McVitie's). Hodgson describes it as "just taking evasive action", Roy even describes the keeper as having "gone with both feet", which is actually an entirely fabricated detail consistent with his reading of the event, but absent in the true event.
Memory Errors
Our brains do not store precise images of events. Our brains store little faint snapshots, but what we actually think of as "recollection" is really "reconstruction" of our sense of what the event meant, and the actual details we do remember. It is not uncommon to distort a memory to include what seem like genuine details, which are in fact fabricated details which fit with the way the event was salient for us. For Roy, Wayne is an innocent party, so he fabricates a detail which supports this perspective. 
A Quick Lesson in Objectivity
Ask yourself this - if Luis Suarez or Eden Hazard or Diego Costa does what Wazza did, is it viewed the same? No, of course not. Are there any relevant external factors which could justify this? The answer to this question is also 'no'. 
Our Reading of the Event

Thorsten Stuckmann makes a sliding challenge. He makes no contact with Manchester United footballer Wayne Rooney. Wayne Rooney leaps forward into the air, and kicks his leg back. Wayne Rooney makes a deliberate attempt to simulate contact in the absence of actual contact. 
"English players don't dive"

You don't actually hear this phrase verbatim, but some hint to the underlying stereotype is very common. Like any stereotype, we will meet with occasional evidence which runs contrary to it. Take the Millerites, who gave up everything to follow William Miller's prediction for the end of the world, but did not let the simple, unfortunate fact of the world failing to actually end as evidence that their belief was wrong. This may not be a stereotype, but it shows the way we typically react to evidence that challenges our existing beliefs.
 What Do We Do? 

So, you are confronted with evidence - actual indisputable evidence - that an English footballer, Captain of the national team, Wayne Rooney no less (such an "English Footballer" that despite barely being in the game at all he can get on the BBC's three-man 'Man of the Match' shortlist), has done a definite dive. On the other hand, aren't all English players honest? It's now become salient for the parties recognised above to, rather than having to review the veracity of their beliefs, find a way to retain the image of Wayne Rooney as being a) a typical English player, and b) consequently honest. 
Let's Just Take a Moment
He may have to get out of the way, although we're not actually conceding that point, we don't think anything would've happened if he'd kept running at the same pace (slow it down; the left leg goes past Stuckmann, the right leg goes over him). Anyway, we'll let you have that. Let's say he did have to get out of the way. What are his options? He can a) do it the way any normal person would, or b) he can simulate the effects of contact. Interesting that the "honest" footballer, chooses option b. 
So, What Are We Saying?

If you've ever heard Wilson commentate, you'll know that he's of the conservative variety, and if you've ever heard Martin Keown talk, well, you'll know where we're going with this. Keown and Wilson, we're saying, share this popular stereotype "English players don't dive/are more honest" and are met with conflicting evidence. They have a choice. They can question the validity of the stereotype (an act which requires genuine mental effort and attention, some non-routine thinking), or they can interpret the evidence in a way which maintains the credibility of the stereotype (aka their present belief). If you've ever met people, you'll know the latter is a more popular route than the former, in fact one is almost ubiquitous, whereas the other is a rarity.  To maintain your present beliefs, you must find ways of creatively interpreting disconfirming evidence, and when the belief is a stereotype, where disconfirming evidence will inevitably abound, we are especially adept. 
Personal Involvement
Personal involvement (or degree of belief, to put it another way) is always an important factor. This is the degree to which the belief is central to peoples self-perceptions, or their view of the world. If your life is organised around the church, around the rituals and traditions of religious life, you're going to be more hostile to disconfirming evidence, than if the issue is how you make the best toast. In this case, it helps that the five people we've noted as supporting the "had to jump out of the way" delusion (I refuse to call it a theory) are all themselves English, and thus presumably include themselves as fitting the "English are more honest" stereotype. 
So...

We are protective of the image in our heads, of our beliefs and dreams, no matter how unequivocal the evidence in front of our eyes. We may even go as far as Roy Hodgson, and interpret the evidence in such a biased way that we actively sit around creating details that were not present (such as two footed tackles which are, no matter how many times you see the footage, a complete fabrication).