Bayern Munich: What's down is up

While listening to the lastest ESPNFC podcast, Iain Macintosh threw in an interesting posit on German football that deserves some investigation.

His theory, which is his, was that Bayern Munich win a few Bundesliga titles in a row, are unseated and then use this opportunity to reimagine themselves as a bigger and better club. Furthermore, he thought this provided hope for 2015 and beyond to shrewd local clubs with great youth development.

Taking a quick look at the list of German league champions reveals the basic mechanics of his dictum are correct: Bayern have won the league eleven of the past twenty seasons and look certain to do so again in 2014. Their longest title stretch spanned the three years from 1999 to 2001.

The flip side of this theory is that despite making the Champions’ League final in 2012 and winning it in 2013, this has actually already occurred and this is the more powerful incarnation of Bayern intimated by Macintosh.

Bayern’s past re-envisionings have come in the face of slip-ups (coughKlinsmanncough) or the local competition advancing their players or tactics beyond them. Looking back over seasons 2012-14, we can suggest playmaking and personnel developments at Borussia Dortmund was responsible for their title victories – meaning Bayern Munich’s success in the One Competition to Rule Them All actually occurred during some of their “down” years.

The logical progression from that position is that Pep Guardiola is actually not involved in the finishing steps of a rebuild, but the earlier ones.

The greater revenue brought about by Champions League success and the increasing importance of globalizing a club’s brand allows a club having a less successful local year (in which they proceed deep into European competition) to repopulate themselves with the likes of Mario Gotze and Robert Lewandowski. Such a large difference – such as a 4:1 spending difference over the past four years between the best two clubs in the nation – is increasingly hard to bridge with tactical and developmental innovation.

Macintosh’s dictum is a true statement. However when applied to the 2013-14 Bundesliga, it is less a statement of potential future challenges than a monochromatic commentary on the future of the Bundesliga.

Shaun Marsh - Ducks and Tons

It has come to some people’s attention that Shaun Marsh has an unenviable record in Test cricket.

Should Shane Watson re-enter the Australian team for the third Test at Cape Town at his expense, Marsh will have one foot in each of two curious history books. Were he never to play another Test – an eminently possible proposition – he would join such luminaries as Barry Richards*, Clive Radley and Tom Moody to have scored two tons in less fifteen or fewer innings. (*No one doubts Richards would have played many more innings and scored many more hundreds had South Africa been able to play Test cricket in the 1970s and 1980s).

Less appealingly, Marsh also be the star feature in another tome detailing batsmen with the highest percentage of failed innings.

On a good day, Shaun Marsh is splendid to watch. On bad days – of which there are far more – you barely get a look at him. This is because for any Test batsman (i.e. not specialist wicketkeeper or bowler) who has played at least 15 innings, Marsh has the highest rate of ducks per innings. He records one zero every 2.5 times he strolls to the crease (40%), a truly remarkable rate that makes him a true outlier. The only other true batsman with at least 15 innings’ experience to record even one duck in every four innings is the immortal Saleem Elahi, who made six gozzers in twenty-four.

The following is a chart that plots the frequency of a player’s ducks against the frequency of their scores above 50. To qualify, a player must have been selected as a batsman or all-rounder, played a minimum of fifteen Test innings and had a duck frequency rate (DFR) over 10% (i.e. one duck every ten innings).

Notable outliers have been named and highlighted.

A table containing these players can be found at the conclusion of this post. 

Lucas Neill is the new Harry Kewell

Pick one: Sydney Olympic of the New South Wales Premier League, or Watford, promotion contenders in England’s League Championship.

Yup, Lucas Neill has landed on his feet.

Maybe.

Ageing Australia captain Neill needed a club in the worst way in order to lead the Socceroos to this year’s World Cup. There are zero bones about this – seventy-four games for six teams in four years since the last Cup is a telling statistic. Neill was, and perhaps still is, in serious danger of missing Ange Postecoglu’s squad after vehemently criticizing Australia’s young players following ex-manager Holger Osieck’s departure in October.

This week, he has been cut by manager Ange Postecoglu from the Socceroos’ squad for a warm-up game against Ecuador while simultaneously batting seemly eyelashes towards former club Blackburn Rovers and hometown Olympic.

Only in Australian gold does he still command respect for his abilities, if not for his personally-vaunted natural leadership. If he places so much currency in that leadership, it speaks ill of his stocks in this trait that each of his last four teams have not seen the same value. Many younger Socceroos would not share his own lofty opinions of his charisma.

After long stints at Millwall – a club with a long fondness for Aussies – and similarly-inclined Blackburn Rovers, Neill has become a shiftless free agent, roaming the globe in search of game time and ready coin. In the eight years since his defining day in the gold and green, Australia’s most publicized player has played for nine clubs with declining influence. Such has been his difficulty settling down that there have been few stories reporting on-field performance and many on possible landing spots, dressing-shed schisms and how – or if – he fits into a new generation of Socceroos.

Since the South Africa 2010, the defender has only managed over twenty games at one club, rocking up to 39 matches alongside compatriot Harry Kewell at Galatasaray during 2010-11. There is no coincidence that Cimbom’s assistant manager at the time was Guus Hiddink’s sidearm and noted Neill fan Johan Neeskens.

There’s an odd symmetry to the link-up with Kewell, for Lucas has now replaced Kewell as Australian football’s story-for-hire.

Kewell, the captain’s contemporary for Australia, Galatasaray (and nearly Liverpool), has a reputation for making the game all about Harry: overblown and poorly-timed injuries, startling recoveries, a soap-star wife, will-he-play-in-Australia questions, will-he-play-for-Australia questions, an ego with its own gravitational pull and, buried beneath those B-list celebrity trappings, sublime talent.

After making a name for himself as a hard-bitten defender capable of playing both on the right and centrally, Neill has become a similar figure of parody. His presence in the game is now less about his times on the pitch than when he is removed from it. The questions surrounding him are not as lurid as those flung at Kewell, but instead wonder if Neill can successfully contribute to a dressing room, if his inflated opinion of his leadership abilities are to his (and others’) detriment and if he even demands a place on merit in a Socceroo backfield.

Amidst all this, if he is match-fit, Neill probably still has a role to play. With Rhys Williams missing the tournament, Neill may be the best central defender Australia has to offer to a terrifying group in Brazil. He has an amount of that chest-out, chin-up defiance made so popular by John Terry that if not encumbered with egotism might prove invaluable in an Australian squad likely to include several players at their first Cup.

Watford will provide fourteen potential opportunities to prove to Postecoglu that he can contribute tactically and physically rather than solely with his Spartan brand of leadership.

Plus/minus: Aston Villa, Cardiff City, Manchester United, Southampton, Tottenham Hotspur - 21st February 2014

Aston Villa

Player	G	Min	GS	GA	+/-	Scored/90	Conc/90	Team GD
Guzan	26	2340	27	36	-9	1.038	1.385	-9
Westwood	23	2063	22	33	-11	0.960	1.440	-9
Delph	23	2013	25	29	-4	1.118	1.297	-9
Clark	22	1845	25	30	-5	1.220	1.463	-9
Bacuna	24	1797	21	26	-5	1.052	1.302	-9
Weimann	25	1766	22	26	-4	1.121	1.325	-9
Benteke	21	1728	19	28	-9	0.990	1.458	-9
Vlaar	20	1725	23	22	1	1.200	1.148	-9
Agbonlahor	20	1662	16	24	-8	0.866	1.300	-9
El Ahmadi	21	1502	19	28	-9	1.138	1.678	-9
Baker	19	1484	14	23	-9	0.849	1.395	-9
Luna	17	1381	15	18	-3	0.978	1.173	-9
Lowton	16	1266	17	22	-5	1.209	1.564	-9
Kozak	14	781	10	9	1	1.152	1.037	-9
Tonev	15	553	5	6	-1	0.814	0.976	-9
Sylla	9	462	5	7	-2	0.974	1.364	-9
Albrighton	10	454	2	7	-5	0.396	1.388	-9
Bertrand	5	425	7	9	-2	1.482	1.906	-9
Herd	2	171	1	4	-3	0.526	2.105	-9
Okore	3	167	1	3	-2	0.539	1.617	-9
Holt	4	146	1	1	0	0.616	0.616	-9
Bennett	2	86	0	0	0	0.000	0.000	-9
Bowery	5	63	0	2	-2	0.000	2.857	-9
Helenius	3	49	0	1	-1	0.000	1.837	-9