Chopper reminds us that we don’t win there.
Our man in the North (Jamie) is going to the game – check back tomorrow for his report.
September 23, 2008
Confirmation bias
What?
Paul DePodesta works in the front office of the San Diego Padres baseball team. So? Well he’s a very bright and interesting man, writes a blog about his experiences at San Diego too. I liked this little nugget:
Very simply, confirmation bias describes the act of accepting only those facts that buttress a pre-existing opinion while discarding those facts that run contrary to one’s opinion. In short, we’re much more comfortable continuing to believe what we already believe.
So true. And this…
So, there we sit discussing the skills of a highly qualified and tested group where the distinction between players is very, very thin. However, what becomes clear is that for the players we want to keep in big league camp, we generally talk about what they can do. For the players we want to send down, we tend to focus on what they can’t do, so the decisions seem obvious (which they’re not). Understand, I keep using “we” because every one of us in the room is guilty – we can’t help ourselves!
I think we see a lot of this in discussions about Fulham players. This is tied into what Colin’s doing at Championship at Best. If you haven’t filled the survey in yet, go for it.
Kevin Nolan worried that Bolton are going soft
This article is about Arsene Wenger, but check out the bit at the end:
Wenger will be unimpressed by an admission from Bolton’s Kevin Nolan that he told a team-mate to foul Theo Walcott. “I said to Jlloyd Samuel, ‘Give him a little kick and see if he comes back at you’,” Nolan said, adding: “We are in danger of losing that side – the roughing up of people.”
I wouldn’t look at this twice were it not for several recent attempts to clean out Jimmy Bullard. The first of which was by Kevin Nolan. Nice man.
Looks like things are moving in the right direction for Sheffield United, at West Ham’s expense. Good. How this ever got to this point is a mystery to me; extraordinary gutlessness from the league at the time. Anyway, it partly explains why we were able to buy Zamora and Paintsil:
West Ham’s keenness to sell players this summer is now thought to have been prompted by a need to raise funds in anticipation of the judgment. Freddie Ljungberg was paid to leave to get him off the wage bill, Bobby Zamora and John Paintsil were sold to Fulham, and Richard Wright and Nolberto Solano also left.
Finally, the formatting’s gone again. They must have updated me. Oh well.
