Thanks to my lovely lady, who intervened and pointed out a glaring typo, what turned out to be extraordinarily simple problems with my KRS spreadsheet has been fixed. And that means, besides more eye-rolling on her part, that you, dearest reader, get your final KRS fix of the year. In previous editions we’ve talked mainly about who was the best and who was the worst and that format won’t differ particularly for this one, but let’s start with what will not be included.

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It’s obviously going to be a tense couple of days as we all count down, either inwardly or outwardly, to the kickoff against Inter on Wednesday afternoon/evening. Personally, I’m already dreaming about it in nervous and hectic ways, with the team scoring goals, but always needing one more to advance. My first thought upon waking up this morning was that we could win 4-2 and still not go through. It’s going to be a long couple of days…

But there is news afoot and it’s worth discussing:

The most significant news is that Sport is reporting that Guardiola already has his lineup chosen. If you’re surprised by Valdes, Alves, Pique, Milito, Abidal, Busqutes, Xavi, Keita, Pedro, Ibrahimovic, Messi, then you clearly haven’t been paying attention to what has gone on since the beginning of the year. El Mundo Deportivo reports that Yaya may have played his way into a starting spot with his performance against Xerez, which was a glorious one indeed. Frankly, I would be surprised if Yaya started and Busquets didn’t and so I imagine that Sport‘s lineup will turn out to be correct despite several potential changes, including Maxwell for a possibly-still-injured Eric Abidal. Our French LB is currently working with physios on the field, but I don’t know what that means for his recovery time because the extent of his injury is unclear. Andres Iniesta is also training on the field again, but he is an assured absence until at least the last few weeks of the season and probably until the Champions League final, if we make it there.

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I hope everyone had a good weekend, or at least a better one than Pique and Marquez. Hopefully your buddies/life partner/imaginary friends bailed you out and despite your horrid tackles, you were able to come away with all 3 points. I had a good enough time trying to find a place to watch the match–we went first to Woodwork (whose name I suddenly understood as I walked from the subway to there in the cold), but they apparently don’t have ESPN Deportes despite promising me on the phone before that they would have the match. So then we returned to my house and watched the match on the DVR, which was fun. Damn you, DirectTV and your nonsensical positioning of ESPN Deportes in a different package than all other things. Also something happened in Miami. You may have noticed. So a pretty good weekend, yeah.

To the random things we keep track of on this site…

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from Graph Jam

As most of you are aware, there’s this guy named Kevin that does the reviews for this here website. And some of you smart readers are even aware that during those reviews, he rates the players in each match. What you probably aren’t aware of is that there’s a bookish nerdboy collecting those ratings and putting them through the ringer and come up with averages, medians, and some analysis. That Peter Parker-esque science geek is, of course, me.

Each week I feed Kevin’s ratings into my number crunching machine, carefully calibrated to understand exactly the emotions involved in these integers. The machine is, of course Excel. And it does fairly simple mathematical operations. The first KRS is here.

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A lad could get used to this....

Great galloping Jesus, what a match. Pedro! sums up how I think we all feel here, in the wake of a gritty victory that found us not even approaching our dazzling, sparkling best, a victory that defines this club in a way that few others have, and that left me weeping right along with Pep Guardiola.

6 trophies, 6 competitions, less than 12 months. Pause for a second, to let that one sink in, then we’ll continue.
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As most of you are aware, there’s this guy named Kevin that does the reviews for this here website. And some of you smart readers are even aware that during those reviews, he rates the players in each match. What you probably aren’t aware of is that there’s a bookish nerdboy collecting those ratings and putting them through the ringer and come up with averages, medians, and some analysis. That Peter Parker-esque science geek is, of course, me.

Each week I feed the numbers into my number crunching machine, carefully calibrated to understand exactly the emotions involved in these integers. The machine is, of course Excel. And it does fairly simple mathematical operations. Continue Reading