Online football pundit

Football, explained
with the numbers.

Expert analysis and straight talking commentary on the game, from the Premier League to the leagues that only get a line on the vidiprinter. Form, tactics, data, and what it all means before the next kick off.

Follow the columns
What I cover

Three things I keep coming back to

Every column is a reading of the game, backed by the numbers. Most of them land in one of these 3 beats.

Form and the table

Who is better than their league position says, who is riding luck, and why a 6 game run can lie. Points per game, home and away splits, and the shape of a season read properly.

The numbers under the result

Expected goals, shots on target, clean sheet rates and the stats that explain a scoreline before the pundits on the telly do. Plain English, no spreadsheet required.

Beyond the big leagues

Scandinavia, the Americas, the Turkish and Saudi second tiers. The leagues nobody covers in English, followed week in week out, with the stories and the stats to match.

Columns

Recent reads

Form
Mansfield are better than ninthWhy a mid table League One side keeps turning draws into points nobody expected.
Stats
The xG table tells a different storySix Premier League sides whose results and their underlying numbers have come apart.
Tactics
Copenhagen's 3-0 was built in midfieldHow Braga were squeezed out of the game before the first goal went in.
Beyond
A Tuesday night in MardinTurkey's second tier, a club 20 miles from the Syrian border, and a season worth following.
Form
Argentinos Juniors and the art of winning 1-0The Primera side turning narrow leads into a title challenge.
Stats
Why the draw is football's forgotten resultOne match in 4 ends level. Most previews pretend it cannot happen.
The table tells you where a team is. The numbers tell you where it is going, and the two disagree more often than anyone on Match of the Day lets on.From a Mr Value Hunter column
About

Who is writing this

I write as Mr Value Hunter. I've spent 12 years studying football with a spreadsheet open, the first 10 of them for my own curiosity and the last 2 in public. I follow 71 leagues across 45 countries, which means I can tell you as much about Djurgården's away form as I can about Arsenal's.

My background is in writing for British audiences, so I learned early how to explain a complicated idea in a sentence a bloke can read on the bus. That is what the columns are. Expected goals, points per game, home and away splits and the rest, turned into plain English and used to say something useful about the next match.

I'm not on the telly and I don't have a former player's badge. I have the data, the hours, and an eye for the leagues and patterns that the big outlets skip, and the reader can judge the analysis on whether it turns out to be right.