Perm, crunching the numbers

By: timmyg | August 28th, 2009

Similar in style to the turd sandwich Chelsea left at the Nou Camp last May, Fulham’s display in the Urals was nothing to write home about.

Or even commend, other than it did the job and saw us through.

Injuries and breathers forced Roy to make a roster and tactics fitting for an advanced-stage Carling Cup match (not a complete JV roster, but close). Without Johnson, Zamora, Konchesky and Murphy through injury and Dempsey given a rest, chances are we’ll probably never see that lineup or formation again.

Nevland started up front on his own – something that never has worked before and didn’t work yesterday either. Riise was handed his debut, and Baird moonlighted as a center-mid, a switch in position that I still can’t determine is lasting or not.

Even with Schwarzer in goal and the Hangeland/Hughes parternship intact, Amkar Perm huffed, puffed, and blew our porch down by scoring (another) late goal, but thankfully the house did not fall. A 1-0 loss but a 3-2 aggregate win.

Off to the group stages we go.

The draw for which occurred this morning, and we got Roma, FC Basel, and CSKA Sofia. Via their coefficients, Roma is ranked 3rd overall. Basel was second in Pot 2 and thus ranked 14th overall. CSKA Sofia was top of Pot 4, making them 37th overall – just one spot below us.

So although we may want to underestimate the other clubs besides Roma, we got a pretty tough draw according to the coefficients. Lets compare the average coefficient of other British clubs – who according to the news got an equally tough draw – to ours to prove my point.

Everton (with a 35.899 coefficient) drew Benfica (64.292), AEK Athens (25.633), and BATE Borisov (7.733). That’s a 35.552 average coefficient.

Celtic (40.575) takes on Hamburg (67.339), Hapoel Tel-Aviv (18.050) and Rapid Vienna (8.565) – an overage opponent coefficient of 31.318.

Again, our Fulham (15.899) have Roma (78.582), FC Basel (51.050) and CSKA Sofia (14.250). Despite our coefficient being much lower than Everton or Celtic, our opponents average coefficient is still 47.96.

Poke holes all you want in the whole coefficient argument, but it still proves my point: our group is not an easy one on paper. But like that overused, obnoxious cliché: they don’t play games on paper.

The stage begins September 17 against CSKA Sofia.

Oh, and we take on Aston Villa Sunday. It’s a big match, and they’ll be out for revenge from yesterday’s humiliation against lowly Rapid Vienna. Can’t wait.