Wednesday, April 23, 2014

新发现 - 行星Kepler-186f,一顆環繞紅矮星克卜勒186的太陽系外行星,距離地球約492光年

http://zeusleaveolympus.blogspot.com/2014/04/kepler-186f.html

在最近的《科學》期刊雜誌裡公佈一篇文章,說科學家們花了3年的時間,找到了一顆名叫Kepler-186f的行星。那是一顆環繞紅矮星克卜勒186的太陽系外行星,距離地球約492光年。

這顆行星的特別之處,是在於它是有史以來,人類發現最接近地球生態的星球。也就是說,那裡可能有生命的存在。

美禄早餐 - 转载

美禄早餐



小时候最开心的,记得有两件事。

学校里来了那部青色的milo小卡车,就知道有冰凉可口的美禄饮品,让同学们有秩序的排队分享,暂时离开上课的苦闷感觉。而直到千禧年代的校园,美禄饮料的卡车还时有到临,重复再重复当年那模糊的免费饮品分派的画面。

另一项让你我至今念念不忘的小时候欢乐,也是关于美禄饮品的卡车,不过是在晚间抵达村子里学校草场,离卡车不远搭起了白色布幕,天色昏暗间播放着当年电台天天播的美禄广告歌:milo…..milo…..milo,身体健康饮milo…..,吸引村子里的老少居民赶至,原来广告车就要放映一部戏片(通常都是泰山片),让居民观赏,成为村子里最热闹的晚间休闲活动。

当时除了美禄,还有一个饮料牌子‘阿华田’,同样深入民间成为大人小孩喜欢的饮品,村子里多得这两个牌子的饮料促销竞争,这个星期某晚有美禄广告车来学校草场放电影,下周则有阿华田的广告车也来播放‘美味的阿华田,营养丰富;增加你的体力,阿华田人人爱。’随即也有电影西片吸引人潮。

随着日子流逝,多年后的今天,阿华田好像已没有继续发挥热能,而以绿青为主色的美禄,却越战越勇,日前在布城还成功搞了一场5万民众捧场的《大马早餐日》集会,提醒国人记得吃早餐,从而唤醒民众的健康意识,让家人及成长期孩童,培养正确的饮食习惯,摄取均衡营养,吃早餐就要记得美禄!

说实在的,营养专家提醒人群,早餐是人们一天里的重要养分,一天忙碌的日子,必须先有足够的早餐养分使人精力充沛。不过,新时代的人群过份重视工作或玩乐至深夜甚至凌晨才睡觉,而次日睡醒时已是接近朝阳高照的中午,因此往往错过了享用早餐的时刻。

无论如何,美禄鼓吹的健康饮食习惯,虽然其商业味浓,然而在促请民众关注每日享用早餐打造健康生活习惯的宣教,毕竟是值得称赞的一步咧!

Saturday, April 12, 2014

神一样的星期五

By Paul Tomkins: The Reds Have Bought Success? No Chance

By Paul Tomkins.
The notion that Liverpool have bought success, as opined by the Manchester Evening News’ Stuart Brennan, is frankly ludicrous. He also Tweeted that:
 …while Liverpool do have a couple of home-grown lads in Gerrard and Jon Flanagan, it is outrageous to suggest they have not bought their way to success.
Liverpool have of course spent some money to get into the hunt, but nothing compared with that spent by Chelsea, Man United and City in winning their titles of the past decade, during which time football became about billionaires and even trillionaires. Liverpool have five huge games left, but if they win the title it would make them the ‘cheapest’ champions in many a blue moon.
Brennan throws out a random series of numbers in his article and tweets – Liverpool’s gross spend in the past six years, then the Reds’ net spend over the past 20 years – without acknowledging any context, such as Liverpool becoming something of a selling club between 2009 and 2011 as the cowboys, Gillett and Hicks, looked to recoup all the money they could, and FSG offloaded anyone who wanted out, or who needed moving on (Alonso, Torres and Mascherano were all sold in that period; those three alone raised £100m.)
As I noted a few years ago in Pay As You Play, the argument of net spend is very flawed indeed; the only thing in its favour is that it’s slightly better than using gross spend, which is virtually meaningless. (A team can have a gross spend of £100m in a season – Ooh, big spenders you say! – but at the same time sell its entire existing team for £10m or £200m, and it still has that same £100m gross spend. It’s like looking at the background of the Mona Lisa and calling the work a landscape.)
SuarSturr
The biggest problem with net spend is deciding where to make the cut-off point; because whatever you choose will always be fairer to some than others.
You can start with the moment a certain manager arrives, but if, for example, you take Jose Mourinho in 2004, he joined a club that had spent £100m the previous summer (which is around £200m in today’s money). So it wasn’t just the £100m he himself went on to spend in 2004, but all the money leading up to that point. Mourinho might not have rated everyone he inherited, but it was a squad full of top internationals to pick and choose from.
Net spend is even more problematic with Manuel Pellegrini (who was my choice to replace Rafa Benítez in 2010), because he inherited an expensive squad packed with the talent bought during Mancini’s time, and beyond. After all, it’s not like a manager starts with no players at all, is it? He doesn’t start from scratch, but from where his predecessor left off. If every manager had to assemble an entire squad of their own at the start of each season, net spend would make some sense.
Pellegrini hasn’t spent an absolute fortune, mostly because he already had Hart, Kompany, Silva, Aguero, Toure, Zabaleta, Dzeko and various other world-class and/or top Premier League players (plus Joleon Lescott). Therefore net spend is an irrelevant argument in this case, as it is in many others. This shouldn’t detract from the fine job he is doing in changing the playing style, and the fact that City’s summer signings were mostly excellent value for money.
How much a team costs, once inflation is taken into account, is what matters; as we showed in our book and various articles. Our Transfer Price Index inflation system is not going to take the vagaries of football into account – unexpected things happen – but by contrast, gross and net spend arguments seem petty and misguided; it’s like going back in time, to a pre-enlightened age.
(Note: TPI inflation is based on the average price of all Premier League transfers each season, which leads to far greater rises than “standard” inflation. TPI inflation means that transfers are approximately ten times what they were in 1992, and twice what they were in 2004.)
How much a squad cost to assemble only tells you so much of the story; it shows the existence of a safety blanket, but not how much that reserve gets relied upon. Ultimately it’s the cost of the talent that plays that determines whereabouts a team usually finishes. We call this the £XI (average cost of the XI over 38 games after inflation is applied). It usually predicts to within two places of where a team will finish, making it more accurate than using squad costs.
Obviously the bigger, costlier squads have expensive players to replace expensive players when rotation or injuries occur; and while you get costly flops on the bench, on the whole you get better odds of a success when buying someone for £30m than £3m (even if it’s still never guaranteed, and we can all name £3m signings that proved better than £30m ones; but the overall rule is that more money increases your chances of a gem).
Inflation is vital when assessing or comparing teams assembled across many different seasons. You cannot say that when Rio Ferdinand cost £30m in 2002 it was roughly the same amount as Marouane Fellaini (at £27.5m) in 2013. Ferdinand’s fee was huge, a British record, for an elite player who’d possibly make the all-time Premier League best XI in his position; Fellaini’s was upper-mid level fee, and no more, for a mid-level footballer with a giant sponge on his head.
Go back to 2009, when United were at the peak of their powers; they had already locked down a player in Ferdinand whose fee, when adjusted for inflation, was by then up around the £50m mark (reflecting that he was the best centre-back around when taken off the market by Alex Ferguson, and he was still performing at a very high level). Funnily enough, the British record rose shortly after, in 2011, to … £50m.
In the past people have used the example of Ferdinand to say to me “well, he’s not a £50m-£60m player now, is he?”; proof, therefore, that the concept is flawed. But actually, the thing with Ferdinand is that he shows up as part of the squad cost (just as he’s still a huge wages drain on the United accounts), but he barely registers in the £XI – because he’s now old and doesn’t play that much. Therefore it doesn’t particularly skew the figures. It bloats the squad cost, but we ignore the squad cost.
Individual players are rarely, if ever, worth exactly what they originally cost, or what that fee amounts to with inflation. Clubs pay the fee at the outset, before he pulls on their shirt, with only some reflection of future performance seen in achievement-related payments. It’s a punt, an educated guess at value. Unlike transfer fees, wages (eventually) get upgraded to reflect performance, and they’re obviously a good guide too; but they don’t take into account injuries, which means that a club’s five highest-paid players could all be sitting in the stands for six months, not out there affecting the result.
Overall, though, once a club has shipped out its costly mistakes, it will tend to have a mixture of free, cheap, expensive and club-record breaking signings in its squad, with the best of those appearing in the XI. The law of averages brings this spending into something resembling a logical hierarchy. Of course, teams can perform below their cost/value, like United this season (or City in 2012/13), or above it, like Liverpool in this campaign (after a few years falling below the expected return).
In a follow-up to the piece, Stuart Brennan tweeted that the Liverpool team at the weekend cost over £100m, as if this was 1998 and £100m was still a big deal. With inflation, the Reds’ £XI (averaged over 33 games) is £102m, which ranks them 4th in 2013/14, just as the squad after inflation cost also ranks them 4th; but in both cases a mere fraction ahead of Arsenal. I’m guessing that the Gunners’ current wage bill is higher, due to regular Champions League participation, with Liverpool’s ranking 5th, ahead of Spurs (whose £XI is £86m).
What about the above says Liverpool have any right to lead the table in April based on outlay?
An £XI of £102m pales in comparison with City’s £169m, United’s £179m and Chelsea’s £187m. In the past decade, the cheapest £XI to win the title is £164m in 2011, and the average is £184m.
Along with the fact that no-one jumps from outside the top four to challenge for the title anymore (you have to go back to the ‘80s for the last time a team jumped from 7th), the reason I felt Liverpool stood no chance was that the side is so relatively cheap. So while Brennan may have a point in that Liverpool aren’t total paupers by Premier League standards – and I’m not sure anyone said they were? – in the relative terms of finishing 1st they actually would be.
Random figures like the gross spend of the past six seasons, in which the Reds have also shipped out several dozen players, or the net spend in the Premier League era, given that it includes a decade where Liverpool spent terribly, seem almost arbitrary. (How much money did the Reds waste between 1992 and 1999? The answer is a ton. And what does it have to do with Brendan Rodgers?)
£XIandSq
To put it further into context, Chelsea’s current squad, with inflation, cost almosthalf a billion – £476m; with United’s at £385m and City’s £382m. None of these clubs has reached even 50% in terms of the transfer costs of players making the £XI, suggesting a lot of fat on the bone, whereas Liverpool are at 64%.
This could of course mean that those richer clubs have been more injury-hit, but the figure tends to reflect squad depth more than anything; almost two-thirds of the Reds’ expenditure has, on average, taken to the pitch, whereas the richer clubs have had more in reserve.
In Rodgers’ favour, he hasn’t had to play his stars in Europe or extended domestic cup runs; in my view that has helped even the playing field a little, because bigger (and usually costlier) squads are required.
But even so, it’s not success that’s been “bought”. All that was bought was a decent chance of the top four, with logic dictating that the top three would be the same as last season (although Moyes was always like to turn expensive players into mere drones like Hodgson at Liverpool), and that, based on £XIs, Arsenal, Liverpool and Spurs were fairly evenly matched in the race for 4th.
One thing TPI proves in City’s favour is that they didn’t “buy” success in terms of assembling costlier £XIs and squads than United or Chelsea; but that, like Blackburn in 1995, they levelled the playing field. Back then, United had already accrued a whole host of expensive players (breaking the transfer record in 1993 on Roy Keane and 1995 with Andy Cole), to go with their emerging golden generation; the difference being that it feels more false if a team is assembled in two years rather than six or seven, and even more so if the money is pumped into the club in all at once, without having been generated in the traditional way (turnstiles, shirt sales, TV revenue).
The game-changer in English football was the arrival of Roman Abramovich. That was the one huge jump in investment; City didn’t blow their rivals out of the water in the way that Chelsea did, not least because Chelsea still had their wealth when City joined the party. Even now Chelsea have the costliest squad and most expensive £XI, and despite Mourinho’s ludicrous protestations about his brave young troops, are the joint-oldest side in the top four, at a very experienced 28.1; the exact same age as City based on the starting XIs so far. Liverpool are a full two years younger, at 26.1. So Rodgers has neither money nor experience on his side.
Another way to override the TPI predictions is by using loans, a subject covered well by Martin Samuel when discussing Everton this week. If you take his guess that Lukaku, Deulofeu and Barry would cost a combined £50m, then assuming they played regularly, their £XI would rise from the very modest £40m to £90m, making their contention for the top four more understandable (even if Roberto Martinez has still done a great job).
So there you have it. Liverpool are young, inexpensive and inexperienced when it comes to winning titles, and yet lead the table with five games to go. City probably remain favourites, but anything less than a point on Sunday, and they will face an uphill struggle.

Friday, December 27, 2013

Rodgers, and FSG’s Big Mistake

Posted on December 22nd, 2013
By Paul Tomkins.
I don’t know if the 2012 documentary Being:Liverpool helped improve Liverpool’s global appeal at all – it’s hard to imagine people falling for the club in the way that Istanbul lured in new Reds – but perhaps it helped sell thousands of shirts which, in turn, helped pay for Luis Suarez’s new contract.
In many ways it was a harmless PR stunt. But some lasting damage occurred when it came to Brendan Rodgers’ image. Here was a new manager – and a young one, to boot – having just replaced a literal living legend (no erroneous use of the word where King Kenny is concerned!), and his first steps were shadowed by a camera crew.
In truth, Rodgers came off looking a bit awkward, and the now infamous ‘three envelope’ stunt was not only an old trick, but one incorrectly worded. (“Make sure your name’s not in one of these envelopes” – well, players can’t do that, because they can’t alter the space/time continuum; they could only look to prove the manager wrong if their names were in the envelopes, even though the gimmick means they were probably empty.)
JWH
How to deal with criticism.
So began the comparison’s with Ricky Gervais’ David Brent, which, in turn, gave the sense of a manager full of clichéd nonsense, talking a lot but delivering little. It’s fair to say that those comparisons were highly egregious.  It’s also true that the manager has grown in stature and confidence since then, to the point where those notions look ridiculous and even spiteful.
But the reality of the situation is that Rodgers arrived as a young manager who hadn’t done a lot. No big deal at Watford and Reading, he inherited a rebooted Swansea project and ran with it. He took it to promotion and mid-table in the Premier League, which are admirable achievements, but a decade earlier George Burley had done even better with Ipswich, whom he took straight into Europe, and he didn’t end up at Chelsea or Newcastle.
Rodgers achieved promotion and top-flight mid-table stability with fine football, but the achievement was little or no better than what Tony Pulis, Sam Allardyce, Phil Brown, Paul Lambert and various other unremarkable or largely unproven managers had achieved. Therefore it was possible to wonder if Rodgers was overhyped, by a patriotic media eager to protect British coaches.
As I noted last season, there is nothing remarkable on Rodgers’ CV for us to use as a comfort blanket. His appointment required a leap of faith; some were happy to offer blind faith, some (like me) were on the fence, and some, for various reasons, had it in for him from day one.
At the time FSG were still relatively new to football, and here they were appointing the least-decorated Liverpool manager in over 50 years (if you include trophies won by Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan and Roy Evans in their roles as assistants, and, first time around, Kenny Dalglish’s incredible success as a player, which afforded him a ton of goodwill and knowledge of how to win titles.)
Graeme Souness returned to the club in 1991 with his stellar Liverpool cachet and Rangers success; Gérard Houllier had once won the French title and was given some credit for being part of his nation’s World Cup success in 1998, in the summer he moved to Liverpool; and Rafa Benítez had just won La Liga twice in three years, along with the Uefa Cup, with what were only the third best team in Spain. These were comfort blankets for the cold, dark times. Even Roy Hodgson had league titles, albeit in minor leagues.
When Dalglish returned as manager in 2011, he did so with a CV that had been bulging up to the late-‘90s, when he fell out of work, and it was so easy to recall memories of 1987/88, and the most exciting Liverpool side in memory; made all the easier when his new side started putting three past Manchester United and Manchester City. By contrast, Rodgers’ big club experience was confined to a brief time at Manchester United as a kid, and running the Chelsea youth set-up. He’d never won a meaningful trophy, nor been under any real scrutiny.
To add to the image issues, once Rodgers had gone, Swansea initially played more exciting, incisive football under Michael Laudrup, and, at a time when Rodgers’ Liverpool were still a bit hit-and-miss at the start of 2013, won the club its first trophy. In that context it seemed sensible to continue to wonder if Rodgers, whose Liverpool side went on to finish an unremarkable 7th, was quite up to the task, rather than feting him as the bright new face of British football management.
Put like this, and in the face of both rational and irrational doubts, Rodgers has had to overcome a lot since his unveiling. Add Bitegate, and Suarez’s desire to leave in the summer, on top of the mammoth task of replacing the club’s most beloved living figure, and you have to say that Rodgers has looked and acted nothing at all like the slightly nervous man seen in Being:Liverpool who, perhaps understandably, was trying too hard to impress. (Perhaps it helps that he doesn’t have a camera crew capturing his every gesture.)
There are a weaknesses, of course, which can be easy to focus on, but it’s also true that every team has its Achilles heel; even the greatest of recent Barcelona sides weren’t perfect. Set-pieces are a constant source of concern for Liverpool, but time spent rehearsing those is time spent away from practising passing patterns. Perhaps that’s why Barcelona aren’t very good at defending set-pieces, either, and why long-ball teams spend a high percentage of their time working on gaining advantages from corners and free-kicks.
FSG’s Redemption?
After a lot of criticism, and comparisons with their awful compatriots who preceded them at Liverpool, it’s fair to say that FSG are having a quite incredible 2013.
Having gone almost a century (and that merits the uses of italics) without the World Series before they pitched up, the Red Sox recently won their third title during their 11-year ownership. The Sox were totally abject just a year earlier – it was a record-breaking collapse after a decent start – but with the fan-base close to revolt, they turned it completely around in such a short space of time. Unthinkable back in July, FSG could possibly say goodbye to 2o13 with the Reds top of the table.
Despite the the League Cup success, 2012 will go down as an Annus horribilis for Liverpool too, particularly at Anfield. Being:Liverpool therefore documented a club with an identity crisis, having shed its most successful servant. And yet that all seems such a long time ago now.
The fact is, the club, and FSG, are making fewer mistakes. Even Suarez (touch wood) is winning over some neutrals with his attitude and behaviour. It feels like a club, and a manager – and indeed, a group of players – who have learnt a lot in a short space of time. People are making good calls, and it’s paying dividends.
Personally speaking, given the situation as it stood, I would have sold Suarez in the summer for £50m. Of course, even those who wanted him to stay didn’t see him averaging at over 1.5 goals per game. Remember when 0.5 (or “one in two”) was considered prolific? The Uruguayan doesn’t even take penalties, either!
If Suarez had done something stupid on his first game back – maybe biting the head off the Anfield cat, or challenging the entire opposition XI to a bout of Greco-Roman wrestling – then keeping him would have looked foolish. Instead, John Henry very publicly put his reputation on the line in a bid to keep the player at all costs. A few months on and Suarez is scoring goals at an unprecedented rate, and has signed a new contract.
The £35m ‘wasted’ on Andy Carroll (although only half was technically wasted, given the amount recouped) seems easily forgotten.
Indeed, 2011, which was widely regarded as a transfer debacle, doesn’t look quite so bad right now, considering that Liverpool’s two best performers at the moment are Luis Suarez and Jordan Henderson, signed by the much-maligned Dalglish and Comolli combo. If Liverpool “wasted” £110m in 2011 – and many of the purchases didn’t help at the time – then when you add the erratic Jose Enrique and the almost-forgotten Sebastian Coates, the club has at least £120m left in on-pitch assets from those deals, on top of the c.£30m already raised from offloading the less astute purchases. Remember, Liverpool sold Andy Carroll to West Ham for more than they paid for Daniel Sturridge.
Indeed, right now you could add the crazy £35m Andy Carroll fee to the £50m Torres money from that bonkers January evening and still not get to what Suarez, in this vein of form, is currently worth.
A £90m valuation for one player perhaps paints over the cracks of Carroll, Charlie Adam, Stewart Downing and co., but that’s what football transfers are about: you are guaranteed nothing but a varying mix of successes and failures. As I’ve said for many years now, it just needs two or three really special players to transform a team’s fortunes, meaning that plenty of signings will turn out to be duds.
Arsene Wenger, seen for so long as the transfer guru, has signed loads of seriously under-performing strikers – Diawara, Jeffers, Chamakh, Gervinho, Arshavin, Baptista, Suker, Boa Morte, Reyes, Wreh, Aliadiere and others I’ve no doubt forgotten – but you look at Anelka, Henry and Van Persie, plus the improving Giroud (and for a while, Adebayor), and you see that one gem every few years is usually enough in any given position. In ‘2013 money’ Wenger has ‘wasted’ over £100m on strikers during since 1996, but it would be wrong to focus on those errors given the success of others.
Right now, Moses and Cissokho, albeit both only on loan, look like “failures”. The good news is that Moses, after a bright start, is not getting game time because Sterling, who seemed to have totally lost his confidence (and possibly his way) is once again looking like the lad of 15 who skinned youth-team full-backs; except he’s now doing so to senior players and internationals. He’s just had his 19th birthday, and most 19-year-olds learn the game in the reserves.
Cissokho is out of the team because – weird of all weirds – Jon Flanagan has it in his head that he’s Roberto Carlos. If you asked in August which of Cissokho, Enrique or Flanagan would be the Reds’ best left-back, scoring goals and performing Cruyff turns, you wouldn’t have picked a confidence-starved youngright-back whom no Championship clubs even wanted to take on loan.
The Reds’ transfer business of the summer of 2012 was also flawed, with Rodgers furthering the niggling doubts with some unremarkable business. He seemed to be thinking rather small, like the manager of a mid-table club.
Joe Allen, who I think can still win over his doubters à la Lucas and Henderson, hasn’t yet proved value for money, and the others who arrived with him (bar youngster Yesil) are all sold, returned or loaned out. Then there was the Andy Carroll loan mess that left the Reds almost strikerless, the failure to land Clint Dempsey (which almost cost the Reds Henderson) and various other uninspiring events. It was a very inauspicious start, magnified by the American television show.
However, the transfer committee that FSG subsequently put together, whichincludes Rodgers, looks, on the overall balance, to be an inspired decision: it’s almost insane to think that Sturridge, Coutinho, Sakho and Mignolet all arrived in 2013 as very sensibly-priced players with years left ahead of them if they stay fit.
Not every signing will work out, not least because you can’t start fielding 16 or 17 players to give them all the chance to shine. My old rule of thumb, as a pure guess, was about 50% of buys working out well. Having since studied roughly 3,000 deals in the Premier League era, I’d say that around 40% are successful in one form or other (either on the pitch or in terms of making a profit to reinvest), with around only one in ten proving outstanding for the purchasing club, whether it be Thierry Henry at Arsenal or Kevin Davies at Bolton.
In terms of money spent, 2013 has delivered stunning pound-for-pound returns for Liverpool. Loanees Moses and Cissokho have underwhelmed, and freebie Kolo Toure isn’t in the side (but hasn’t let anyone down when he’s played). That’s three players who obviously rack up wages, but no transfer fee. Liverpool won’t be saddled with debt if they fail.
Ilori and Alberto were bought as young squad players, so it’s hard to comment on the wisdom of those deals at this juncture, other than to say Alberto has looked a very tidy player in his brief cameos. Which leaves just Aspas, at £7m, as “wasted” money based on performances so far. That can quickly change, as can perceptions of, for example, a senior player like Sakho, who just two games ago wasn’t even in the side. But based on things as they stand, which is all I can do here, the transfer committee has had an exceptional hit rate since its creation a year ago.
Whether or not Rodgers has the final say on transfers, he is working wonders with what he’s been given. If he only has a minimal input on deals, like ex-Spurs boss Andre Villas-Boas, then he’s doing even better to work so well with playershe didn’t choose. Either way he comes out of it well. And yes, he was lucky to inherit Luis Suarez, but he has to take some of the credit for the striker’s otherworldly form. If Rodgers was a fraud, as some suggest, then Suarez wouldn’t be so happy with him.
So 2013 has been one of great improvement for Rodgers’ Reds, and FSG must be hoping every year could be like this one. In terms of their football ‘franchise’, however, it’s only roughly the halfway stage. Nothing has been achieved yet. Their team are top on merit, but quite remarkably, also only one defeat away from slipping to 5th, with their second choice from 2012, Roberto Martinez, having made Everton a watchable, winning side. The top six is incredibly tight right now.
Perhaps ‘AVB’ was in the frame too back in 2012, but this summer, having recorded Spurs’ best points tally in the Premier League era, he was in the Caribbean yachting topless with his underlings. Months later he was shivering on the touchline, having been frozen out by his bosses.
Things change quickly in this sport, so this is not a case of crowing, or suggesting that Rodgers and FSG have it cracked. Football can flip too quickly to say that. But insofar as this season – and 2013 as a whole – is concerned, it’s hard to imagine things having gone any better.