Predictions 2015-2016 (Round 4)

This past week I picked three games out of ten correctly with one correct score for 60 points.  Lawrenson picked five out of ten correctly with three correct scores for 140 points.  His celebrity guest picked picked five correctly for 50 points.  Merson picked six out of ten correctly with one correct score for a total of 90 points.

My current total for the season is 12 out of 30 for 180 points.  Lawrenson has picked 11 out of 30 for 200 points.  Merson has picked 16 out of 29 for a total of 340 points.

When Lawrenson and Merson make their new picks I will link them here and here.

At this point my system is not doing so well which might mean I was just lucky last year.  Or it could mean that my early season method of relying on last year’s results is flawed.  Maybe I should have relied only on the last ten games from last year or, perhaps, the last ten games played by each side.  Oh well.  Just three more weeks and I start using this season's results.

PREDICTIONS

My system’s picking rules can be found here.  Based upon those rules here are my predictions for the next round of games:

Newcastle-Arsenal          1-2

Aston Villa-Sunderland  1-1

Cherries-Leicester           1-1

Chelsea-Palace                 2-1

Liverpool-West Ham       2-1

Man City-Watford           2-1

Stoke-West Brom            2-1

Tottenham-Everton        2-1

Southampton-Norwich  2-1

Swansea-Man U               1-1

This Coming Week in Europe from the Perspective of Southampton FC

Obviously, Southampton needs a result that gets them through to the group stages of the Europa League.  It would also be slightly helpful if Manchester United qualifies for the Champions League, both to keep them out of the Europa League and to improve England’s European Coefficient. However, if Southampton qualifies for the group stage of the Europa League, additional favorable results would be quite helpful.

In group play, Southampton will be matched up with three other clubs.  Because of the way these clubs are chosen, things that happen next week can make a significant difference for us.

 

The groups are chosen by random draw.  Each group consists of one club from Pot 1 which contains the twelve clubs with the highest coefficients, one club from Pot 2 which contains the next 12 clubs, one club from Pot 3 which contains the clubs seeded 25 to 36, and one club from Pot 12 which contains the clubs ranked 37 to 48.

 

As it stands right now, Southampton FC might make it into the third pot.  This would be very helpful because in the third pot, we will face one lower ranked club along with the two higher ranked clubs.  In the fourth pot we will face nothing but higher ranked clubs.  This is the difference between having two purportedly easy fixtures and no easy fixtures.

 

For my analysis, I am relying upon the Kassiesa website which is permanently linked on the first page of my blog.  The page of that website dealing with Europa League seedings is found here.

 

According to Kassiesa, if the higher ranked teams advance out of all qualifying matches, Southampton will be the 37th ranked team.  This means that we will be the highest ranked club in the fourth pot.  Alas, there is no prize for being the highest ranked club in a pot.  To make it into the third pot we simply need one extra game to go our way.  However, this assumes that all of the relevant Champions League games go our way and this is not guaranteed.

 

Of the 20 clubs playing in the Champion League playoffs, ten of them will drop into the Europa League group phase.  Of these 20 clubs, only five have lower coefficients than Southampton.  If any of those clubs qualify for the Champions League group stage, a club with a high coefficient drops in to the Europa League and increases the number of other games we need to go our way.  With this in mind, we care about these Champions League fixtures.  The clubs we wish to prevail are shown in bold with the results of this week’s fixtures:

 

1              Bate-Partizan                                 0                             

3              Celtic-Malomo                               2
1              Skenderbeu-GMK Dinamo          2
1              Astana-Apoel                                 0
0              Rapid Wein-Shakhtar                   1

In this round of the Europa League, we are a seeded club but only two of the 21 other seeded clubs have lower coefficients than us.  That means that we do not care about the games involving those clubs, Krasnodar and Belenenses.  No matter who wins those fixtures, we will be seeded ahead of them.  In each of the other 18 fixtures, there is one club we strongly prefer prevail.  These are the results of this past week’s fixtures with the club we wish to win in bold.

3              Astra Giurgiu-AZ Alkmaar                           2

2              Dinamo Minsk-FC Red Bull Salzburg         0

0              FK Qabala-Panathinaikos                            0

1              Ajax-FK Jablonec                                           0
2              Molde FK-Standard Liege                            0
5              PAOK Salonika-Brøndby IF                          0
1              Slovan Liberec-Hajduk Split                        0
3              Sparta Prague-FC Thun                                1
0              Zorya Luhansk-Legia Warsaw                    1
1              Milsami Orhei-St Etienne                           1
0              Atromitos Athens-Fenerbahçe                  1
0              BSC Young Boys-FK Qarabag                      1
1              Rabotnicki-Rubin Kazan                              1
0              Steaua Bucharest-Rosenborg                     3
3              MSK Zilina-Ath Bilbao                                  2
1              Bordeaux-Kairat Almaty                             0
3              Odd Grenland-Borussia Dortmond          4
3              Viktoria Plzen-FK Vojvodina                      0
3              Lech Poznan-Videoton                               0

Combining the two lists, we want six bolded clubs to win.  (18 would be even better because that would get us into the second pot, but that is not going to happen.) Of the 24 relevant fixtures, we are ahead in eleven.  Two are even.  Thus, we appear to be in good shape to qualify for Pot 3, assuming we can advance ourselves.

Predictions 2015-2016 (Round 3)

It appears I misunderstood the BBC scoring system.  You get 30 extra points for picking the exact score, not 30 points total.  I have adjusted the running totals to reflect this.

This past week I picked five games out of ten correctly with one correct score for 80 points.  Lawrenson picked four out of ten correctly for 40 points.  His celebrity guest picked picked five correctly for 50 points.  Merson picked five out of nine correctly with three correct scores for a total of 140 points.

My current total for the season is 9 out of 20 with one correct score for 120 points.  Lawrenson has picked 6 out of 20 for 60 points.  Merson has picked 10 out of 19 with 5 correct scores for a total of 250 points.

Merson has jumped to a big early lead despite not bothering to pick the Aston Villa-Manchester United match this past week.

When Lawrenson and Merson make their new picks I will link them here and here.

PREDICTIONS

My system’s picking rules can be found here.  Based upon those rules here are my predictions for the next round of games:

Man U-Newcastle           2-1

Palace-Aston Villa            2-1

Leicester-Spurs                 1-2

Norwich-Stoke                 1-2

Sunderland-Swansea     1-2

West Ham-Cherries        2-1

West Brom-Chelsea        1-2

Everton-Man City            1-2

Watford-Southampton  1-2

Arsenal-Liverpool            2-1

Concussion Update (Part Seven)

I first posted about Concussions in football on 8 August 2014.  My last concussion update was in October.  I think I stopped posting on the subject because it felt too much like banging my head against a wall.  (My six earlier posts about concussions can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

In my first post, I discussed the new rules dealing with head injuries and wondered “whether those new rules are adequate or whether the pre-existing state of denial will just continue.” The events of last season and the clash of heads between Olivier Giroud and James Tomkins in the Arsenal—West Ham game last Sunday demonstrate that for all the big talk, the denial continues and the Premier League does not take this issue seriously.  Players are not being properly evaluated and removed from play even when they have suffered apparent serious head injuries.  The recent events involving the Chelsea team doctor, Dr. Eva Carneiro, and the way she was treated by Jose Mourinho and the management of Chelsea compound the problem.

 

The most critical aspect of the protocol for head injuries is that the decision as to whether a player with a head injury can continue must be made by the doctor, not the player or the manager.  It is difficult to see how any team doctor can take this rule seriously given what has happened to Dr. Carneiro.

 

Based upon an apparent injury to Eden Hazard, she and Chelsea’s head physiotherapist, Jon Fearne, ran onto the field—at the referee’s request—to provide treatment.  This was a medical decision.  Yet, as a result of that decision, they have both been demoted.  (See here.)  This sends a clear message to all club doctors that they can be punished for doing their job. 

Mourinho found fault with Dr. Carneiro and Fearne because their actions did not demonstrate a proper understanding of the game.  In an article on this incident Martin Samuel agrees and also lets us know that sexism was not involved.  (See here.) 

Apparently, Hazard was not really injured, he was just tired and taking a rest.  Mourinho could tell all the way from the sidelines that Hazard’s rolling around in pain was fake and he expected his doctor and physiotherapist to reach the same conclusion.  Mourinho’s claim is, on its face, preposterous.  Setting aside the fact that this means Hazard was cheating, his behavior was convincing enough that the referee gestured, twice, for the treatment team to come onto the field.  Mourinho may very well have hoped that Hazard was not seriously injured and was just resting and stalling, but he could not be certain.

 

The problems that could arise in the case of a head injury are clear.  What happens if, in a future game, the Chelsea team doctor (either Dr. Carneiro or her replacement) decides that the player needs a full evaluation to determine whether he has suffered a concussion.  This could keep the player off the field for ten or more minutes if done properly.  Yet Mourinho believes that the doctor is obligated to understand the game and, presumably, get the player back on the field as soon as possible.  Under such circumstances, Chelsea’s doctor and, perhaps, doctors for all the other Premier League teams would know that they are expected to conduct their concussion evaluations rapidly and without regard for the true medical needs of the player.  In fact, this pressure might explain why team doctors are already allowing players with head injuries to go back into play so quickly. 

 

In Dr. Carneiro’s case, there are other factors potentially at play because she is a woman.  Allegedly, there have been concerns expressed by Mourinho because, supposedly, some players were not happy that there was a woman doctor with access to the dressing room.  On the other hand, The Times claimed that this was not true.  (See here.) There have also been claims that the last straw causing her demotion was not her decision to run onto the field but her Facebook post thanking the public for their support.  (See here.)   According to a Guardian article written by David Hytner, Mourinho demands total loyalty and privacy from the staff at Chelsea.  The Facebook post while not actually violating Chelsea’s rules, violated Mourinho’s unwritten rules.

 

Another Guardian author, David Conn, (see here) suggests that by stripping Carneiro of her match day and training session duties, Chelsea has constructively dismissed her and Chelsea could well be sued.  Conn points out that with Hazard on the ground and in pain and the referee beckoning to the Chelsea bench for attention, “Carneiro could have been in serious breach of her professional duties as a doctor had she not attended to him.”  That much seems self-evident.

 

Not surprisingly, the Premier League Doctors Group has condemned Chelsea’s treatment of Dr. Carneiro.  I am unable to find the exact text of their statement.  (One article for which I have misplaced the link, claims that this is the first public statement that group has ever issued.)  Other doctors have also spoken out in defense of Dr. Carneiro.  On the other hand, Chelsea’s last team doctor has publicly criticized her and supported Mourinho.  (See here.)  Possibly he wants his old job back.

 

Obviously, we cannot know if sexual discrimination is involved in Chelsea’s treatment of Dr. Carneiro. However, it seems a likely possibility.  We do know she has been subject to abuse simply because she is a woman doctor for a Premier League football club.  (See here and here.)  Certainly, sexism is the most logical explanation for why there is only one woman doctor in the Premier League.  After all nearly 45% of the doctors in the United Kingdom are women.  (See here.)

 

While no one has asked me, if I were the Premier League Doctors’ Group I would demand that Mourinho be sanctioned severely and publicly apologize and that Dr. Carneiro be restored to her job.  If that did not happen, I would organize a surprise work stoppage for a weekend of Premier League football.  Since team doctors are required for games to be played, this would cause the cancelation of an entire weekend’s worth of football.  On the other hand, I am not an expert in English Labor Law so it may well be that it would be illegal for the doctors to organize this kind of action.  Nevertheless something should be done and if that something does not result in Dr. Carneiro being restored to her job and Mourinho being appropriately sanctioned, it is not enough.

 

Bringing this back to the subject of concussions, in Sunday’s game Arsenal’s Giroud and West Ham’s Tomkins butted heads.  On my initial viewing, it looked like they were both unconscious which made it seem strange and completely inappropriate that they were back in the game barely three minutes later.  However, I reviewed the incident multiple times and I do not think there is any evidence that either player actually lost consciousness.  I will lay out the timeline of the incident.  Note that this timeline is not complete because the television coverage spent a lot of time replaying the incident or showing something other than the two players lying on the ground.

73:55     The incident occurs.  As he is going down, Tomkins moves his hand to his head.  Giroud starts to move his hand to his head but then stops.  This suggests to me that both players were still conscious immediately after the collision.

 

74:00     Both players are on the ground not moving.  The referee is looking at the ball in play and not at the players on the ground.  From this I infer that  the referee is not yet aware of the incident.

74:03     The referee blows his whistle.  Neither player is moving. 

74:09     Giroud is tipped onto his side by one of his teammates and appears to move on  his own slightly while this is happening.

74:50     Although still on the ground both players appear to be making slight volitional movements.

75:50     Giroud gets up and walks off the field.

76:05     Tomkins gets up and walks off the field.  He is helped by medical personnel and  appears to be unsteady on his feet or, to use the technical term, woozy

77:10     Both players are back on

Subsequently Arsenal issued a public statement that Giroud never lost consciousness.  From my repeated viewing of the game on the NBC coverage of the game, which included multiple replays of the incident itself, I do not think anyone can be sure whether either player lost consciousness so if Giroud says he never lost consciousness, he probably did not. 

On the other hand, it is clear that both players suffered a head injury and, whether they lost consciousness or not, could have suffered a concussion.  That is why the handling of the incident once the players were off the field, was problematic.  Medical personnel were in contact with the players for no more than three minutes before they were allowed back onto the field.  As I have stated in earlier concussion posts, it is simply not possible to do an adequate assessment to determine whether someone has suffered a concussion in that about of time.  If, indeed, the team doctors made the evaluations and cleared the players to go back on the field, I find it difficult to believe that they were complying with their medical duties to put the health of their patients first.  Very possibly the doctors felt pressure to get the players back on the field as soon as possible and knew that they would not be given the time necessary to conduct a full concussion assessment.  The pressure on the second doctor to let his player back on the field after the first player returned might have been particularly strong since otherwise he would be demonstrating his lack of understanding of the game by forcing his team to play one man short.

 

In researching this issue I found this article which discusses how long it takes to determine whether a concussion has occurred.  It describes the Standardized Assessment of Concussion Screening Tool which take five to seven minutes to administer.  Here is a link to the scoring form.  According to the article, it identifies the concussions correctly in 90-95% of the cases when there is no loss of consciousness or other signs of concussion.  Thus, even this tool would allow a significant number of players, over the course of a season, to continue to play with a concussion.

 

A more sensible rule would simply be to say any player who suffers a head collision and does not immediately get back up on his own must be removed from the game.  (This would not be necessary, of course, if football adopted the proposed rule change that would allow a temporary substitute while the player is fully evaluated for concussion.)

 

I also reviewed this more scientific article analyzing the Standardized Assessment of Concussion Screening Tool.  The article contains statistical stuff I did not understand because I did not take statistics in college.  However, the article makes it clear that the test is not a pass/fail exam where, if you score a certain score you do not have a concussion.  Instead, the results must be compared to the individual player’s preseason baseline score.  Players who have not suffered a concussion typically score at the same level or slightly better when tested during the season.  On the other hand, players who have suffered a concussion did not improve their score.  A small number of them scored the same but most of them dropped a significant number of points.  The article concludes that persons who suffered concussion usually displayed a decrease of more than four points on the exam immediately after the concussion whereas uninjured players averaged an increase of just under one point.  The suggestion appears to be that any drop from the preseason baseline is highly likely to correlate with the existence of a concussion but the greater the drop the more certain is that conclusion.

 

Obviously, neither doctor at the Arsenal—West Ham game conducted this thorough of an assessment because they, quite simply, did not spend enough time.  Arsenal later claimed, very likely correctly, that Giroud had not suffered a concussion.  West Ham chairman David Gold tweeted that Tomkins was bruised but happy with the result of the game, presumably implying that he had not suffered a concussion.  However, the results do not justify the means.  Given the information that is publicly available about concussions, the effects of concussions, and the process of assessing concussions, there is simply no way that anyone could have known that neither player was concussed when they returned to the field of play.  In other words, as I stated last season, the new concussion protocol is a farce.  It is designed to make the Premier League (and the FA) look like they are behaving responsibly by taking appropriate steps but that is not what is actually happening.  Moreover, after what happened to Dr. Carneiro, it seems difficult to imagine that a team doctor can feel confident in exercising independent medical judgment to keep a player from reentering a game if the player is conscious and wants to play.

 

The Premier League should fix this problem.  The best solution would be to assign independent doctors to make the mandatory concussion assessments.  Any player who has suffered a head injury should be evaluated by the independent doctor some distance away from the bench area to avoid improper influence and to give the doctor enough time to conduct a thorough evaluation.

 

It would also make sense to change the substitution rules so there is time to make a concussion assessment, while another player goes on the field temporarily to replace the injured player.  If the league does not want to tinker that much with football’s traditional three substitution rule, the league should enact a mandatory removal from the game rule for persons with head injuries.  If they are not going to make any of those changes they at least need to do something to protect Dr. Carneiro and other doctors from being punished by their club when their medical judgment does not meet with the approval of the on field manager who, at least in Mourinho’s case, believes it is more important to avoid losing a game than it is to ensure the safety of his best player. 

 

 

Predictions 2015-2016 (Round 2)

Last year I used Mark Lawrenson’s scoring system to compare my picks to his picks and to Paul Merson’s picks.  I will do the same this year.  However, under Lawrenson’s system the correct result is now worth 10 points and picking the exact score is now worth 30 points.  So we will all be doing 10 times better this year than last year, more or less.

This past week I picked four games out of ten correctly for 40 points.  Lawrenson picked two out of ten correctly for 20 points.  His celebrity guest picked also picked two correctly for 20 points.  Merson picked five out of ten correctly with two correct scores for a total of 90 points.

When Lawrenson and Merson make their picks I will link them here and here.

PREDICTIONS

My system’s picking rules can be found here.  Based upon those rules here are my predictions for the next round of games:

Aston Villa-Man U           1-2

Southampton-Everton   2-1

Sunderland-Norwich      2-1

Swansea-Newcastle       2-1

Tottenham-Stoke            2-1

Watford-West Brom       1-1

West Ham-Leicester       2-1

Palace-Arsenal                 1-2

Man City-Chelsea            1-1

Liverpool-Cherries           2-1

July 2015 Reading List

Pursuant to my new policy of sometimes writing about things other than football, I present the first installment of my monthly reading list.  This list will include all books I have started or finished in the prior calendar month.

I have decided to post this information because it will be useful to me to have a handy place to find this information and because I am delusional enough to believe that some people might be interested.  This list will not contain all the reading I have done in the prior month because I have read, without completing, some books that I started reading before July.  I also do a lot of reading on the internet.  I might at some point write up a blog about what I regularly read on the internet.  I also do a vast amount of reading for work.  In July, for example, I read (and in some cases, re-read) a couple of thousand pages of court reporter’s transcripts for several different cases as well as several dozen published cases and a handful of briefs written by other attorneys.

Books Finished

The Game: Inside the Secret World of Major League Baseball's Power Brokers by Jon Pessah

This book provides a detailed history of Major League Baseball from the early 1990s until just recently.  It primarily focuses on three people:  Bud Selig, the Commissioner of Baseball, Don Fehr, the head of the players’ Union, and George Steinbrenner, the owner of the New York Yankees.  It is clear that Pessah has great inside sources.  There is information in the book that had to come directly from Fehr and Selig and probably Steinbrenner as well.

The interesting thing about this book, in a strange way, is how little it had to do with baseball itself. There was almost no discussion of baseball strategy. Instead, the focus was on the financial dealings and political infighting.  Selig was trying to get the owners to stick together to keep down costs.  Fehr was trying to get the players as large a share of the money as possible.  Steinbrenner was trying to win even though he spent so much money that he drove up player salaries for all the other clubs.

My sympathies have always been with the players and nothing in this book changes that.  Certainly Fehr’s behavior appeared more ethical and competent than that of Selig and Steinbrenner.  On the other hand, in a sense, none of it mattered because baseball’s income grew so dramatically over the time period that there was plenty of money for everyone.

I intend to read similar books about other sports especially football and American football.  (See “The Football Business” by David Conn below.)

Mr. Monk and the New Lieutenant by Hy Conrad

This is the umpteenth book in the series of novels based upon the Monk TV show.  These are not novelizations of TV shows but additional stories about the same characters.  The first novels were written while the TV show was still on the air and included additional cases not covered by TV shows.  Subsequently, the books have carried the story of Monk and his friends forward. 

This book is not suitable for anyone who did not enjoy the Monk TV show.  On the other hand, if you liked the Monk TV show you would probably like these books.  I thoroughly enjoyed both. However, you should read the book chronologically by publication date.

The only thing about this book that disappoints me was the announcement by Hy Conrad that this will be his last Monk book.  Conrad was chosen by the prior author to take over the series when that author retired.  Conrad has apparently gotten an exciting new job and no longer has time to write the series.  As a result, this maybe the last of the Monk books.

Working for Bigfoot by Jim Butcher and Vincent Chong

This is a collection of three stories about Butcher’s continuing character, Harry Dresden, a professional wizard working as a private investigator in modern day Chicago. In this book, Dresden takes on three separate jobs for Bigfoot looking after Bigfoot’s half human son. 

If you are a fan of Harry Dresden you will enjoy this book.  If you are not a fan you will probably not enjoy this book.  If you have never heard of Harry Dresden but think you might enjoy a set of fantasy/crime novels set in the modern day you will probably enjoy the Dresden series, but this is not the place to start reading it.

Money and Soccer: A Soccernomics Guide by Stefan Szymanski

The original Soccernomics book is one of the books that most strongly influenced how I think about football.  My thought process has also been greatly affected by the vast number of Sabremetrics books I have read over the years going all the way back to the Bill James Baseball Abstracts from the 1980s.  I found this book by one of the two Soccernomics authors to be interesting and informative.  That being said, I was not entirely impressed by the fact that early in the book, he analogizes the skills involved in buying players and making scouting decisions in football to the decisions of investment managers in the financial markets.  He claims that “there is very little evidence that any fund manager can invest your [money] better than any other fund manager.  The same reasoning applies quite closely to soccer.”

I think this conclusion is wrong.  Instead, I believe that there is strong evidence that most money managers and football managers cannot reliably provide above average results.  Obviously, the typical money manager provides his investors with returns that are slightly below the average for the market as a whole.  This is inevitable because the market is primarily made up of stocks being traded by money managers and, when you syphon off their fees, the average return must be slightly below average.  The same is true of football managers.  The average manager provides averages results, by definition.

What Szymanski ignores are investors such as Warren Buffett and football managers like Alex Ferguson who have demonstrated an ability to significantly outperform over the long haul.  No doubt some people, perhaps even Szymanski, would attribute Buffet’s success not to a greater level of skill, insight, or knowledge but to luck.  After all, if you were to hold a coin tossing contest with everyone in the world competing, after 20 tosses there would still be something under five thousand people with perfect scores.  Yet, of course, these people would have no special coin tossing skills—they are simply the natural result of random chance.  (I am ignoring the possibility of cheating stage magicians.  I assume the contest is properly policed.)  Is there any way to know that someone like Buffett has not just tossed heads multiple years in a row purely through luck? 

I believe that the answer to that question is that yes, we do know that Buffet has invested well through skill, not luck.  Likewise, there is good reason to believe that Sir Alex Ferguson performed as well as he did for so many years because he had actual skills and not because he was lucky year after year. 

This does not mean it is easy to determine in advance, which financial advisors, football scouts, or football managers, have the ability to reliably make good decisions.  In fact, it is obviously very difficult, but it is virtually certain that there is skill involved. 

Aside from this one quibble, I found the book very informative and interesting but it focused almost exclusively on financial aspects of football and not much at all on game play.  If you have read and enjoyed Soccernomics, you will almost certainly enjoy this book.  If you have not read Soccernomics you should read it first and only read this book if you liked Soccernomics.

The Fuller Memorandum by Charles Stross

The Apocalypse Codex by Charles Stross

These books are the third and fourth, respectively, books in Charles Stross’ Laundry series.  The books are set in modern day England but it is a world where the Lovecraftian horrors really exist and careless use of computers and mathematics can summon the monsters that live beyond our world.  The Laundry is the ultra-secret bureaucracy tasked with defending the world, or at least the UK part of it, from the dangers represented both by the horrors and by the people who would worship or summon them.

I started this series a number of years ago and thoroughly enjoyed the first book.  As a result, I bought the other books on my Kindle as they came out, but never got around to reading them.  When I noticed that a new book was coming out this summer and that it would be the fifth unread book in the series, I decided to make a concerted effort to read the books.  I have enjoyed them so far although, based upon the author’s comments on his blog, it is quite clear that I am missing much of his humor and the homages to other authors. Thus, I failed to recognize the homage to Len Deighton even though I had read several books by Deighton.  I recognized the homage to Ian Fleming but then it was pretty obvious.  I did not recognize the homages to Anthony Price and Peter O’Donnell but then I have never read anything by either author.

Once again, these are fantasies set in the modern world and presumably appeal to a limited audience but if you are in that audience these are among the best books around.  You should read the books in chronological order.  There are some shorter stories too.  The proper reading order can be found on the internet.

The End of All Things by John Scalzi

This is the sixth book in John Scalzi’s “Old Man’s War” series.  It, too, is not the place to start reading the series.  You should start with, of all things, “Old Man’s War.”

This is a science fiction novel set in the future universe where humanity is at war with virtually every alien species around.  The off earth human civilization gets its soldiers by recruiting elderly citizens of Earth who agree to join humanity’s defense forces.  In exchange they get rejuvenated into super soldiers.  If they survive long enough, they get to retire to a colony in brand new young, but not super, bodies albeit with the risk that the colony will be conquered or destroyed by aliens.  I enjoyed this book as I did all of the other Scalzi books I have read.

City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett

One of the things I like about fantasy novels in recent years is how they have moved far beyond books that are obviously based on J.R.R. Tolkien.  I particularly enjoy, for example, Brandon Sanderson’s books.  He has the ability to create a new and completely different, but interesting, magic system every time he starts a new series of books.

City of Stairs would fit right in with Sanderson’s work because it too has a new and different magical system and is set in a world that feels new and different.  The book is set many years after the end of a war in which the oppressed people successfully revolted against their oppressors and killed the very real gods they worshiped.  The action takes place in the former capital city of the gods which is a complete mess due to the aftereffects of the gods’ deaths.  The descendent of the military leader responsible for the killing of the gods comes to the city to investigate the murder of her mentor and in the process has interesting adventures and learns lots of stuff.  This is apparently, the first book in the series.  The next book in the series is due out in January.  I enjoyed the book but will probably hold off on reading subsequent books in the series until the series is complete or at least until two or three more of them have been published. Bennett has written four other novels which I will probably read at some point.

Books Started

I tend to start a lot more books than I finish so, assuming I continue with this project, the books started list will usually be longer than books finished list.  Obviously, I will not comment twice on books I started and finished in the same month.  In fact, I will probably not comment on most of the books in the books started list.

Sports Analytics: A Guide for Coaches, Managers, and Other Decision Makers by Benjamin C. Alamar and Dean Oliver

Mr. Monk and the New Lieutenant by Hy Conrad

Working for Bigfoot  by Jim Butcher and Vincent Chong

Money and Soccer: A Soccernomics Guide by Stefan Szymanski

Big Data Baseball: Math, Miracles, and the End of a 20-Year Losing Streak by Travis Sawchik

The Apocalypse Codex by Charles Stross

The Rhesus Chart by Charles Stross

Proxima by Stephen Baxter

I have read a large number of Baxter’s earlier books but after a while, I stopped reading his books because their endings tend to be depressing.  The depressing endings are perfectly reasonable.  If you write science fiction novels that extend into the far future, it is inevitable that things will not always go well for the characters or humanity as a whole.  Certainly, no matter what happens we are all going to die and the universe is going to end either in a big collapse or some form of heat death.  As an atheist who does not believe I am personally immortal I accept the concept that by my own standards my life is not going to have a happy ending and for the most part I am good with that.  However, that does not mean that I always want to read about something that reminds me of that. 

On the other hand, his books are very good in virtually every respect so after taking a five or six year break from reading anything by Baxter, I decided to give one of his new novels a chance.  We shall see if I manage to stick it out.

Thirty-One Nil: On the Road with Football’s Outsiders by James Montague

The Color of Magic (Discworld Book 1) by Terry Pratchett

Despite his fame and popularity, I have never read anything by Terry Pratchett.  However, people whose judgment I trust assured me that I should enjoy his books.  Since he is not writing any more, I decided to start with the first book in his Discworld series and see how it goes.

The Football Business by David Conn

David Conn’s column is one I read regularly.  He generally seems to know what he is talking about and writes about football related subjects that I find interesting. 

Unfortunately, his books are not available on Kindle in the USA which is annoying.  As a result, I have ordered actual hardcopies of his books which, given my current reading habits, makes it less likely I will finish reading them.  Nevertheless, I decided to give this book a try.  It is about the Premier League in the 1990s. 

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling

I have already read this book multiple times, but the e-book version of the entire series was on sale at J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore web site and I couldn’t resist buying them.  Whether I will actually re-read the entire series again is impossible to say.

Which Lie Did I Tell?:  More Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman