The battle for the title WPL National division Ep 2

Leeds and Sunderland win, Cardiff loose at home to Charlton.  Coventry v Barnet posptponed. Villa draws at Watford.

Sunderland winning by 6-1 actually improves greatly their goal difference advantage. Leeds keeps going but has played one more game than Sunderland, so really need to hope for them to loose at least once.

Charlton is now out of the title race as they can only reach 31 points and Sunderland/Leeds on 32 points. Coventry, Barnet, Villa and Cardiff still in it mathematically but unlikely to win the trophy.

Team GB defensive midfielders

There are not many specialists in that position :

Katie Chapman  is a world class player and has everything you want in that position. She does everything right in term of defensive work and also as a platform to starts the attacks.

Anita Asante is a very gifted player who reads the game well and can also help in the attacking build up as her distribution on short passing is excellent. She also the ability to turn and run under pressure and therefore create space and breach the opposition defensive block.

Fara Williams has not been at her best recently but she the women’s equivalent of Andrea Pirlo. She is technical has a great vision and a phenomenal passing range with both foot, she can switch play on demand.

Jessica Fishlock has recently played in that position for Wales and has been excellent with her energy and fighting spirit.

Abbie Prosser and Rebecca Anderson are two specialist but clearly lack experience and should be developped to be candidates in a couple of seasons.

The promotion battle – WPL Northern

Northern division winner gets promoted to the National division.

The division is wide open and 7 teams are still in with the chance to win it.

1.  Leicester 29 points +19 max pts 38

2. Manchester City 28 pts +31 max pts 43

3. SC Albion 28 pts+14 max pts 34

4. Sheffield 25 pts +10 max pts 37

5. Derby County 24 pts +6 max pts 36

6. Blackburn 22 pts +5 max pts 37

7. Preston 20 pts +5 max pts 35

Manchester City are in the driving seat with a superior goal difference and need basically 10 points out of their last 5 games. The division is so tight that every team in that top 7 can beat and be beaten by the others. So who knows what will happen next. It will be definitely very exciting to see the race unfold.

The FA Women’s Cup

Second Round Proper Sunday 8 January 2012
Third Round Proper Sunday 5 February 2012
Fourth Round Proper Sunday 26 February 2012
Fifth Round Proper Sunday 11 March 2012
Sixth Round Proper Sunday 25 March 2012
Semi Final Sunday 15 April 2012
Final Saturday 26 May 2012

Clubs exempt to the Fifth Round Proper
The FA Women’s Super League

Clubs exempt to the Third Round Proper
The FA Women’s Premier League National Division

Clubs exempt to the Second Round Proper
The FA Women’s Premier League North & South Divisions

Rounds prior to the Third Round Proper will be played on a geographical basis.

 

Due to the weather some First round proper games will be played on Sunday while the majority of the Second round proper games are scheduled on Sunday.

Entering this round are WPL Southern and Northern division teams. They at the 3rd level of England women’s football, top level being the FA WSL and second level FA WPL national division.

There will be a few game between those level 3 teams : Rochdale v Blackburn, Leicester v SC Albion, Gillingham v Colchester, Brighton v Millwall and also some potential upset in Enfield v QPR, Spurs v Denham, Havant and Waterloo v Plymouth, Chichester v West Ham.

The full list can be found on the FA website here :  http://www.thefa.com/TheFACup/FACompetitions/TheFAWomensCup/Fixtures

Let’s hope, the weather won’t be too nasty and games won’t be postponed and create the mess we have seen a few season ago where on the same Sunday games , there was 3 diferent round games played simultaneously.

The relegation battle – WPL National division

2 teams will go down from the following contenders, they are ranked by the maximum potential points they can reach and their actual League position is on the left column.

 

10. Watford 7 points (19 pts maximum)

7. Reading 16 points ( 25 pts maximum)

9. Forest 11 points (29 pts maximum)

3. Charlton 22 ( 31 pts maximum)

5.  Barnet 20 points ( 32 pts maximum)

4. Coventry 21 points ( 33 pts maximum)

6.  Aston Villa 17 points ( 35 pts maximum)

8. Cardiff 15 points ( 42  pts maximum)

 

Watford are  in a very difficult position due to their terrible start of the season.  So it leaves 7 teams in theory fighting for their future in the national division.

In reality, Reading, Forest and Cardiff are in it with maybe Charlton in danger if they don’t take win at least one of their 3 remaining games.

Last year, the relegation battle went to the final day with Millwall going down with 13 points and Barnet, Watford and Blackburn all finishing with 16 points ( from 14 games) and goal difference condeming Blackburn to relegation by a couple of goals.

Forest has currently a -13 goal difference,  Reading -12 and Cardiff +4  with Charlton at +2.

So Watford very likely to go down and it will be a very tight battle between the 3 teams Forest Reading and cardiff IMO.

The battle for the title WPL National division

This is a two horse race between Sunderland and Leeds.

Mathematically, Charlton, Coventry, Barnet, Aston Villa and Cardiff are still in it but it is really unlikely to see the 2 leading team collapse and loose all their remaining games. The two teams are tied on 29 points but Sunderland has a game in hand and a better goal difference +21 to be compared to +18.  The remaining games for those two teams are :

08/01  Leeds v Reading 3 points needed for Leeds against a team that lost 9 of their 15 games this season, only Watford has a worse defeat record.

08/01 Sunderland v Forrest It should be an easy win with Forrest second from bottom of the table and fighting to avoid relegation.

22/01 Sunderland v Cardiff A title decider for Cardiff if they are in a chance to win it, as they more or les  need to win every game to do so.

19/02 Aston Villa v Sunderland A potential banana skin for Sunderland here with Villa being a young side packed with quality players.  That game is so far away that suspension and injuries are a parameter not to be excluded.

26/02 Cardiff v Sunderland Difficult to know how good Cardiff are at the moment, their average is higher than Chartlon that sits 3rd on the table. Another game far away in time.

04/03 Reading v Leeds return game from the one in early January.

18/03 Charlton v Sunderland  Another difficult trip for Sunderland at Charlton.

Leeds v Cardiff home and away is not currently scheduled.

So the title race is gonna go all the way to March and probably April depending on how far the two teams will go in the FA and the Premier League cup.

Holders Sunderland are welcoming Jordan Nobbs for a few games on loan and it will be a certain boost for their midfield. While Leeds have currently 2 WSL players on their book Holbrook and Bright due to special dispensation from the FA.

The promotion battle – WPL Southern

Southern division winner gets promoted to the National division.

There are 3 teams still in it. Colchester United, Porstmouth and West Ham.

Colchester United lead the division with 35 points and a +16 goal difference but has already played the whole schedule. West Ham is second with 31 points a _15 goal difference and 2 games to play. Porstmouth has 30 points a goal difference extremely favorable of +22 and 3 games to play.  Porstmouth is the virtual leader and 7 points out of 9 would clinch promotion due to the goal difference.

Here are the upcoming games.

Gillingham – Portsmouth 22/01 A tough away games at Gills, Porstmouth will certainly need to come back with at least a  point from that trip.
QPR – West Ham 22/01  A must win for West-Ham against a QPR side fighting to avoid relegation.

Portsmouth – Plymouth  26/02 A home win is needed against Plymouth also fighting to avoid relegation

West Ham  -Brighton 04/03 West Ham schedule finished on the day and need also a win against a side that was in the promotion race until recently.

QPR – Portsmouth 18/03 Final verdict on that day maybe with QPR that might be safe by that time of the season.

Even if Porsmouth is in the driving seat, I can foresee West Ham gaining promotion this season, leaving Pompey missing promotion again.

Team GB center backs

Casey  Stoney : Experience, reading of the game, intelligence. She has everyhting that you would want from a senior and seasoned international player.

Gilly Flaherty : She would complement perflectly Stoney, excellent passer, can tackle as well and has vast experience at top level for 3 seasons including Champions League

Kylie Davies :  A very solid and reliable center-back for Chelsea and Wales. She knows what she has to do and does it very well.

Laura Bassett : Another solid and experienced defender, versatile as well.

Sophie Bradley : Very much a defender-defender, solid but could better on the ball.

Rachel Corsie : The Scotland defender is a young up and coming defender.

Others center-back worth a mention are Fern Whelan but she seems to have limitation on ball passing and Faye White who has not been performing well for a few years now.

 

The Cardiff City Ladies conumdrum (part 2)

The Cardiff  team has started to catch up with other teams in term of game played and has now 9 games to complete the season while others have 3,4, 5 or 6 to do so. Mathematically they could still catch up Sunderland by winning all their remaining games. So let’s have a look on the very busy schedule.  As far as I see, there are still 4 games to be scheduled so far. it looks like a giant mess to me and not a really fair competition.

08/01  Cardiff v Charlton

15/01  Cardiff v Leeds postponed + international friendlies

22/01  Sunderland v Cardiff , title decider a must win.

29/01 No Game ?

05/02 FA Cup

12/02 international friendlies

19/02 No Game ?

26/02 FA Cup or Cardiff v Sunderland, another title decider !

04/03 Algrave Cup

11/03  FA Cup

18/03 Cardiff v Forrest , could be a relegation race decider

25/03 FA Cup

01/04 Euro qualifiers or Barnet v Cardiff

08/04  Cardiff v Coventry

15/04 FA Cup

22/04 open date 7

29/04 open date 8

06/05 open date 9

13/05 open date 10

20/05 open date 11

27/05 open date 12

http://full-time.thefa.com/FixturePublicGrid.do?divisionseason=6874262&league=872938

 

Team GB players Goalkeepers

With the good news that Hope Powell has selected Welsh players in her pre-squad for her 2012 Olympics. Let’s have a look at the potential candidates starting with the goalkeepers.

Carly Telford  : a fantastic athlethe, clearly the best English goalkeeper, the only question mark is her fitness with her recurrents shoulder problem.

Karen Bardsley : England’s current number 1 tall solid strong in the air.

Siobhan Chamberlain : Best goalkeeper in England by a mile in 2011, deserve to be at the Olympics.

So those are the 3 main candidates for 2 places in the Olympic squad.  If one of those is injured, there are some obvious 4th and 5th choice

Rebecca Spencer : Not the tallest player but Japan won the World Cup with a small goalkeeper. Technically very complete and has bags on international experience.

Marie Hourihan : A solid season  wtih blues and a regular with the U23 side.

There are other talented goalkeepers in England like Danielle Hill, Sarah Quantrill, Helen Alderson, Mary Earps, Kay Hawke or Rachel Brown but I don’t think they are at the same level as the 5 players above. Same thing for the Welsh and Scottish goalkeepers except the one that is now in the Scottish  6 nations rugby squad 😉

The top 4 goalies make my shortlist.