@tt9m

Below is a simple diagrammatic representation of the content of 200 tweets sent to Joey Barton during the course of the last half hour. I did no filtering at all apart from excluding retweets, which at a guess account for 20% of traffic being sent to Joey at the minute. What is displayed is the words in direct tweets to ‘@Joey7Barton’ from any single twitter account. Size of word indicates frequency of use..

It’s almost impossible to keep up. Tweets were already disappearing off the screen on my adjacent tweetdeck before i could copy them. He is being tweeted more than once every second. And it is easily 90%+ abusive.

Even from a sample of just 250 people you can see there is no pattern to who is tweeting abuse at Joey. Just watching a tweetdeck column for a minute you see the male/female, old/young, long/short, succinct/waffling, punctuated/mispelt.. there’s nothing to characterise his abusers. I must have seen a club crest from at least half of the club’s in the Premier League attached to users’ icons as I copied and pasted.

There is one thing all those tweeting Joey do share , and that’s their cloak of anonymity, a facelessness, a cowardly veil over their identity allowing them to vent the most despicable of their prejudices at a young man, who’s simple crime is a red card in a football match. It’s pathetic, depressing, and unrelenting..

Imagine being called a disgrace every 40 seconds.. (90 times an hour)

Imagine being called a cunt every 48 seconds.. (75 times an hour)

Imagine being reminded of your ‘murdering’ brother every 80 seconds.. (45 times an hour)

And this isn’t the same person doing it over and over. This isn’t the school bully, or the bastard boss. Every single one is a new, unique person. Hundreds, thousands of them, all directing disgusting abuse straight into your hand or into your lap as you sit at home with your family. And still it continues in the corner of my screen…

@Official_Stu: @Joey7Barton U see how u say tevez started the fight…did the guy ur brother attacked with an axe also start it? #familyofcunts……

@TomButt23: @Joey7Barton Fucking wanker…….

@MrCoreyHughes: @Joey7Barton How are you even captain? All of my respect for you has been drained, you shouldn’t be playing football in England again.

etc…

@ejtaylor8: @Joey7Barton you cunt! Fuck off cunt you’re an absolute cunt irresponsible ugly shit haired dick head cunt fuck off you cunt!

etc…

A red card in a fucking football match…

________________________________________________________________________________

* Wordle is available here: http://www.wordle.net/create - Wordle changes size of words dependent on the frequency of their use in any sample of text that is input.

I) Unprecedented.

Across town on Leazes Terrace, RD recently looked at Papiss Cissé’s place in NUFC scoring history. It’s a fascinating read, and can be found here: http://www.leazesterrace.com/papiss-demba-cisse-the-best-goalscoring-start-in-newcastles-history/.  There’s plenty of numbers and characters from NUFC history that, for my shame I hadn’t even heard of, that stack up against Cissé. One can use numbers and statistics to prove pretty much anything you want in football, the Guardian Football Weekly podcast gets probably half an hour of ‘material’ just doing that every week, but the figures involved with Cissé’s accuracy, finishing, scoring rate etc. don’t need any embellishing to illustrate his quality.

Below I’ve tried to create a concise graphical representation of just where Cissé ‘fits’ both historically and currently in terms of goalscoring rate, initial impact, and in the context of revered goalscorers.

Firstly, I’ve plotted the first 14 league games of Cissé, Shearer, and for contrast, Suarez. A simple calculation of goals/games gives Y axis, games on X axis. I’ve highlighted the line above which more than a goal a game is being scored. Given that a goal every other game is thought to be fairly good, the blue filled area shows the times Cissé is actually operating at over twice that profligacy.

Cissé has only played 12 games, but even assuming he doesn’t score again this season, he will still finish on 0.92857 goals a game - well above Shearer, and putting Suarez into insignificance.. and that’s if he doesn’t score..

What about Shearer’s overall record? Duly heralded as one of the best in the PL, and also a past wearer of Cissé’s shirt? His average at NUFC was just a shade below 0.5 goals a game and graphically the gap between Cissé’s current rate and appears huge. Even the average goals/game plot of Lionel Messi at Barcelona only closes the gap between the two by just over half. Granted these two averages are taken over a much longer scope of time, and inevitably Cissé will have some dips in form and periods without goals, but on the only evidence we have to hand of his performance at NUFC, his goalscoring rate is without precedent. However..

II) Precedented.

In my post earlier today I tried to show the variety in the 13 goals Papiss Cissé has scored since his arrival. As I was doing the visuals, I didn’t hear it myself, but I did read plenty of commentary regarding (more) unfounded nonsense tumbling from the mouth of everyone’s favourite crap gambler, and squeaking rubber-lipped cockney, Paul Merson. Apparently he was criticising Cissé for only scoring spectacular goals..

Pardew however, has been saying the opposite in a lot of interviews. I’m not sure why he is so keen to labour the point that Cissé is a ‘finisher’ and that ‘if he’s given a chance he will score’. It’s the opposite of what Merson is saying. I think they’re both right..

Either position is a reductive way to describe Cissé when you see that for half his goals so far, he’s had absolutely no business scoring from where he is/how he receives the ball, and the other half are great ‘finishers’ goals. To imply he’s a goal machine/poacher in the same vein as past number 9 Andy Cole, or a Van Nistelrooy is to do Papiss a disservice. For me, he’s a much more complete, and and unpredictable striker. Much more in the vein of the chap who’s 206 goals I looked at earlier in the year.

Below I combine Shearer’s 206 goals and Cisse’s 13..

As discussed below, there was no ‘typically Shearer’ goal, and just 12 games into Cissé’s time in that same numbered shirt, there’s clearly no ‘typical’ Cissé goal either. Left foot, right foot, head.. chips, drives, lobs.. straight or curved.. near or far.. pressured or open..

The variety of these goals is what makes the frequency of these goals all the more incredible. Olympic divers or gymnasts hone the same routines, day after day in pursuit of perfection; a ‘correct’ way to execute something. Whether it’s direct quotes from Bruce Lee, or in Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell - the concept of practicing something 10,000 times/hours for it to become instinctive and innate, is often cited as the ‘route’ to being ‘accomplished’ or natural in any activity - and there is evidence to support it.

However, a ‘goal’ cannot be so practiced that it can be replicated at a required or designated time, the game does not offer the participant that degree of control - they are part of a much more fluid dynamic. Spontaneity and intelligence are required - knowing what needs to be done in any situation, in any position, instinctively and instantly. That is the marker or a truly great goalscorer.

Shearer had it, and so far it looks like Papiss Cissé has it too.

prolific [prəˈlɪfɪk]

adj

1. producing fruit, offspring, etc., in abundance

2. producing constant or successful results

3. (often foll by in or of)rich or fruitful

[from Medieval Latin prōlificus, from Latin prōlēs offspring]

prolifically  adv

prolificness , prolificacy n

#1.  [1/1 = 1.00000]

#2. [2/3 = 0.66666]

#3. [3/5 = 0.60000]

#4. [4/6 = 0.66666]

#5. [5/6 = 0.83333]

#6. [6/7 = 0.87514]

#7. [7/7 = 1.00000]

#8. [8/8 = 1.00000]

#9. [9/8 = 1.12500]

#10. [10/9 = 1.11111]

#11. [11/10 = 1.10000]

#12. [12/12 = 1.00000]

#13. [13/12 = 1.08333]