In appreciation of the cat who made it onto the pitch at Anfield this evening I felt that it was about time I drew up another "Best XI". This time it's for players with "cat" in their name.

Cat XI

Between the sticks is Antalyaspor's 35 year old custodian Omer Catkic.

The modern football fan has access to statistics that would have seemed unthinkable only five or six years ago. Sites such as the marvellous whoscored.com offer the casual fan a site from which they can drag figures to prove or disprove their assertions on their side. Are we missing a lot of chances?

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a small article selecting the best eleven in Europe who wear the number thirteen shirt. I thought I'd look into this subject further and I believe that if you take the top five leagues in Europe (Spain, Italy, Germany, France and England) that the highest number you can make an eleven from (you need a goalkeeper remember) is 33.

After similar pieces on League Two, League One and the Championship it seemed apt to do one on the Premier League. The following tables show the Premier League table had the season stretched from 1st January 2011 to 31st December 2011. The first table displays the seventeen teams who spent the entirety of 2011 in the Premier League.

The following tables show the number of points earned by teams during 2011.

It's very tight at the top of the Championship table for 2011. Reading have the best points average yet it's Middlesbrough who picked up more points during the year. Both these sides are closely followed by Cardiff City who finish the year having picked up 82 points, an identical tally to Reading.

As there are three teams promoted and four teams relegated from League One, seventeen sides spent the entirety of 2011 in the third tier. Of these teams it was League One play-off finalists Huddersfield Town that ended the year with the best record. It was only everyone's favourite franchise MK Dons that won the same number of games during 2011.

There are eighteen teams that spent the whole of 2011 in League Two (four teams are promoted each season, and two are relegated). Congratulations to Shrewsbury Town, who despite missing out in the League Two playoffs last May ended the year as the League Two side that had gained the most points (an impressive 86) during 2011.

Disturbingly high squad numbers have been part of top level football for a few years now and squad numbers as high as 99 are seen around Europe. The Premier League isn't immune from such abominations with numbers in the 40s regularly sighted in stadiums throughout the UK. With this in mind I thought I'd take a look at the biggest culprits from Europe's "Top Five Leagues": Serie A, La Liga, Premier League, Ligue 1 and the Bundesliga.

I wrote about substitutions a few weeks ago with regards to substitutions last season in the Premier League. I've decided to expand on these slightly by taking a look at the state of the game when the substitutions are actually made. The following data is taken from Premier League fixtures from the 2010/2011 season.

This marvellous poster was given away free with Soccer Monthly some time during the mid to late 70s. It contains information on 158 teams throughout the British Isles, from Torquay United to Sligo Rovers. Click to enlarge.

There are some terrific kits in there. Bonus points to Orient and Wales for their lovely Admiral numbers and to Cardiff City, Carlisle United and Torquay United.

A night with Malky Mackay. 1927 Club Q&A Session at Hammersmith Working Men's Club, West London.

It's taken me some time to transcribe much of this Q&A. I think I've represented what was said pretty accurately, however if there are any errors please free to point them out to me.

Date: Friday 18th November 2011, 7:30pm

In attendance:

• Cardiff City manager Malky Mackay (MM)
• Cardiff City director Alan Whiteley (AW)
• The Cardiff City media team Barrie et.

Football has a habit of re-writing history. If it isn't trotting out statistics with the prefix "since the Premier League began", then it's defining a relatively arbitrary cut-off point of "post-war". Despite these handy devices it has not stopped Manchester United supporters claiming superiority over Liverpool with their 19 titles (first title won in 1908), one ahead of Liverpool's 18 (first one won in 1921).

The substitute has long been a tactical tool rather than a compassionate one (for injuries) so I thought I'd take a look at how different clubs in the Premier League used their substitutes last season. I suspect that data for this season would probably look very similar to this.

Number of substitutes used in each minute during 2010/2011 Premier League season

First Half

As you'd expect very few subtitutions are made during the first half.

Last weekend Liverpool faced off against Manchester United in the Premier League. The game ended in a 1-1 draw. Steven Gerrard scoring for Liverpool with Hernandez equalising for Manchester United late on.

I thought it may be amusing to replace the names of players with numbered dishes from the "Food 4 U" Chinese take away in Thornton Heath, Surrey.

The Europa League is often viewed as the poor cousin of the much more high profile Champions League. This contents of this video propose a new theme song for the competition in order to help it reach its rightful place amongst the world's great footballing competitions.

I would be very interested if anyone else has any ideas for theme songs for the Europa League (or any other football competition for that matter).

Following on from the piece on nationalities in European competition I thought I'd take a look at the squad numbers used during the opening week of European football (Europa League and Champions League). There were forty games across Europe last week so it gives us a decent data set to look at which numbers are popular in Europe, and which are not so popular.

The Champions League and Europa League group stages began this week so therefore I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the different nationalities that featured in the matches this week. In the sixteen Champions League matches fifty-three different nationalities started matches, in the twenty-fourEuropa League fixtures seventy-three different nationalities started games.

I've finally bitten the bullet and bought a domain name for this blog.

All articles will now appear at http://spiritofmirko.com

I didn't really want to keep using the "Mirko Bolesan" title as it's a bit odd having a blog named simply after a footballer, however good they once were.

I'm currently in the process of moving over all of the old articles that I think are worth keeping, and at some point I'll shut this site down.

I think we can all agree football is broken. Whilst millions of pounds are being spent on players like Jordan Henderson and Andy Carroll, famous clubs like Wrexham are struggling to survive. My ten point plan will not save football in its entirety, but it will help make it a darn sight more enjoyable.

I think we can all agree football is broken. Whilst millions of pounds are being spent on players like Jordan Henderson and Andy Carroll, famous clubs like Wrexham are struggling to survive. My ten point plan will not save football in its entirety, but it will help make it a darn sight more enjoyable.

Heat maps have been an integral part of football analysis for a few seasons, but until now we did not have sufficient technology to track the positioning of managers within their technical areas. This has now all changed, and from this season Mirko Bolesan will be providing heat maps for managers.

Heat maps have been an integral part of football analysis for a few seasons, but until now we did not have sufficient technology to track the positioning of managers within their technical areas. This has now all changed, and from this season Mirko Bolesan will be providing heat maps for managers.

The following table displays the average ages of the players who started Premier League games last season. Wigan Athletic fielded the youngest players whilst, Fulham had the eldest side.

Average age of players who started games for each club 2010/2011 season

These figures can easily be skewed by a side playing a few youngsters in one match, so perhaps aren't totally indicative of which teams truly fielded the youngest sides.

As a follow up to my previous blogpost related to the different nationalities represented in the Premier League I thought it might be interesting to slice the data slightly differently. This time I'm going to look at player nationality by club. The data in this article relates to the nationality of players who started matches in the Premier League last season (2010/2011).

As a follow up to my previous blogpost related to the different nationalities represented in the Premier League I thought it might be interesting to slice the data slightly differently. This time I'm going to look at player nationality by club. The data in this article relates to the nationality of players who started matches in the Premier League last season (2010/2011).

The proliferation of foreign players in the Premier League is an often covered subject on radio phone-ins and blogs like this one. I thought rather than offering the same glib observations on foreign players in the 'English game' I'd offer some facts on the number of non-English (and non-British) players who currently ply their trade in the Premier League today (or to be more specific last season).

The proliferation of foreign players in the Premier League is an often covered subject on radio phone-ins and blogs like this one. I thought rather than offering the same glib observations on foreign players in the 'English game' I'd offer some facts on the number of non-English (and non-British) players who currently ply their trade in the Premier League today (or to be more specific last season).

African club football gets very little coverage in Europe so I thought it would be interesting to delve into this little known world for another blogpost.

On Saturday the East African club cup begins in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Twelve clubs from ten African nations compete for the coveted trophy.

As you may be aware I have spent the last week or so creating word maps out of 2010/2011 match reports for all of the clubs in the Premier League. I thought I'd use this data in order to create a team of the season. The rules are simple, the players with the most mentions during the 2010/2011 season in BBC match reports are included in the first XI.

The word cloud below is generated from all of the BBC's match reports from the 2010/2011 season for Wolverhampton Wanderers. The cloud offers a visual review of the past season, illustrating the players who were important – or at least were mentioned in the match reports most times! Click on the image to see a larger, easier to read version:

Premier League 2010/2011 Season Review: Wolves

World Cloud (description from wikipedia): A tag cloud (word cloud, or weighted list in visual design) is a visual representation for text data, typically used to depict keyword metadata (tags) on websites, or to visualize free form text.

The word cloud below is generated from all of the BBC's match reports from the 2010/2011 season for Wigan Athletic. The cloud offers a visual review of the past season, illustrating the players who were important – or at least were mentioned in the match reports most times! Click on the image to see a larger, easier to read version:

Premier League 2010/2011 Season Review: Wigan Athletic

World Cloud (description from wikipedia): A tag cloud (word cloud, or weighted list in visual design) is a visual representation for text data, typically used to depict keyword metadata (tags) on websites, or to visualize free form text.

The word cloud below is generated from all of the BBC's match reports from the 2010/2011 season for West Ham United. The cloud offers a visual review of the past season, illustrating the players who were important – or at least were mentioned in the match reports most times! Click on the image to see a larger, easier to read version:

Premier League 2010/2011 Season Review: West Ham United

World Cloud (description from wikipedia): A tag cloud (word cloud, or weighted list in visual design) is a visual representation for text data, typically used to depict keyword metadata (tags) on websites, or to visualize free form text.

The word cloud below is generated from all of the BBC's match reports from the 2010/2011 season for West Brom. The cloud offers a visual review of the past season, illustrating the players who were important – or at least were mentioned in the match reports most times! Click on the image to see a larger, easier to read version:

Premier League 2010/2011 Season Review: West Bromwich Albion

World Cloud (description from wikipedia): A tag cloud (word cloud, or weighted list in visual design) is a visual representation for text data, typically used to depict keyword metadata (tags) on websites, or to visualize free form text.

The word cloud below is generated from all of the BBC's match reports from the 2010/2011 season for Tottenham Hotspur. The cloud offers a visual review of the past season, illustrating the players who were important – or at least were mentioned in the match reports most times! Click on the image to see a larger, easier to read version:

Premier League 2010/2011 Season Review: Tottenham Hotspur

World Cloud (description from wikipedia): A tag cloud (word cloud, or weighted list in visual design) is a visual representation for text data, typically used to depict keyword metadata (tags) on websites, or to visualize free form text.

The word cloud below is generated from all of the BBC's match reports from the 2010/2011 season for Sunderland. The cloud offers a visual review of the past season, illustrating the players who were important – or at least were mentioned in the match reports most times! Click on the image to see a larger, easier to read version:

Premier League 2010/2011 Season Review: Sunderland

World Cloud (description from wikipedia): A tag cloud (word cloud, or weighted list in visual design) is a visual representation for text data, typically used to depict keyword metadata (tags) on websites, or to visualize free form text.

The word cloud below is generated from all of the BBC's match reports from the 2010/2011 season for Stoke City. The cloud offers a visual review of the past season, illustrating the players who were important – or at least were mentioned in the match reports most times! Click on the image to see a larger, easier to read version:

Premier League 2010/2011 Season Review: Stoke City

World Cloud (description from wikipedia): A tag cloud (word cloud, or weighted list in visual design) is a visual representation for text data, typically used to depict keyword metadata (tags) on websites, or to visualize free form text.

The word cloud below is generated from all of the BBC's match reports from the 2010/2011 season for Newcastle United. The cloud offers a visual review of the past season, illustrating the players who were important – or at least were mentioned in the match reports most times! Click on the image to see a larger, easier to read version:

Premier League 2010/2011: Newcastle United

World Cloud (description from wikipedia): A tag cloud (word cloud, or weighted list in visual design) is a visual representation for text data, typically used to depict keyword metadata (tags) on websites, or to visualize free form text.

The word cloud below is generated from all of the BBC's match reports from the 2010/2011 season for Manchester United. The cloud offers a visual review of the past season, illustrating the players who were important – or at least were mentioned in the match reports most times! Click on the image to see a larger, easier to read version:

Premier League 2010/2011 Season Review: Manchester United

World Cloud (description from wikipedia): A tag cloud (word cloud, or weighted list in visual design) is a visual representation for text data, typically used to depict keyword metadata (tags) on websites, or to visualize free form text.

The word cloud below is generated from all of the BBC's match reports from the 2010/2011 season for Liverpool. The cloud offers a visual review of the past season, illustrating the players who were important – or at least were mentioned in the match reports most times! Click on the image to see a larger, easier to read version:

Premier League Season Review 2010/2011: Manchester City

World Cloud (description from wikipedia): A tag cloud (word cloud, or weighted list in visual design) is a visual representation for text data, typically used to depict keyword metadata (tags) on websites, or to visualize free form text.

The word cloud below is generated from all of the BBC's match reports from the 2010/2011 season for Liverpool. The cloud offers a visual review of the past season, illustrating the players who were important – or at least were mentioned in the match reports most times! Click on the image to see a larger, easier to read version:

Premier League Season Review 2010/2011: Liverpool

World Cloud (description from wikipedia): A tag cloud (word cloud, or weighted list in visual design) is a visual representation for text data, typically used to depict keyword metadata (tags) on websites, or to visualize free form text.