WYCOMBE WOES PROVE A POINT

THE worst team across the top five divisions this season are Wycombe Wanderers. Played five, lost five, in the Championship. Another triumph for the points per game calculation. Wycombe, you may recall, were the grateful beneficiaries of PPG last season. Catapulted from eighth into the play-offs by virtue of a process that awarded them a predicted 1.73 points per game, including a visit to champions Coventry, who were handed 1.97 points, making it a 3.7 point fixture. Wycombe progressed through the play-offs, a glorified cup competition with all the attendant unpredictability. Now is the reality. A mid-table League One club were always likely to struggle if plucked and deposited into the Championship. And that is all PPG became: a random calculation, producing random outcomes, whose consequences are now being felt.

When Pep Guardiola calculated why Manchester City trailed Liverpool last season, he attributed a third of the difference to the absence of one player: Aymeric Laporte. not just because he was City’s finest defender, but for how he started attacks from the back. Guardiola rated Laporte as City’s best passer from defence, and their quickest thinker. he wasn’t saying City would have won the league, but the 23 games Laporte (right) missed were significant in falling so far behind. Virgil van Dijk is that and more to Liverpool. not just the best defender, but the player who gets the moves going and whose confidence permeates through the team. Joe Gomez had an excellent game in his place on Saturday and Joel Matip would get in the majority of Premier League line-ups, including those with designs on the title, but Liverpool are terribly light in central defence now. Fabinho can play there, and did a great job at Chelsea earlier this season, but he only fills the role in an emergency; never as plan A. As good as their recruitment has been, Van Dijk’s injury was a giant blow for Liverpool.