Friday Night Links

No new books or blogs this week, so here's your April Fools Day edition of my favorite links.

• Sometimes it's not always about the money a player can earn, but more about location, location, location.  Or so says Soccer By The Numbers.
• After what some might see as a depressing series of posts on how pay-as-you-play disproportionately impacts the EPL table, it's nice to see a club like Wolves' steadily building their club without the debt.  Read Swiss Ramble's review of their finances to see how it's done.
• TwoHundredPercent asks whether or not the idea of a "Team Great Britain" should be entertained for the 2012 London Olympics.
• Perhaps a "Team Great Britain" would make the English fall back in love with their soccer team.  TwoFootedTackle chronicles a compelling narrative as to why the nation has fallen out of love with the Three Lions.
• The Seattle Sounders will be hosting Manchester United in a friendly this summer.  In a stroke of marketing genius, the Sounders are making a three ticket package available for early purchase that includes tickets to ManU and two MLS matches.  This is allowing them to open up capacity at Qwest Field for all three matches, and would certainly lead to a single game attendance record for a regular season MLS match.
• Our national team did reasonably well against Argentina last weekend.  But how's this for the opportunity of a lifetime - Red Bull academy players got to train with the Argentines, including Messi.
• StatDNA is plugging along in their breakdown of the Brazilian and English league data that they're making available via their soccer analytics competition.  Not content to let the competitors do all the work, they're publishing some very good individual player analysis including a series of posts on quantifying shot quality.
• Soccermetrics makes a compelling case that a CONCACAF/CONMEBOL merger would provide the best distribution in team quality of any confederation in the world.
• 7AM Kickoff has the statistics to make the argument that Arsenal may better off developing Szczesny as their primary goal keeper rather than blow huge sums of transfer money on Reina.  Meanwhile, Arsenal's ability to finish in the top four but not win titles may come down to their defense being unable to finish in the Top 2.
• After a gangbuster start to the season's attendance figures, MLS settled back down to earth in week 2 according to Overlapping Run.
• Finally, file this one under "lies, damn lies, and statistics."  OnFooty shows why asseritions that MLS is ready to pass the NHL to become the "4th most popular league in North America" are wrong.

We're now into one of the two times of year I love - wall-to-wall domestic and EPL soccer.  My Gunners are limping into these final games with an outside, albeit flickering, shot at a title.  I'm not confident about this weekend's match, and not just because of the opposition.  We've drawn Phil Dowd as our ref.  Readers know how much I love him.  My Sounders head to California to play San Jose, hoping to improve their form that has delivered one point out of nine to start the season.  It may be looking a bit long for my two teams right now, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Enjoy the resumption of league soccer in Europe, and I'll see you on Monday!