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Stats: Messi’s first league goal, Zlatan breaks new ground at 40 and Muller first to 600

Source: ESPN

Barcelona won in club legend Xavi Hernandez’s first match as manager (1-0 against Espanyol), while Manchester United were dismantled 4-1 at Watford in what would become club legend Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s last game in charge. Antonio Conte won his first game at Tottenham against Leeds United, while Manchester City, Liverpool, and Chelsea strolled to wins against Everton, Arsenal, and Leicester City respectively. Over in Spain, a draw for Sevilla (against Alaves) meant Real Madrid are now two clear atop LaLiga after a comfortable win at Granada. In Germany, Augsburg shocked Bayern Munich 2-1, combine that with a 2-1 win for Borussia Dortmund vs. Stuttgart and Bayern’s lead is down to one.

Here are the best stats from a dramatic weekend of football.

Premier League

5

Dan James is the fifth player to score for both Leeds United and Manchester United in the Premier League, after Rio Ferdinand, Alan Smith, Eric Cantona and Lee Sharpe.

6

Spurs may have won, but before they turned up in the second half, they made history. They became the first team (since such data has been collected, from 2003-04) to go six straight halves of play in the competition without managing a single shot on target (2nd half vs. West Ham, both halves vs. Manchester Utd & Everton, 1st half vs. Leeds United).

20

Sadio Mane’s assist for Mohamed Salah is the 20th time the pair have combined for a Premier League goal – only Steve McManaman and Robbie Fowler (24) have combined for more for Liverpool in the competition.

21

Through the first 12 games of the PL season, Manchester United have conceded 21 goals; they’ve never previously conceded more at this stage of a season in the competition. They also have won just 17 points, their second-worst start to a PL campaign, ahead of only 2019-20 when they had 16 points under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

30

Saturday’s 8 PL games saw 30 goals in total, the most on a single day in the competition with a maximum of eight matches since September 26th, 2015 (35).

32

Manchester United have suffered their biggest league defeat against a promoted side since a 5-1 loss against Manchester City at Maine in September, 1989. 32 years ago.

101

Liverpool have now scored 101 goals against Arsenal in PL history. Only against Newcastle (105) have they scored more.

300

Raheem Sterling became the fourth youngest player (26 years and 348 days) to make his 300th PL appearance after James Milner, Gareth Barry and Wayne Rooney.

LaLiga

10

Real Madrid’s Vinícius Junior has become the first LaLiga player born in (or after) the year 2000 to score at least 10 goals in all competitions in a single season.

10+

Only 2 players in LaLiga this season have 10+ goal contributions… Karim Benzema and Vinícius Junior. Those two have been sensational this season.

12

This is a rather unusual one. Xavi Hernandez faced 12 shots in his first LaLiga match as a coach, the highest by a manager on his LaLiga debut for Barcelona since Frank Rijkaard against Athletic Bilbao in August 2002 (17).

54

The last time Real Madrid blew a 2-goal lead in LaLiga (and lost) was Aug 31, 2014 vs. Real Sociedad. They had a blown 2-goal lead May 19, 2018 at Villarreal which ended in a 2-2 draw. Since then, they’ve won 54 straight, by far the longest active streak in LaLiga (2nd is Sevilla, with 24 straight).

Bundesliga

7

This is the first time in their history that Borussia Dortmund have won their first seven home games of a Bundesliga season.

11

Robert Lewandowski ties the record for most away Bundesliga goals vs. a single opponent (11). Gerd Muller (who else) scored 11 road Bundesliga goals vs. Schalke 04.

13

Augsburg’s 13-game winless streak in all competitions vs. Bayern has been snapped. This is their first win over their fellow Bavarians since May 2015.

600

Thomas Muller is the first outfield player to make 600 competitive appearances for Bayern Munich. Goalkeepers Sepp Maier and Oliver Kahn are the only other players to reach the milestone with the Bavarian club.

Serie A

0

Napoli’s loss to Inter today means there are no more unbeaten teams in the top 5 leagues this season. No one’s going invincible this season.

40

Zlatan Ibrahimovic has become the oldest player ever to have scored 2+ goals in a Serie A game and the first 40-year-old player to have scored 2+ goals in a match in the big-5 European leagues in the 2000s (40 years, 48 days).

103

Dries Mertens has now scored more Serie A goals for Napoli (103) than any other player in the club’s history.

Messi Ronaldo watch

Cristiano Ronaldo had an assist, but couldn’t materially affect the course of Manchester United’s game against Watford. Lionel Messi, meanwhile, scored his first league goal for PSG in their hard fought win against Nantes.

17

Lionel Messi has become the 17th player from Argentina to find the net with PSG in Ligue 1. It also ends a personal drought of 19 shots without scoring in the top-flight.

(Stats courtesy ESPN’s Stats & Information Group)

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The competition of simulation in motorsport development

Salman Safdar, subject matter expert at Ansible Motion

The automotive and motorsport industries have long been driven by the relentless pursuit of performance, efficiency and innovation and as these sectors evolve, so do the tools and technologies that support them.

Among these, Driver-in-the-Loop (DIL) simulation stands out as a transformative force, offering unprecedented opportunities for development, testing and optimisation. From motorsport through to broader automotive OEM applications, the integration of advanced simulation tools is undoubtedly accelerating progress and redefining the boundaries of what’s possible.

At the heart of all effective simulation is the interaction between humans and technology. High-fidelity simulators provide drivers with realistic feedback that closely matches what they would experience in the real world – an approach that’s vital for optimising performance and gaining that all-important competitive edge.

The ability to simulate multiple racing cars and series underscores the versatility of modern simulators. By allowing extensive and varied test programs to be conducted in a controlled environment, teams can make quick setup changes, explore various chassis configurations, and understand track conditions without the expense and time constraints of on-track testing. This not only strengthens the collaboration between drivers and engineers but also enhances the overall development process.

Only recently, topflight motorsport teams Penske Autosport and Honda Racing Corporation USA (HRC) announced their respective investments in DIL simulation – with HRC upgrading its simulator in time for this year’s Indianapolis 500.

Capable of replicating the current Dallara-Honda Indy car, Acura ARX-06 hybrid GTP machine and a variety of Honda and Acura concept racing vehicles, Ben Schmitt, head of the Vehicle Performance Group at HRC US explains in the firm’s official press release: “The new simulator is superior in every way to our original DIL simulator. The vehicle physics models have continued to evolve from the original simulator, including the tyre models, and our data acquisition capabilities are exponentially higher than previously. The new motion platform, cockpit and vision systems create a vehicle dynamics experience for the drivers that is our closest recreation yet of real-world conditions.”

Realism is also key for those competing in the FIA ABB Formula E Championship – providing a data-rich environment where drivers can learn track layouts, optimise energy management strategies, and experiment with different race scenarios.

When it comes to gaining a competitive edge – on and off the track – engineers and drivers are looking for tools they can trust, and DIL offers the ability to replay and analyse multiple scenarios repeatedly, via a truly immersive experience that mirrors real-world conditions. However, engineers also need the capability to connect with a vehicle’s onboard powertrain ECUs via Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) and Software-in-the-Loop (SIL) systems – integration which facilitates the validation of critical components such as torque maps and electro-mechanical driver controls, ensuring that both the hardware and software are finely tuned before hitting the track.

One of the standout features of contemporary simulation environments is their ability to integrate with other advanced tools such as engineering-grade visual simulation environments – crucial for teams that need to adapt quickly to changing conditions. For example, there’s no need to wait for a real rainstorm because weather variations can be conjured up with the touch of a button; multiple tyres can be driven in rapid succession; a virtual racetrack can even be set up to loop one particularly critical track segment continuously.

While motorsport often leads in adopting cutting-edge technologies, the benefits of simulation extend well beyond the circuit. Automotive manufacturers are increasingly leveraging simulation to enhance vehicle development processes, reduce costs, shorten development cycles and reduce the environmental impacts inherent in the traditional build-and-test approach.

As the automotive and motorsport industries continue to evolve, the role of simulation will only become more critical thanks to its ability to provide a controlled, repeatable, and data-rich testing environment that is flexible as well as sustainable.

Whether it’s mastering the intricacies of a demanding street circuit or refining the dynamics of a new road car, simulation offers unparalleled opportunities to innovate and excel. As we look to the future, the seamless integration of these tools will undoubtedly expedite progress and set new standards for excellence in both motorsport and automotive development.

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Sports

Intelligent Automation and Football: How Lessons from the Pitch can Enhance Automation Initiatives

Neil Murphy, CSO, ABBYY 

Football is the most watched sport in the world, with an international passion for the game resulting in some unexpected intersections of culture and commerce. Ted Lasso follows an American football coach’s journey to leading an English Premier League team. Although Ted’s endearing quips and southern drawl might have been mere comedic caricature, the trope of westerners meddling in European football is no longer just fiction.

American actors Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds bought English football club Wrexham AFC in November of 2020 for £2m, funding the club’s return to the English Football League for the first time since their relegation over a decade prior. More recently in May of 2023, professional American athletes J.J. and Kealia Watt became minority owners of Burnley Football Club in England.

Now, ABBYY is partnering with Arsenal Women’s Football Club, elevating the trend of western investment from just wealthy individuals to notable technology enterprises.

As enthusiasm for football continues to grow worldwide, these intersections become inevitable, but they’re much more than household celebrity names or mere sponsorship deals. On the surface, using advanced AI within automation solutions might seem like a concept far removed from the sport of football – but this technology has much more in common with what occurs on the pitch than you might think.

Strategy and intent – moving with a purpose

Football is all about control. Without a proper strategy in mind, the ball could easily be taken by a defender, or fall into the hands of the goalkeeper, turning the tide of the game against you in an instant.

Similarly, implementing automation without a clear objective or understanding of your organisation’s current processes will not always yield desirable results. Without proper visibility, you could unintentionally make a bottleneck more visible to the customer, dampening their experience without any gains in efficiency. This isn’t uncommon – 70% of automation attempts fail due to unclear goals.

Understanding your scoring strategy from end to end is crucial to maintain control over your processes, which requires deep familiarity with both your team dynamics and individual traits. Process intelligence, or the practice of driving process improvement through use of advanced data analytics,enables this visibility by combining process mining and task mining into a unified, AI-enhanced platform. While task mining examines individuals’ workflows like clicks and keystrokes, process mining scrutinises the larger holistic process. Much like understanding individual football players’ mechanical skill such as footwork, positioning, and ball control as well as how each player interacts with one another is key to devising an informed strategy, combining insights from task and process mining yields the most contextually accurate model of how a process or workflow can be improved.

Proving it on the pitch

Football fans’ expectations for their respective clubs can reach astronomical heights in the off season, often fueled by the acquisition of up-and-coming talent. While new promises of success can be exciting, not every team will perform as well as we expect them to.

The intelligent automation market experiences a similar trend. The constant upcropping of startup vendors trying to capitalise on the hype train of AI can be overwhelming, with each of them boasting unprecedented potential for efficiency gains without ever having experienced the real pressures of operating a modern enterprise. On the other hand, massive tech-giants will try to leverage their brand recognition and resources to win you over, despite their unfamiliarity and overall detachment from your specific business needs.

It’s unadvisable to jump the gun and sign the rising star that promises to transform your operations without any gametime experience, just as it’s unwise to shell out cash to the household name with an illustrious legacy that’s becoming weak in the knees and slow to keep up. When selecting a provider of intelligent automation solutions, you need to prioritise both innovation and experience, and most importantly, an understanding of and commitment to your organisation’s needs. Haphazardly filling your tech stack with every new tool that promises to yield the best value from AI will create a cacophony of platforms, inhibiting efficiency – take care in selecting your solutions and choose those that have proven their worth in the context of the modern enterprise.

Improving outcomes and predictability through training

There’s no denying that “practice makes perfect.” Dribbling, passing, corner-kicks; even professional players practice the basics every day to stay sharp and dependable on the pitch.

Intelligent document processing (IDP), or the application of AI and machine learningto understand, process, and extract insights from business-critical documents like a human, works similarly. By processing volumes of documents, it hones its accuracy in extracting key information over time. This improves its straight-through processing rate, or the rate at which it can process a document with 100% accuracy without any manual intervention. Leveraging IDP allows professionals to spend less time on repetitive, monotonous manual data entry, empowering them to focus on more fulfilling or customer-facing tasks.

But what if there are more advanced or specific skills you’d like to cultivate within your team, such as bicycle kicks or intricate passing maneuvers? The answer is simple – drill those specific skills, giving your team even more versatility.

With IDP, you can augment your platform with pre-trained document skills that are developed to handle a multitude of specific documents that might be crucial to the full scope of your business. From hyper-specific government forms in Japan that vary per district to US tax forms with seemingly countless variables, IDP can be trained to extract actionable data with staggering accuracy.

Weaving a strong fabric

In sport and business, teamwork is everything. Just as Ted Lasso worked tirelessly to fix Richmond’s tumultuous team culture to bring out the best in his players and weave a strong fabric from their strengths, intelligent automation solutions help drive progress forward at a unified pace.

Adopting a unified suite of automation technology ensures that no facet of your operations will fall behind. It’s impossible to fully benefit from the visibility and insight enabled by process intelligence if you don’t have the technological capability to improve cumbersome document-centric processes. On the other hand, it’s difficult and unadvisable to leverage IDP haphazardly without evaluating where it is most needed.

Bringing the victory home

Intelligent automation and the sport of football couldn’t be any more different on paper, but those with a keen eye for strategy, teamwork, and culture will see the value in applying these to innovation. Implementing intelligent automation doesn’t have to be dauntingly ambiguous – with the right coach at the helm and the right players on the metaphorical pitch, you can assure victory for your organisation.

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Lifestyle

Exploring the psychological impacts of a two-month, solo Antarctic expedition

Next month, British explorer Sam Cox will spend two months, completely alone, trekking across one of the Earth’s last true wildernesses – Antarctica.

While travelling 2,000km across snow and ice requires a huge amount of physical endurance, the mental impacts of this journey are perhaps, even more significant.

Alexandra de Carvalho from the Austrian Space Forum will be working closely with Sam pre- and post-expedition, to understand the psychological impacts of the journey.

 “The first thing to consider is the sheer isolation of this challenge. Two months with extremely minimal human contact is not something to be underestimated,” she said.

“Our work is mainly concerned with space, and people usually think that space is more distant than Antarctica, but actually it’s not true. It’s much easier sometimes to come back from space, to come back to Earth if there’s an emergency.

“More people have gone into space than trekked to the South Pole.

“To come back to the mainland from Antarctica can be extremely difficult, which exacerbates that feeling of distance. You cannot just be evacuated if you want.”

The only link Sam will have to the outside world is a beacon plotting his incremental location in case of emergency, and very limited communications via satphone.

Alexandra added: “Separated from family and friends, this kind of study will help to really understand more about the psychology of people.

“In fact, this is the main reason we were so keen to work with Sam. He’s in a very special situation, being alone with nobody to share his feelings with, nobody to share his thoughts with.

“It’s rare that scientists can study subjects that are completely isolated for this amount of time, let alone in conditions as extreme as those in Antarctica.

“We really want to get an idea how a person emotionally regulates in this kind of scenario.”

Sam will be taking daily voice recordings of the experiences and emotions he’s feeling during this period of extreme isolation.

Alexandra said: “For this research to be useful, it’s really important that we hear frequent and specific audio diary entries from Sam.

“It’s common for people to look back on an experience like this and say – it was stressful, but it was nice – which is not precise enough for us.

“We’re using audio equipment to make this as accessible for Sam as possible – writing could be a challenge in extremely low temperatures.

“In similar studies, we’ve asked participants to keep written diaries as the fear of being overheard by other participants might stunt their honestly, but that’s not going to be an issue with Sam, since he’ll be completely alone.”

There will be other psychological challenges for Sam, as well as isolation.

Sam said: “An important thing to consider is the 24-hour daylight, and how my body will adapt to that.

“Because I’m travelling during Antarctica’s summer months, the sun will never actually set, meaning my circadian rhythm is likely to get pretty confused.

“A lack of sleep could be detrimental to my physical and mental well-being, so it’s something I’m having to prepare for.”

Alexandra said: “Sensory deprivation could also be a challenge. It’s an interesting environment, but it’s very monotonous, so it depends on the person and how they perceive it.

“For example, Sam might find it interesting to have the colour green. While other people would be fascinated by the sky and the sea, he might be like wow – I really miss the forest and more complex environments.”

Alexandra continued: “This research is not only helping us understand the emotional impact of extreme environments, but it’s helping us understand the type of person that’s suitable for working in these remote places.

“We want to know how people feel in these environments, which emotions are more dominant? How do these people deal with that?

“When people are stationed in distant locations, either from Earth or in polar expeditions, they have to be really trained to deal with their feelings autonomously.

“But we can only do that by understanding when happens within a person and what they’re likely to feel so we can prepare them beforehand. You can prepare, but you cannot run away from your emotions.”

Sam leaves the UK for Antarctica on 24th October, with plans to complete the expedition by mid-January.

He has been supported by Team Forces and Resilient Nutrition to embark on this epic adventure.

For more information, follow Sam on www.frozendagger.co.uk

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