Hold The Back Page: 20/11/2010

It's a big weekend for...

Roy hodgson

Yesterday's Independent revealed the statistical revolution about to descend on Anfield, how the baseball-rooted Metrics system developed by Billy Beane is something the newly arrived director of football strategy, Damien Comolli, deeply believes in. Liverpool's struggling manager, Roy Hodgson, probably doesn't need an Excel spreadsheet to work out what's needed in this evening's visit of West Ham: three points. A home defeat, apart from giving his opposite number Avram Grant a fillip, is not so unthinkable, what with Steven Gerrard out injured, and might well result in Hodgson finding that his own number's up, and a small but significant bump in the jobless statistics.

We applaud you wholeheartedly...

Phil 'the partially sighted' Taylor

You spend every available hour practising, eat the right food, stay off the drink, do all you can to be the best you can possibly be. OK, if you're a thrower of darts you spend a lot of time practising. Spare a thought for Wes Newton, the 33-year-old from Fleetwood who has dreamt of becoming the world's best since childhood, but was beaten by a man this week who, with the scores at 1-1, decided to take off his spectacles and play the rest of the match with somewhat less than 20/20 vision. Taylor, the real world's best, triumphed 5-3. It could be a long way back from there for Newton.

And the stories you may have missed

The FA Women's Super League

"We undertook an extensive process over the past six months that has led to The FA WSL name and accompanying logo unveiled today," said Julian Eccles of the FA this week. That statement translates as, "We've spent a long and fruitless six months turning up stones for a sponsor for women's football." Back to Eccles: "The main aim was to find something the key target audience – nine to 15-year-old girls – identified with." The result, thanks to branding agency Corporate Edge? The FA Women's Super League (just how bad were the names that were rejected?), and a revolutionary idea that girls prefer purple to pink.