Hi, I’m back! And I think I’ll be back-ish for a while now. I know I keep saying I’m gonna keep sending these emails — and then I stop sending these emails. But Twitter is truly a black hole, both for developing any kind of conception of the real world and for writers who want to share their work. So, my new plan is to just send out a very brief email with a link to my latest column on the day it goes up.

Before we get to that, though, there’s more pressing news: Net Gains: Inside the Beautiful Game’s Analytics Revolution is now one full year old. It came out on October 18, 2022. Today is October 18, 2023. Even if you haven’t bought a copy, your support in subscribing to this newsletter helped give me this space and confidence to go write a weird book about a very weird sport. I’m really proud of the book, and you all played a role in helping make that happen.

But also, if you haven’t bought a copy yet … maybe buy a copy now? It’s pretty good! My publisher has links to all your different purchasing options. If you can’t afford a copy and can’t get one from the library for whatever reason, shoot me an email and we’ll figure something out.

And if you enjoyed the book, word of mouth still holds a ton of power. Books sold today count just as much as books sold last year. If you know someone who might like Net Gains, please tell them about it. If you know someone who might hate Net Gains, please tell them about it. Everything helps.

As for the link, I wrote about Gio Reyna yesterday:

As a mostly teenage pro, Reyna has mainly been someone who drives the ball upfield with his feet, combines in tight spaces with teammates, and creates chances for his teammates in and around the box. If you want to take the most optimistic view possible, you can look at last season, squint a little bit, and decide that he has also added goal-scoring to that profile.

I, of course, would caution against that because I'd caution against anything with Reyna, right now. At 17, he was so impressive that he looked pretty likely to become a star. In the years since, he has been so injured that it'd be hard to imagine him not continuing to get injured for the rest of his career. However, neither one negates the other. The potential for Reyna to still be a star exists, as does the potential for him to be one of those guys who never develops because he's never healthy enough to be on the field consistently enough.

Love you all. Talk soon.