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Pitch Inspection – Ashes, World Cup Draw and Chamakh

To bring you the best of the sporting weekend, we dig into our bespoke social media analytics platform, Pitch Social Insight, to provide a more social view of sport’s talking points.

This week Pitch Inspection looks at the much anticipated draw for the World Cup, the Premier League weekend and another abysmal Ashes display from England.

We begin in Brazil on Friday afternoon as England found themselves drawn against Italy, Uruguay and Costa Rica for next year’s World Cup. A tough draw no doubt and with the games being held in the hottest venues, it looks like a tall order for England to progress. This was echoed by a distinct lack of fan optimism throughout social media as the most common word associated with England’s World Cup draw, was ‘death’. Something Greg Dyke clearly agreed…

It wasn’t a great weekend for English optimism in the cricket either. England’s Ashes chances took another turn for the worse with a second humiliation  in the second Test Down Under. It seemed to be the straw that broke the camel’s back for bleary-eyed England fans, as anger peaked at 12.30 on Monday evening after Stuart Broad was dismissed for a wild hook. Any chance of a surprise comeback in the series seems far from fans’ minds, as the most common phrase in Ashes conversation was ‘end 5-0’ .

Not everyone had a bad sporting weekend though. Under-fire Spurs manager AVB was jumping around in celebration after Tottenham beat Sunderland on Saturday. That precious win resulted in an immediate 30.1% jump in positive sentiment towards him through Twitter conversation straight after the game, compared to the hour before kick-off.

In other Premier League action, West Ham’s striker crisis remains after poor finishing from Maiga contributed to their fourth defeat in five games at the hands of Liverpool. Perhaps ironically, former Irons front man ‘Marouane Chamakh’ was mentioned alongside #WHUFC more than any of their current strikers this weekend, after his goal helped Crystal Palace secure a second consecutive win and draw level with the Hammers on points.

Further Reading