By Bulldog Drummond
As far as I know, Untold Arsenal is the only site that regularly challenges the notion of supercomputers being used to predict football match results. But now, after us taunting them for years on the subject, the Sun seems to have responded to these challenges by telling us which “supercomputer” it is using and giving us the machine’s full prediction.
It turns out it isn’t exactly a supercomputer (it really is just a fairly nifty computer), but yes, some people do treat it as one, so let us see how the “supercomputer” predicts the table in relation to what it is now. We’ll compare how it does after the results tomorrow.
| Current position | Team | Predicted position | Change in Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Liverpool | 1 | 0 |
| 2 | Barcelona | 2 | 0 |
| 3 | Arsenal | 3 | 0 |
| 4 | Inter Milan | 4 | 0 |
| 5 | Atlético | 6 | -1 |
| 6 | AC Milan | 5 | +1 |
| 7 | Atalanta | 10 | -3 |
| 8 | Leverkusen | 7 | +1 |
| 9 | Aston Villa | 8 | +1 |
| 10 | Monaco | 15 | -5 |
| 11 | Feyenoord | 14 | -3 |
| 12 | Lille | 11 | +1 |
| 13 | Brest | 17 | -4 |
| 14 | Dortmund | 13 | +1 |
| 15 | Bayern | 9 | +6 |
| 16 | Real Madrid | 12 | +4 |
| 17 | Juventus | 16 | +1 |
| 18 | Celtic | 18 | 0 |
| 19 | PSV | 21 | -2 |
| 20 | Club Brugge | 22 | -2 |
| 21 | Benfica | 23 | -2 |
| 22 | PSG | 19 | +3 |
| 23 | Sporting | 20 | +3 |
| 24 | Stuttgart | 24 | 0 |
| 25 | Man City | 25 | 0 |
| 26 | D Zagreb | 26 | 0 |
| 27 | Shakhtar | 27 | 0 |
| 28 | Bologna | 28 | 0 |
| 29 | Sparta Prague | 31 | -2 |
| 30 | RB Leipzig | 29 | +1 |
| 31 | Girona | 33 | -2 |
| 32 | Red Star Belgrade | 30 | +2 |
| 33 | Sturm Graz | 34 | -1 |
| 34 | Red Bull Salzburg | 32 | +2 |
| 35 | Slovan Bratislava | 35 | 0 |
| 36 | Young Boys | 36 | 0 |
So 12 of the clubs (ie 33%) don’t actually change position. Nothing very exciting there.
Nine clubs move by one place and seven by two places. Pull that lot together and you have fractionally under 78% moving either not at all or at most just a couple of places. And you may wonder, “Did we really need a supercomputer to tell us that?
The big movers are Atalanta and Feyenoord down three while PSG and Sporting each go up three. Brest go down four and Real Madrid go up four. The big losers are Monaco who go down five and the biggest winner is Bayern who go up six.
Now this is a much easier set of figures to consider than we normally get, so we can come back tomorrow and see how accurate the so-called Supercomputer was. Which of course will also give us an insight into how much note we should take of this (what may be called) quasi-super-computer.
Anyway from our point of view Arsenal stay where they are, in third, on this showing, and so happily miss out on the next round, and move on to the final run of knock-out games with the other big boys. In fact, it is also worth noting that in this set of predictions, the top four clubs (including of course Arsenal) don’t move at all, and as for the next two in the table, one goes up one place and one goes down one place. So not really much happening is there?
I am not really sure that we need a so-called but not-really supercomputer to tell us that. But we shall see tonight, and yes if they have got it all right, we shall happily congratulate them. A bit.
But now what about the Arsenal team? On the injury front, there is nothing new as we have Jesus, Saka, Tomiyasu and White out although White is getting closer to a return.
The Standard taunts us by suggesting that Arsenal might drop Raya, but then when push comes to a bit more pushing they drop that and give us
Raya;
Partey, Kiwior, Calafiori, Tierney;
Odegaard, Rice, Merino;
Nwaneri, Trossard, Sterling.
Sporting News give us
Raya
Timber, Calafiori, Gabriel, Lewis-Skelly
Nwaneri, Jorginho, Odegaard
Martinelli, Havertz, Trossard.
There’s also a wonderful piece from Sporting News about the match which says, “This Champions League clash takes place at the Estadi Montilivi in Girona, Spain and kicks off on Wednesday, January 29 at 9:00 p.m. local time. Here’s how that time translates to UK time:
| Date | Kickoff time | |
| GMT | Wed, Jan. 29 | 8:00 p.m. |
OK? Glad we got that! Could have been confusing otherwise.
Raya
Timber, Saliba, Kiwior, Lewis-Skelly
Jorginho Merino Nwaneri
Stirling Havertz Trossard
So it is more than likely that the line-up will be somewhere among that lot. Meanwhile, I am not sure you will find this piece of news elsewhere in today’s media but in the last 16 Premier League and Champions League matches Arsenal have won 11, drawn five and lost none and scored 38 goals. And indeed one can fully understand why the media don’t report this; it simply doesn’t fit their narrative.
But it is true, so we run it.
| Date | Game | Res | Score |
| 10 Nov 2024 | Chelsea v Arsenal | D | 1-1 |
| 23 Nov 2024 | Arsenal v Nottingham Forest | W | 3-0 |
| 26 Nov 2024 | Sporting Clube Portugal v Arsenal | W | 1-5 |
| 30 Nov 2024 | West Ham United v Arsenal | W | 2-5 |
| 04 Dec 2024 | Arsenal v Manchester United | W | 2-0 |
| 08 Dec 2024 | Fulham v Arsenal | D | 1-1 |
| 11 Dec 2024 | Arsenal v AS Monaco | W | 3-0 |
| 14 Dec 2024 | Arsenal v Everton | D | 0-0 |
| 21 Dec 2024 | Crystal Palace v Arsenal | W | 1-5 |
| 27 Dec 2024 | Arsenal v Ipswich Town | W | 1-0 |
| 01 Jan 2025 | Brentford v Arsenal | W | 1-3 |
| 04 Jan 2025 | Brighton and Hove Albion v Arsenal | D | 1-1 |
| 15 Jan 2025 | Arsenal v Tottenham Hotspur | W | 2-1 |
| 18 Jan 2025 | Arsenal v Aston Villa | D | 2-2 |
| 22 Jan 2025 | Arsenal v Dinamo Zagreb | W | 3-0 |
| 25 Jan 2025 | Wolverhampton Wanderers v Arsenal | W | 0-1 |
More tomorrow.
A good win in the end which keeps us in 3rd place. In the round of the last 16 we will either go to Holland or to Italy as we would play PSV or Feyenoord or AC Milan or Juventus as they finished in place 13,14 and 19,20.
Nice to see a ref doing it in an unbiased way and giving us two correct penalties…. wow…
Walter
Exactly.
As I said yesterday. Referees in Europe are not perfect: “…but as far as Arsenal are concerned I never go into a European night fearing the worst from the referee.”
And so it proved. Not perfect, but never for one moment did I think he was biased in any way shape or form.
Just to qualify, no not perfect but still very good.
Nitram and Walter, I felt that the booking for Sterling was a mistake, but I agree that the referee was not biased at all and provided more evidence of the superiority of European match officials over the PGMOL.
A quick scan of the table above shows (I think) that the “supercomputer” got 22 of its predictions wrong. Not so “super” after all lol. Particularly if you think at least one team could not have finished in a different position to the one they were in before kick off. In fairness though the computer was a lot more successful with its predictions than the “journalists” are with their transfer predictions 🙂
Yet again, the media prove themselves to be exactly the charlatans that few of us on here ever doubted!
Before the match, a TNT interviewer threw a statement at Arteta along the lines of “We ran 10,000 simulations before the match”. Mikel seemed to lose interest after that.
The day before the Wolves match, I posted examples of Oliver’s anti-Arsenal bias on BlueSky. When the red card happened, the social media interactions went through the roof. I have never had so much interaction on social media before. The BlueSky post was copied over to X/Twitter and even made it onto Reddit.
I had a look at similar stats for Anthony Taylor yesterday, and although they were not as bad as Oliver’s, they were not pleasant to read.
What would the supercomputer say if it was suggested that the EPL move to bring in foreign refs to their games from hereon ? Would it be an improvement ? Would the betting sites agree ?
I for one am looking forward to REFEXIT !