- Football: The game of 1000 complaints, but not always the right ones
- Booing players: how can journalists and officials so utterly fail to understand why?
By Bulldog Drummond
By way of an aside from all the heavy stuff of late about the corruption of the PGMO – absolutely vital to comment on it of course, but we also need something a little more light-hearted sometimes – we have tried to find a way of predicting the scores in games for next weekend for the clubs near the top of the league.
We started with the position of each club – but not the position in the league overall. Instead we took the home or away position of each club depending on the game being played next weekend. So in what follows Liverpool are fourth in the league on home form, at home to Everton who are 15th in the league on away form
- Liverpool v Everton = 4th v 15th.
- Manchester City v Brighton and Hove Albion = 5th v 9th
- Chelsea v Arsenal = 13th v 2nd
- Tottenham Hotspur v Fulham = 7th v 10th
The home form against away form in each case suggests a home win for Liverpool, Manchester City and Tottenham, and an away win for Arsenal.
Now this approach is biased because in its almighty wisdom the Premier League fixture chappies have given some clubs five home games and only three away so far, and indeed the reverse for others. Tottenham thus has only played three home games, but won them all. Arsenal have only played three away games but won them all.
So we need to go further and we’ve looked at the average number of goals scored by each team in their respective venue per game. Liverpool have scored nine goals at home in three games, so clearly have an average of three goals at home a game.
Here then are the results predictions based on average scores in the relevant venues…
Liverpool v Everton; an individual score per match of 3-2
Manchester City v Brighton; an individual score per match of 3-3
Chelsea v Arsenal; or an individual score per match of 1-2
Tottenham Hotspur v Fulham; or an individual score per match of 2-1
So you can check my workings, here is the table thus far of home games for the four home clubs in this examination
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | Liverpool | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 2 | 7 | 9 |
| 5 | Manchester City | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 1 | 7 | 9 |
| 7 | Tottenham Hotspur | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 2 | 4 | 9 |
| 13 | Chelsea | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 4 |
And here is the table thus far for the four away clubs involved…
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Arsenal | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 6 | 9 |
| 9 | Brighton and Hove Albion | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 8 | 8 | 0 | 6 |
| 10 | Fulham | 4 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 7 | -3 | 5 |
| 15 | Everton | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 7 | -2 | 4 |
From this we can see that Arsenal for example is scoring on average two goals in each away game while Chelsea in the table before are scoring just one goal on average in each home game. So pulling this simple array of data together we can then see if we need to add in anything else to take account of circumstances….
Liverpool v Everton. 4th at home v 15th away. Average goals 3-2, Add an extra Liverpool goal to reflect their superior results so far; or take away one to reflect Everton’s poorer results, or both and we get either 4-2, or 3-1 or 4-1.
Manchester City v Brighton and Hove Albion. 5th in the league at home v 9th in the league away. Average goals 3-3. Add one for Manchester City to reflect their superior results so far and take one away from Brighton and we get 4-2. But fifth and ninth are positions that are close together so those extra goals might not accrue. So maybe 3-3 is right, except that referees like Manchester City so they might feel obliged to disallow a Brighton goal and it ends 3-2.
Chelsea v Arsenal. 13th in the league at home v 2nd in the league away. Average goals 1-2. Remove one from Chelsea to reflect their problems and add one to Arsenal who are flying away and we get 0-3. There is nothing in Chelsea’s results or Arsenal’s results to suggest anything other than an Arsenal win except the recognition that the referee might have his own ideas about this one.
Tottenham v Fulham. 7th at home v 10th away. On the basis of goals scored it is 2-1, and there’s nothing really to suggest it might be otherwise.
Therefore taking all this into account here’s the top of the league after the next round of games..
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 9 | 7 | 2 | 0 | 19 | 6 | 13 | 23 |
| 2 | Tottenham Hotspur | 9 | 7 | 2 | 0 | 20 | 9 | 11 | 23 |
| 3 | Manchester City | 9 | 7 | 0 | 2 | 20 | 8 | 12 | 21 |
| 4 | Liverpool | 9 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 21 | 10 | 11 | 20 |
Of course I am publishing it now so that if the results are utterly different from this I can just forget about it, and hope you do too. But if any of these are right I shall be crowing for weeks to come. And might even try it again.
Anyway, it passed the time when there is no football of any consequence on for the next few days.
OT
Can anyone explain to me why the BBC, on their website, refers to “Erling Haaland’s Norway”? Surely it would be more appropriate to call them “Martin Odegaard’s Norway” given he’s the captain and Haaland is merely one of ten others in Martin’s team…..
BBC bias rears it’s very ugly head yet again.
Mikey and Tony
The commentator did something similar before the England game the other day. Paraphrasing he said something along the lines of:
“It will be interesting to see how this team does without stars such as Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane”
Nope not a mention of Saka, arguably the most dynamic and influential of the 3 in an England shirt over the last year. I know, I know, very trivial, but never the less WHY? I don’t know, but the least it seems to be to me is a ‘subconscious’ bias.
Anyway back to the theme of the article and I have to say I think it’s brilliant. One things for certain, there is no way on Earth the mythical ‘supercomputer’ goes in to anything like this detail. Great work Tony. Sad to say you just know it wont work out like that because this is football we are talking about! Not only the naturally unpredictable nature of the game itself, but our absolutely hopeless referees and what appears to be a totally corrupt VAR.
I did a rudimentary prediction of the difficulty of our next 5 games the other day using the teams current position in the league as the basis. Using this as a basis the lower the number against the team the harder the run of games should be, in theory at least.
This is the order as predicted with the most difficult at the top, and starting with us it seems Chelsea really do have their backs against the wall:
Chelsea 27
Man City 50
Tottenham 51
Newcastle 55
Liverpool 64
Man Utd 68
Arsenal 72
From my rudimentary method it does appear as if Arsenal do indeed have a favourable set of fixtures on the immediate horizon. Lets hope they put them all away as we would all hope.
Spurs have a trickier set of fixtures coming up, as you would expect given they have had the easiest start of anyone, and that will surely tell us a lot more about their potential title challenge, or otherwise. Time will tell.
Again, what about Chelsea? Well, what can you say? They’ve had the 2nd easiest set of matches so far and still languish in 11th, and things are only going to get harder, with the toughest set of fixtures of all looming on the horizon. Lets hope we can set them off on their run with the kind of result Tony’s system has predicted.
I am not sure you can call the last article a “system” but it helps pass the time during the boredom of an international week, and it is rather fun. Glad you liked it Nitram.
Tony should syndicate the predictions of his supercomputer :
Super Tony’s betting assistance ! Untold Arsenal brings you what no other outlet talks about : a system that actually makes sense !
Add to that a ‘PGMOL weather report to indicate the kind of referee in chage of each game and it is comprehensive…
Please stop predicting Arsenal wiins. Hoped for, yes, but not expected. We should beware of over-confidence and complacency. Also never forget the scope for PGMOL intervention.
The other issue is that Chelsea has just found some semblance of rhythm just before the break and actually won some games, so maybe what JohnL says should be heeded. To be dismissive of any side that just won their first 2 games in succession could be trouble and remember that Chelsea is a London derby, so a lot of emotion and pride goes into the match. Be courageous and take them on then we see what transpires. I trust for a good result too, but just mention that we should not ‘expect’ a win automatically. We have to go and earn it… Plus PGMOL is always there to tilt the table for Pochie as they dif when he was at Spurs.
John L
I understand your reticence. Tempting fate and all that. But as fans, having a bit of fun making predictions, you would hope, would have no effect on how the players approach any match.
You are correct in what you say though. It is essential the players approach every match, be it Sheff Utd, Luton, Liverpool or Chelsea, with the exact same professionalism they approached the Man City match with.
Complacency is what all top teams have to guard against, and that includes Manchester City, who have themselves tripped up more than once against what you would class as perhaps ‘lowly’ opposition. I am getting increasingly confident that Arteta is instilling the mentality needed to avoid too many, if any of these lapses, but only time will tell.
I am far more worried about your second point. Re, The PGMOL. Despite a few media grumbles here and there, I see no evidence of any real outrage at what has been happening, let alone any intent to do anything about it.
They are still going to have a massive say on who wins the Premier League.
An away win at Chelsea , with Kai scoring a hattrick . That would make my day !