By Bulldog Drummond
Doing predictions of scores for England international matches is not exactly what Untold is about – after all we’ve railed against the FA, its ineptitude and its catastrophic spending of taxpayers’ money for ten years. Not to mention the campaign against Fifa which the FA continues to fund and support, exactly as the BBC does. And we pay for the broadcasts too.
But given the lack of Arsenal news that is inevitable at a time like this, I’ve been practising the art (or maybe with a rating of five out of six and lots of statistical facts, we can soon call it a science) of predicting the result and score for forthcoming matches.
For as you may have noticed so far we have predicted three England games (I didn’t think of doing England’s first match so we missed that one).
We’ve predicted three times the score in 90 minutes and twice got it absolutely right. So both the score and the result right for those. Four points out of four. And on the third occasion we tried it, got the result right but the score wrong. One point out of two.
The opening shot in this little series was for the England v Tunisia game wherein we got the score spot on at 2-1. Two points to us.
Then came our disaster. Against Panama we went for a 4-0 England win; the right result (which was hardly difficult to predict) but the wrong score – it was 6-1 as you might recall. So result right, score wrong. One point to us.
So then we had a third go to try and redeem ourselves and got it dead right on full time at 1-1 – and the article did specify 1-1 at full time. Where we went wrong was in predicting that England would win in extra time 2-1. They didn’t of course: it went to penalties. We’re claiming two more points for getting it right at full time.
No one would claim that these are earth shattering predictions, but they are based on a system which does not involve octopuses or other odd creatures living in tanks within restaurants. Indeed it is one that you can use yourself if you have a mind to. Which is where I think the value is. It just takes a little time to gather the data.
What’s more we can honestly claim that no pundits and so-called “experts” were hurt during the making of our predictions. Their egos are undoubtedly still as big as Jupiter.
Here are the three prediction articles so far.
We’ll be doing one for the next round so that you can either
a) laugh or curse at us for being wrong
b) give Untold a gentle congratulation for getting it right again
c) ignore the article because gambling is a mortal sin. Although to be fair we’re actually doing it because we found that our internal predictions for Arsenal matches last season based on the same system that we are using here, worked rather well. We just didn’t publish the predicted scores because the Arsenal away scores became so depressing but the methodology was up there for all to see, and it worked.
The other point I would make in all this is that we’ve made the method of prediction that we use completely open and clear, so you can see all our workings out. Which means you can then apply the approach if you feel gambling is your thing.
But do remember, we don’t give any money back when we go wrong.
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England’s long ball lets scrap it out and win it on set plays seems to be working yet it seems a very dangerous game to play.A crossbar from going out..
Credit to Southgate. He has made the best of what he has got. The team are not drilled & do not do everything together but get a lot of the basics right. The lottery of penalties was won & that makes history. It does not make the team better than its opponent.
With a continuation of luck England might go on to the Final.