By Tony Attwood
In recent articles we have looked at how the alleged “supercomputers” have predicted how the 2022/23 season will work out, and looked at how the teams around Arsenal at the end of last season were doing, and compared this with Arsenal. Details of the most recent article is given above and the earlier ones are shown at the end of this piece
As we have noted a substantial number of commentators, are trying to get us to believe that some football pundit has managed to nick time on one of the most expensive pieces of equipment in the country, and has used it not to aid the defence of the country or understand the very fundamentals of the universe but for predicting football results!
And we have wondered why he or she has bothered, and this for two reasons. First not only is it quite impossible for a football journalist to buy time on a supercomputer (most of these computers either trying to track the weather, decode the workings of black holes or predict Russia’s next move in the Ukraine) and second because the answers they got were so utterly boring they could only have been invented by… a football journalist.
For if we were to believe them, all these mythical super-computers keep coming up with the prediction that the top four next season will be the same as the top four this season. Which is something that has never happened before in the entire history of English professional football and is such a simplistic solution to the problem of next season’s results, it could only have been invented by a football journalist.
Yet there is a very good reason to believe that the notion that the top four this coming season will be different from last season. And this is the fact that since 1889 (which according to Untold’s office calculator was 133 years ago) the top four has never ever been the same two seasons running.
Indeed as we have pointed out, even the last 35 games of last season (that is the last 92% of last season) gave us a league table that is different at the top, from the league table for the whole of last season).
| P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Manchester City | 35 | 27 | 6 | 2 | 89 | 25 | 64 | 87 |
| 2 | Liverpool | 35 | 26 | 7 | 2 | 88 | 25 | 63 | 85 |
| 3 | Arsenal | 35 | 22 | 3 | 10 | 61 | 39 | 22 | 69 |
| 4 | Chelsea | 35 | 19 | 10 | 6 | 70 | 32 | 38 | 67 |
| 5 | Tottenham Hots | 35 | 19 | 5 | 11 | 66 | 40 | 26 | 62 |
| 6 | Wolverhampton Wands | 35 | 15 | 6 | 14 | 38 | 40 | -2 | 51 |
| 7 | Manchester United | 35 | 14 | 9 | 12 | 50 | 55 | -5 | 51 |
| 8 | West Ham United | 35 | 14 | 7 | 14 | 50 | 46 | 4 | 49 |
| 9 | Newcastle United | 35 | 13 | 9 | 13 | 40 | 54 | -14 | 48 |
| 10 | Crystal Palace | 35 | 11 | 13 | 11 | 48 | 41 | 7 | 46 |
Now of course it can be argued that some clubs will improve and some will decline, and this is what the geeks with their fantasy supercomputers seem not to want to assume.
And I think there is rather an important point here. All the people who are predicting Arsenal to sink and the top four to stay the same, are suggesting one thing will change (Arsenal will decline) but for the top four nothing will change – and saying that without any real explanation.
So what we are doing here is putting forward a view based on some statistics and of course an assumption. And yes I admit it is an assumption, but an admitted assumption is preferable surely to hiding behind the impossible notion that some journalist or other managed to buy time on the computer system that is in all probability controlling the missiles that are running defence of this country.
Our assumption is that the first three matches of the season, were an aberration, and Arsenal has now gone way past that. And indeed is going further, because at the time of those games, the club was in the process of still putting its new defence together.
Now what is very strange is that at the same time these writers are telling us about all the transfers that are happening. Or about to happen. And yet they say that is to no avail at all. Whoever the clubs buy, it will make not a blind bit of difference to where they end up in the league, which is really weird.
So why is that? We know that not only will the players available to each club be changing, but also there will be serious injuries, luck will play a part, referees will make mistakes, there may be another COVID outbreak… (Incidentally, there are already reports that clubs are simply refusing to buy players who are vaccine refusers).
And incidentally, if a Supercomputer ever were to be used on football predictions it would take into account the effect of the new outbreak that is sweeping England (one in 25 people and rising).
So why despite all the transfers, the lessons of history, the potential effects of COVID on the unvaccinated, will nothing change? That seems so weird and so incredibly unlikely that it is unimaginable, except to people like football journalists who have no imagination.
Could it be that after all this time, the media is finally saying, “football is fixed”?
- Arsenal’s opposition in the coming season: West Ham
- Arsenal’s opposition in the coming season: Chelsea and the notion of progress.
- Arsenal’s opposition in 2022/3: Tottenham Hotspur
- Arsenal’s opposition in the coming season: Leicester City
- Arsenal’s opposition in the coming season: Manchester United
Showing a PL table for last 35 matches is great BUT it’s as useful as points in a calendar year. Yes, it’s great for all Gooners to rejoice in a 3rd place & UCL finish if dismissing the 1st 3 matches but the 38 match, season long PL table is the ONLY one that counts.
As a THFC supporter, I could look at the PL table solely based on those 3 omitted matches & lo & behold, THFC are top (yes ok, save the ‘no trophies’ comments) or how about the PL table based on when Antonio Conte took over, the last 28 matches & would you look at that, THFC are 3rd & 4 points clear of Arse-nal.
But I won’t go singing & dancing up & down the N17 High Road, I take no real notice of pointless, selectively used stats which when read ‘blind,’ only serve to dumb the already dumbed-down even more!