The measure of superiority

[Luckydestiny]

agreed pagan

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[Chucky McChuckface]

I’d go along with that too, give some of the games, be it top of the table clashes or battle for relegation, a little bit more spice!

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[Hightown hope]

Chuck. ..don’t you think City are 4 times better than Palace? If they played 5 matches I’d fancy City to win at least 4 of them. I know Palace won last year but you are saying Palace would win 3 out of 10. No way!

Must admit I think the difference between goal average and goal difference is minimal. Would be interesting to know if any critical league positions would have been different over the years ie championship, Euro places or relegation?

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[Chucky McChuckface]

No Double HH, I don’t think City are four times better than anybody. Yes, better, and yes, very likely to win 30 plus games this season. But, last season, City didn’t win every single game 4/5/6 nil did they? A fair few teams had a crack at them, they were a little bit fortunate in a few games, and managed to lose more games than Liberoools did.

I just don’t think their is a realistic way of putting a “number” on it…

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[Luckydestiny]

Hightown, you make good points there. You are spot on imo re minimal difference in goal average vs goal difference. In fact If you look at the order of teams based on goal average in my initial post, you will notice that every deviation from the actual league table due to goal average would also be apparent if ranked in order of goal difference. The only reason I prefer goal average is that it is slightly more balanced in that it values defence higher than goal difference, and also because it is factorised rather than a simple sum, it is easier to compare and contrast.

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[Luckydestiny]

Banjo, along the the lines of hightowns post, if city are roughly 4 times more likely to beat palace than vice versa, and you agree with that, then you actually accept that city are roughly speaking 4 times better, because what is the strength of a team other than its ability to win a game?

No one can objectively measure the strength of a team in a stat, you got the wrong end of the stick if you think that is what I am attempting here. All I am saying is that this is a very decent yardstick for roughly measuring the differences in strengths of teams based on how each has performed over 38 games. when the differences are small I dont think it says that much, but when differences get above 0.5 the differences are really telling and decisive in what each team achieves;

Less than 0.5, going down
0.5 to 1, barely surviving to mid table
1 to 1.5, mid table to europa league contention
1.5 to 2, odds on top 4 (in rare earlier prem years possible championship)
2+, Used to mean likely champions but not last year and probably not this year. Will almost certainly need goal average of 4+ to win league this year again.

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[Nike19]

In all honesty, I don’t have the faintest idea in what’s trying to be measured here.

We have 3 Points for a win

We have Goal Difference

I mentioned David-Goliath and Brighton essentially played into Damage Limitation to Manchester City. Others will bring a Bus and the reason for that is that a Team potentially doesn’t want -Minus XYZ on their hands with everything else to deal with if they’re a struggling side.

So if a Team scores 20 goals in one game for example, should they be ‘rewarded’ anymore? I think not as Goal Difference is already in place and 3 points can’t be stretched any further be it 1-0 or 10-0.

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[Luckydestiny]

Nil no one is talking about rewarding teams based on these averages, as I said above “All I am saying is that this is a very decent yardstick for roughly measuring the differences in strengths of teams based on how each has performed over 38 games.”

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[Nike19]

L/D, Ok Mate; I think I’ve tried to work out what you’re trying to emphasise.

It reads a Gulf between a Powerhouse and a Team unfortunately that simply won’t have those level of goals in their locker or purely and simply, a leaky Defence.

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[Luckydestiny]

Broadly yes nil, but the gulf was massive even between pool and chelsea last year as well, and the averages highlight that to. And because the number is a product of division (not subtraction like goal difference) it allows you to easily compare averages of one team next to another and there are no negative numbers to over complicate things either.

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[Pagan]

Lucky, so using your formula a team that wins all of it’s 38 matches 1-0 would have a ranking of ???…..Pagan

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[Luckydestiny]

Pagan I was hoping some one would have the smarts to bring that up mate, should have known would be you

As unlikely as that scenario is, it is possible of course. Now anything divided by zero in mathematical terms is undefined, as you would expect really as while you can divide an object into one or more parts, you can not divide it into zero parts.

So, a team with 38 goals for and 0 against would have to be scored the same as if it scored 38 and conceded 1, ie 38.

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[Pagan]

Lucky, so you have to manipulate a system to make it work (even though it’s highly improbable) which team does the one goal go to, and it would also make that team at least 38 times better than most teams in the league, which is quite frankly equally improbable. Yep I realise the scenario is highly unlikely, but….however it’s an interesting discussion point…..Pagan

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[Luckydestiny]

Ok, very nice Pagan, and worth discussing as you say. Firstly, its about scale, as the average is relative to the opposition in one season, the best team can be the highest reference point on the scale, and surely would be with 38. Again I never said this was a 100% accurate system for measuring relative strength, so making this slight adjustment to define a scale is not actually that big a deal.

Now, as unlikely as it would be for every game to be won 1-0, if it were to happen then the team in question would have proven capable of winning at a 100% rate based on the 38 games passed. Now that means the average opponent has a 0% win rate against them right? Now there are many teams that have 0% win rates against other teams, for example san marino, and they would be as high as 40/1 against to win against a top international team, roughly meaning they are 40 times less likely to win or 40 times weaker. If a team wins every game in the prem league then the odds of them losing to an average prem side would be as steep as the odds of germany losing to say san marino. The point of this is to show that 38 to 1 is not that steep in the context of football, not that the odds are the same in each case.

Of course the reason the counter example has to be so absurd is because the example provided by yourself is admittedly absurd, in reality a team that wins every game 1-0 would be so reliant on luck to actually win all those games that we’ll sooner find a monkey who can read shakespeare than a champion with that record.

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[Luckydestiny]

Simply put pagan, the idea that any team would be as short as 1/38 on to win a prem league game against and average prem leage team is absurd, I agree with you, BUT if you presume the absurd scenario you are describing is a given, is a reality, then the odds of 1/38 are not absurd in themselves, they are simply describing fairly your absurd hypothetical reality.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by Luckydestiny.

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[Pagan]

Lucky, that means all teams have a 0% win rate against them not just the average opponent. We can go round in circles with maths. Let’s face it, what makes footy so good is it’s played on grass not paper, an undefeated team can get relegated on 38 points, that would be harsh but possible on the system we have now….Pagan

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[Luckydestiny]

Pagan, was just trying to illustrate that odds of 40/1 are not unheard of in football when the gulf in teams is vast, not equating the two.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by Luckydestiny.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by Luckydestiny.

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[Luckydestiny]

A team with no wins would deserve relegation in my book pagan.

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[Luckydestiny]

Spot on though Pagan, what makes the game is the unpredictability of it. We can with a good degree of accuracy estimate probabilities, but we will never know for sure what will happen until the teams get on the grass and play the 90 mins.

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[Mikus LFC]

As Guardiola has put it himself, football is a game won by the team who make the fewest mistakes (both in a defensive and offensive sense). That’s why the best teams tend to also be the most drilled, organised and clinical. Obviously you can never remove mistakes completely, but you can promote a culture that tends to minimise them to as low a number as possible. This is where marginal gains come in, something British cycling adopted that helped edged them further to success. And hence you see Klopp bring in a surfer over summer to try to minimise panic under stressful situations.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/unusual-step-jurgen-klopp-taken-18833212

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