Leicester City, Leeds United and Southampton were never meant to go down. FA Cup victors two years ago, only six years since winning the Premier League, Leicester City’s squad was brimming with superstars, including the league’s in-form player – James Maddison, the supposed mercurial wildcard to ignite England’s 2022 World Cup assault. Yet somehow, they…
Category: Blogs
Euro 2020 projection
Forecasting international tournaments is tricky, because it’s difficult to robustly assess the relative strengths of the competing teams. Unlike league football, we only have a small sample of recent international matches to use for analysis – and these are far from perfect, because of the differing strengths of opponents, the mix of competitive and friendly…
2019/2020 Premier League Projection
Here’s my 2019/2020 season Premier League projection I use a simple shot based model to assess teams, it’s explained here – but to summarise, it works out each team’s attacking and defensive strength by applying factors to goals, shots and shots on target, to produce a rating I call “adjusted goals”. Adjusted goals for and…
Assessing the model – the season so far
I use my adjusted goals model to generate probabilities for each Premier League match.The international break gives a chance to assess the model to find out if it’s beating the market. For an initial assessment of my model’s overall performance against the market I’ve used a Brier score method (explained here in a good article by Pinnacle)….
Social Responsibility – Can the Betting Industry improve its image?
The Government’s recent call for evidence for its review of Gaming Machines and Social Responsibility Measures offers the UK betting industry an important opportunity to improve its image. Although the review relates primarily to gaming machines – it also considers the industry as a whole, particularly concerning social responsibility measures to minimise the risk of…
Mick McCarthy’s magic method – 2016/17 Season update
Last November I wrote about the peculiar characteristics of Mick McCarthy’s tactical signature – copied below. In particular, his unusual ability to deliver results with a consistently minuscule pass success rate. So, how’s he faring this season? A quick look at the stats tables reveals that Ipswich are, yet again, bottom of the pass %…
Effective player assessment (and is Wayne Rooney really playing that badly?)
Quickly assessing the ability of individual players isn’t a particularly easy task; firstly because a player’s overall effectiveness isn’t necessarily the sum of a series of data points (goals, assists, passes, tackles etc) and secondly – good quality, manipulable, player-data is difficult to get hold of. There are a few good sources of Team data…
A Magnificent Seven
After a magnificent seven Premier League match weeks, it’s that time when an unscrupulous and powerful organisation disturbs the peace by imposing its will on agitated locals – the horrific International Weekend. The Bounty Hunter This enforced hiatus already prompted one City to enlist the services of an American bounty hunter, to assemble a team…
Man United v Man City detailed modelling preview
Introduction Even early in the season, Saturday’s Manchester derby appears one of those matches that will have a significant bearing on the Premier League title. Added to this it’s the first meeting of the teams’ two new managerial behemoths – so it seems appropriate to give this game added scrutiny from a modelling point of view….
Bad Numbers
Simply placing the word “bad” before a dreary noun seemingly endows an intimidating edge, perfect for a Hollywood movie title; Santa, neighbours, teachers, moms, and even grandpa all get the formulaic comedy treatment. It’s Bad meaning bad-ass in a way that gets past the censor. Three games into the season, if only there was a…
Risk and Reward – managing your betting pot
So you’ve identified a value betting opportunity – how much do you wager? The answer will probably make or break your chances of long-term success. Even if you consistently spot genuine value, the capricious nature of chance dictates that undisciplined staking is the road to ruin. Yet, whilst there are no guarantees in the fickle…
Sam Allardyce – the sensible choice?
My view of Sam Allardyce is heavily influenced by the most exciting match I’ve ever watched. Ipswich’s 5-3 (AET) defeat of Bolton in a play-off semi final in May 2000. A match memorable not only for Jim Magilton’s heroic hat-trick, but also the fact that Bolton managed to concede 3 penalties and receive 2 red…
goal projection 