Squad strength This chart segments squads into strength of the club teams they play for. I’ve used Euro Club index to determine the best teams. The top 6 ranked teams (Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Atletico Madrid, Paris Saint Germain and Juventus) are categorised as “elite” teams, the remaining top 25 teams as “good”, and any other club in the…
Euro 2016 – full projection
After creating attack and defence ratings for the 24 Euro 2016 teams, based on their underlying squad strength (as described here), I can run simulations to look at the likelihood of different tournament outcomes, including the winner. My projection simulates the score of each match for 5000 different possible tournament outcomes – including potential extra time…
Euro 2016 – Assessing international teams
International football is difficult to analyse. Unlike domestic league football, where vast quantities of data exist to assess team and player performance in a variety of conditions, negligible relevant data is available for international football. It is, by its nature infrequent – so tournament line-ups may bear little resemblance to those of previous matches –…
2016/17 Premier League projection
Hull City’s play-off final victory completes next season’s Premier League line-up. This means that I can run my first projection for the new season. I use my adjusted goals measure to rank teams (which is based on goals and shots). It’s solely retrospective, based on last seasons numbers – so, for example, makes no amendment for…
Reflections on a strange season
Now that the Premier League’s unscheduled foray into added time has finished, I’ve set out my reflections after 6 months of attempting to model outcomes (with varying degrees of success). The big picture First thing to note; it appears to have been a strange season. Leicester’s much written about (my attempt’s here) 5000-1 success is…
Were Leicester’s chances really 5000/1?
Leicester City’s season-start title odds of 5000 to 1 have been liberally used by the media to illustrate the magnitude of their success. But do these represent the genuine likelihood of their achievement? Certainly, the very fact that bookies were prepared to offer this price shows that they rated the likelihood as 5000 to 1…
The shifting demographic order of English Premier League clubs
Three big clubs occupy the Premier League’s relegation places. Villa are down, Newcastle almost there, with only Sunderland still clinging to slim survival chances. What causes these footballing behemoths to struggle when so many seemingly smaller clubs thrive in the modern football world? These clubs really are big. Using most measures of bigness – they…
Euro 2016 – Who are England’s most likely last 16 opponents?
The decision to increase the European Championship participants from 16 to an inefficient 24 brings us a convoluted system to pair teams for the first knock-out round. This excerpt from UEFA’s tournament rules (kind of) explains how 24 is transformed to 16 by pairing 4 third placed teams (with the best record) against group winners….
Assessing the model 20/03/2016
I’ve started posting Premier League result probabilities and projected goals for each round of matches, using my adjusted goals rating system. As explained, the ratings are long-term, averaged over this season and last season so can be a good starting point for assessing value. But, because they’re long-term, there is much that they don’t take…
The West Ham Conundrum – updated
In January I queried why West Ham United are valued so poorly by bookie’s odds. A month and a half later it’s still happening. Each week I calculate probabilities for Premier League match outcomes using a model based on goals, shots and shots on target – and compare these against bookies odds. They’re normally pretty…
League probability projections – why so volatile?
This season’s Premier League title race is captivating. Four teams, led by unfancied Leicester City, all have a reasonable chance of winning. How do we know this? Firstly, betting markets give us a good guide to the likely champions. But there are also now many models that calculate the probability of season-end outcomes by simulating thousands…
Championship bang for buck update
At the start of January I described how expected return on player investment has never been higher for Championship clubs, due to the inflated Premier League mega-millions bestowed for promotion. And that the group of clubs challenging for promotion below Middlesbrough had most to gain. Now the window’s closed it’s worth reviewing how things have…
goal projection 