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A Bunch of Fives So when all is said and done, we analyse where, when and the quantity of times a ball has landed in the back of a net, past and present, or failed to, and somehow deduce why it was destined to be so. That’s the unenviable task of our resident expert Professor Statto, who brings us the benefit of his incisive intellect allied to half a century of football scholarship. And not least, his wry sense of humour.  He leaves the predictions to others, but he’ll provide you with the ammunition to sustain your challenge through your Score Five campaign. He’ll keep you up-to-date with what’s happening in the competition. He’ll lead you along byways exploring weird and wonderful facets of the game past and present, but always in his own inimitable style. Some comedian once suggested that “98% of all statistics are made up”, but the Prof. cordially invites you all to verify any information he presents – if only because he does most of the calculations in his head. Professor Statto and his amazing statistics. ====================================== Visit the Prof's 2008/09 season archives. Previous analysis Underdogs 6 - 0 Favourites After a turbulent weekend, you could be forgiven checking the calendar to see if the date was the first of April. While all the journalists were talking about bizarre results, I was glad to see the billionaires suffering the disappointment that we fans of smaller teams experience regularly. I like to see the underdogs do well, so I’m happy every time that Wigan/Wolves/Burnley/Stoke etc. get a good result against the Big Money teams. In Liverpool, they are celebrating a special anniversary. It’s 50 years since one of the legends of the game began to change football history. Bill Shankly became Liverpool manager in December 1959 and within a few years, he changed a bunch of provincial also-rans into league champions and regular European challengers – without needing vast financial backing. Good scouting, fanatical motivation and hard training were the tools that Shanks used to build the Liverpool machine that dominated English and European football until the end of the ’80s. We should all celebrate him. Maynor Figueroa, Wigan full back: a precise and imaginative strike from 60 meters at Stoke. Goal of the season, eh? I’m sorry to say he will probably be playing at a richer club next season. Weekly highlights I think we need to face facts and call it weekly lowlights, folks. Numerous incident of note, shocks aplenty, but the upshot of it all is not many points. No, I’m evading the grim reality: it was a record low points on several fronts. The bare bones first of all: the average score was a basic 11.22 points, and 11.74 with Banker included. The mathematicians among you will know that means there can’t have been many correct Bankers. No sirree, but we’ll come to that later. Correct results average was 22.57%, and correct Bankers…..are you ready for this? 10.3%. That’s right, only one player in 10 forecast their Banker correctly. Perfect 5s were, in contrast, a healthy 9.14%. Round 16 has thus set three unwelcome records *this season’s lowest average score, beating Round 2’s 12.82 – when there were only six games! *the lowest correct results percentage, beating Round 10’s 25.20%. - the lowest ever percentage (and number) of correct Bankers, eclipsing Round 2, when Man. Utd lost at Burnley to the consternation of 50% of you. Even then, 39.8% got their Banker right. There is a fourth record: less players made their predictions than in any other Round of this season. Maybe the stay-aways knew something strange was brewing. The Banker statistics were so extreme, I’m showing them in full below:
Note that the figure in bold for each game is the correct result. Count the zeroes and you’ll see there were six games without a single correct prediction, including those two biggies, Chelsea and Man. Utd, and both of them were at home…. Chelsea – seven consecutive home wins, hadn’t conceded a league goal since the opening day of the season. Man. Utd – hadn’t lost to the Villa at OT since 1983….aye caramba! Of the other four games, two had a solitary success and the third had two players with reason to celebrate, which left only the Birmingham/West Ham game with a respectable number of bonus fives. In case you’re wondering “Why did 49 players – 14.5% of the total – select that game as their Banker?” the answer, I suspect, is that most of them didn’t. Every week, no matter which teams are playing in the first match listed on the Predictions page, it is always over-represented with Bankers. I’m sure it’s because some players forget about the little Banker box over on the right of their screens. No matter; this week, it came in very handy for 31 of you. Among the multitude who missed out were Bryal51 and Cockney Blue Jew, so there are now no players with a full set of Bankers. Apart from these two, there are 14 players who still have one Banker life and are therefore still in the competition to be our Banking Wizard. Let’s move on. What about the regular predictions? Here are the best-backed teams of the weekend: Chelsea. Predicted to win by 96.7% of ScoreFivers Tottenham “ “ 94% “ Man. City “ “ 86.5% “ Man. Utd “ “ 82% “ Sunderland “ “ 79.6% “ Stoke City “ “ 75% “ All those teams kicked off as odds-on favourites. None of them won, two of them lost. What chance of none winning? It’s something in excess of 10,000-1. No-one predicted Bolton to score three goals, whereas the majority of players (57%) expected Spurs to get three or more. In Chelsea’s game, 63% of forecasts said Everton wouldn’t score. Mautin acheived an extraordinary treble: he had Everton to score three, and Wolves and Villa to win! Ross57 and John Makris were the only other players to predict that 0-1 Villa win. Only four players believed United wouldn’t score. That still leaves four games where you had a decent chance of bagging a few points. Birmingham’s run of seven games undefeated had not gone unnoticed, and 60% of you correctly backed the home team. With 1-0 as the second most popular forecast, 20% picked up a ’fiver from it. A draw was the favourite forecast at Burnley, where 40% of you picked up result points, including 32.8% with the 1-1. The meeting of two goal-shy teams at Hull persuaded 43% of you to go with the draw, but the traditional reluctance of ScoreFivers to embrace 0-0 meant that only 6.5% trousered a Perfecto from this one. The other game that confirmed the crowd’s expectations was at Liverpool, where 37% backed Arsenal to win, with 22.2% opting for the favourite (and correct) score of 1-2. Top players of Round 16 When doing a simple thing becomes difficult, those who manage it become special. So, I present to you the only players who got their bankers right last weekend (apart from those who backed the Brummies, accidentally or otherwise).
Last week, the Top 10 of Round 15 had four Arsenal fans, and this week, we had six Gunners! The magic number for a seat at the top table is 23 pts or above. Ebunosky’s 31 was 19 pts above the week’s average. I think that’s a record!
Strange things that have been taken into football grounds Those of you who watched the Liverpool-Arsenal match may have noticed that a beach ball appeared on the pitch from among the away fans, just as at Sunderland in October. A humorous touch, a gentle jibe at the opposition, and no harm done. The objects that find their way onto pitches have been less friendly elsewhere. An incident in the 2001 Barcelona-Real Madrid ‘Clasico’ was widely reported. Luis Figo, returning to his former club for the first time in the colours of the hated Madridistas, had a pig’s head thrown at him when he went to take a corner. How did that get into the ground? In Italy, where the ‘Ultras’ or extreme fans wield huge influence, fans at the San Siro in Milan tried to throw a burning scooter from the second tier of the stand during a game in 2002. That must have taken some organising – you can’t hide a scooter under your jacket as you enter the stadium! As anyone who goes to games in Britain nowadays knows, it’s become customary for spectators to be notionally searched by a security person as they reach the turnstile to prevent weapons and other potentially dangerous objects being taken in. While this practice is often ridiculed – one man had a sandwich confiscated because “he could have thrown it at someone” – it doesn’t always achieve its objective, which is why I say ‘notionally searched’. Consider the chef, a fan of League 1 club Brentford, who went straight to a home game from his shift in a hotel’s restaurant: on reaching the turnstile, he opened his coat, raised his arms, and was ‘patted down’ by a beefy security guy, who then waved him through, without questioning the package our chef had in his hand. Carefully wrapped in a cloth carrier were the tools of the chef’s trade, seven huge knives and cleavers. Here’s an early Christmas present for you: You are Thierry Henry and your job is to help France qualify for the World Cup. Get scoring! Look after yourselves until next week, pals Prof. Statto |
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