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A Bunch of Fives

So when all is said and done we translate the number of times a ball has landed in the back of a net, past and present, and somehow work out why it was so obviously going to be so and what will happen in the future!! That’s the unenviable task of our resident expert Professor Statto, Nobel Prize Winner in waiting, who’s been explaining the meaning of football life and giving comfort to his followers for years.

He’ll tell you why your predictions were bound to be wrong. He’ll tell you about the most outrageous possibilities to come. He’ll tell you…But whatever he says remember:

“98% of all statistics are made up.” ~Author Unknown

Professor Statto and his amazing statistics.

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Previous analysis

FA Cup Round 5.... Weeks 25.... Weeks 23/24.... FA Cup Round 4.... Week 22

Darwinian Evolutionary Theory, City Slickers and You, The Jury

Hello again, friends,

Welcome to this week’s particularly scholarly opus. Away from the sports pages, a slew of media coverage is currently reminding us of the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin, begetter of the Theory of Evolution. While that theory still provokes intense debate 150 years after its publication, I haven’t yet seen anyone consider it’s implications for football. This week and next, pals, I shall attempt to redress that imbalance on your behalf, but before we consider such weighty matters, let’s look at the latest developments in the league, where the principle of survival of the fittest would no doubt please Mr. Darwin.

Weekend roundup
With Liverpool slipping a further two points behind Man. Utd, their March 14th meeting at Old Trafford has now taken on greater significance. It’s too early to call it a title decider, but if it results in a Utd win, it would take several catastrophes to stop them retaining their crown. At the bottom, where the teams have been packed like canned sardines, a gap has appeared. Three points separates 16th-placed Portsmouth from Stoke, Blackburn, Middlesbrough and West Brom.

Liverpool kicked off against Man. City with a 7-5-0 home record, having failed to beat the likes of Stoke, Hull and Fulham, so it was something of a surprise to me that only 9% of you were willing to predict that City would snaffle a point or more from the game. Just three players collected Perfect 5’s for the 1-1. As always, it was the unusual results that were the most interesting for us ScoreFivers. The point Sunderland took away from the Emirates was probably the least likely. Not for the first time, there wasn’t a single vote for 0-0 there, though three foolhardy / prescient individuals did go for 1-1. Newcastle v Everton was another game where you didn’t trust the defences: new boy 小白狗狗 was alone in predicting the 0-0. Given your usual collective reluctance to consider the goalless option, it’s a pleasure to report that 14% of you did foresee it in the Middlesbrough v Wigan game, with 73% saying two goals or less. With the other six fixtures going largely with form, the average score for the round was 17-18.

Which is the best of all the Score Five leagues? Well, Crossmark can boast the best strength in depth. As of the weekend, all their six members are in the 400-club: let’s hear it for Obi Van Kenobi, FungusDBogeyman, Derek A, JohnnyD, Grant and Darren.

Top Players
At the top of the Global Leaderboard, Antomeno added a healthy 21 pts to his total, but still found himself pegged back as Lano23 and Simoscy outscored him. Once again, Gilberto’s Goldmine was the place where riches were unearthed this week. Four glittering Perfect 5s contributed to his 29 pts as he moved up to 4th spot. Those with most to smile about this week are:

Player	League	Supports	Points
Gilberto's Goldmine	Public 1	Arsenal	29
Darren	Crossmark	Everton	28
Lano 23	Public 1	Liverpool	27
240574	Meywin	West Ham	21
Kojja2205	Newcastle GS	Newcastle	25
WolvesJim	Public 1	Wolves	25

Man. Utd. concede goal shock!
A mere 14 league matches and 1334 minutes after Samir Nasri’s strike for Arsenal on Nov. 8, another team, Blackburn, finally managed to score against Fergie’s men. Maybe it was due to the absence of the two stalwarts who had been ever-present through the record-breaking run, Edwin van der Sar and Nemanja Vidic: their own Clean Sheet sequences remain unbroken at 1302 minutes. After 11 appearances and 728 minutes, young Rafael Da Silva finally experienced the pain of an opposition goal in the Prem. That “in the Prem’ is important – in other competitions, United have been positively leaky. During their pristine League stretch, they’ve conceded 11 goals, including three to Championship strugglers Derby, in 12 games in four other competitions, which says something about their congested fixture list. Including Tuesday’s Champions League game at Inter Milan, they’ve played 29 games since the start of November. It’s no wonder they have a lengthy injury list.

City slickers, United, Rovers, Albion, Athletic etc slickers.
The traditional footballer in Britain is a chap with his brains in his feet, whose interests away from the game are of the pub-and-betting-shop-determinedly-non-intellectual variety, and whose dressing-room reading matter is expected to be of a tabloid or pictorial nature. That persona, carelessly acquired during a century in his protected habitat, is gradually evolving following the upheaval that began in 1992 when Old Division 1 declared itself independent of the Football League and re-invented itself as the Premier League. An influx of more cultured continental players into the Prem environment has led to a change of attitude regarding diet, for example. ‘Social responsibility’ schemes have seen an increasing number of players (bravo, the ’Boro squad) getting involved with their local communities and charity work.

The biggest change for the modern player, of course, is that even a fringe squad member is now rich in a way that a pre-Prem star couldn’t even dream of, as a result of the arrival of the boatloads of TV money that you and I ultimately provide. It’s difficult to waste all that cash, no matter how many Ferraris you leave embedded in lampposts, so to avoid your savings being ripped off by people like Bernie Madoff (allegedly), you now need to have at least a nodding acquaintance with the world of finance. While this may not yet have led to The Financial Times replacing The Mirror as the modern clogger’s newspaper of choice, I’ll bet he’s added City Gent’s financial advice column to Page Three, his horoscope and the cartoons as part of his daily reading ritual – and what he’s seen there of late must be distinctly worrying.

Unless you’ve been in solitary confinement or on Mars for the last six months, it can’t have escaped your notice that there’s a just-about-completely-Global Recession going on, and the biggest losers (apart from ordinary folk who have only lost, say, their job or home) have been investors – rich people like Prem players, for example. As stock markets and investment values around the world have plummeted, players have watched their rainy-day funds shrinking. John Terry and Gareth Barry were among the footballing casualties of the collapse of a property investment company that went into Credit-Crunch related administration recently. Small wonder then, if Prem players have taken their eyes off the ball as they contemplate their losses.

So, it’s a change from being small-scale dabblers on the 2.30 at Kempton to millionaire financial speculators in less than a generation! Evolution indeed, always assuming of course that we can verify they are preoccupied with financial considerations, as opposed to other distractions like slapper-tells-all tabloid revelations and drunken driving prosecutions. “Do you have evidence to support your theory, Prof?” you may say. I believe I have – read on.

Premier League Players on trial.
Your Honour, ladies and gentlemen of the jury….on behalf of the Prosecution, I would like to draw certain facts to your attention, facts that will demonstrate beyond doubt that today’s Premiership players are guilty of a most serious charge, to whit, Failing To Entertain.

It may be just a string of coincidences, but it’s curious how the Prem’s goals-per-game ratio has risen and fallen following the London Stock Exchange’s FTSE index over the last couple of seasons.

In the season 2007-08, as team payrolls soared and the London Stock Exchange headed for a peak around the 6800-mark, goals-per-game also increased, from the previous season’s 2.45 to 2.64. At the end of the season, the market fell, only to pick up again in August as football resumed. After a brief rally, the FTSE went into a steep decline in which it is still mired today. In the early months of this season, I drew the jury’s attention to the rising level of goals-per-game. But since the high-water mark of Nov. 16th, m’lud, when it reached 2.73, it has followed the FTSE into a slump, and during the last three months has averaged an all-time low of 2.22 g.p.g. At this point, m’lud, I wish to introduce Exhibit A, viz. a chart showing goal distribution up to and including Sunday, Feb. 22nd.

We reached the two-thirds stage of the season during last weekend’s Round 26. There was a nice symmetry ahead of Monday’s Hull-Spurs game – we could split the season thus far into precise halves, which clearly demonstrate the diminishing goal tally:

	Games	Home	Draw	Away	Goals-per-game (H/A)
13 rounds Aug 16 – Nov 16	129	57	27	45	2.73 (1.44 / 1.29)
13 rounds Nov 22 – Feb 22	129	54	45	30	2.22 (1.28 / 0.94)

   
Now I put it to you, respected members of the Score Five jury, that if goals increase when players make more money, and decrease when they are losing it, there must be a connection. We’re now experiencing the worst global economic recession since 1929: is it mere coincidence that the number of goals in our top division have simultaneously sunk to an all-time low? As we all know, goals are the lifeblood of football, and we’re overdue for a transfusion! (pause for polite laughter). I’m sure Your Honour is no doubt aware that the lower divisions aren’t suffering this type of haemhorrage.

I therefore conclude, m’lud, that the minds of Prem players are overly concerned with monetary matters, and not focussed on the more important task of filling the ol’ onion bag. Having taken financial risks and suffered, they’ve decided not to take any chances on the pitch. “We start with 0-0, let’s hold on to what we’ve got” is their overriding thought. What is the Most Frequent Score in the last three months? It’s 0-0, members of the jury, 0-0, and it’s happened 21 times…but it only happened nine times in the previous three months!

I rest my case, and respectfully suggest that you, members of the Score Five jury, find all Premier League players guilty of Failing To Entertain, and that these miscreants be sentenced to travel for the rest of the season by public transport to their training grounds, where they will do an extra two hours daily shooting practice. Three when it rains.

Until next week, folks,

Best wishes,
Prof. Statto