ScoreFive - Football/Soccer EPL & World Cup Prediction Game

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

Week 2.... Week 1.... Scenesetter

We should have got six!

Hello again, All,

Two weeks into the season and the Premier League table is still looking a bit odd. Hull and Stoke clearly do not understand that they are meant to be cannon-fodder on the way to relegation. Newcastle are calling for oxygen from a giddy height, and for all the media talk of Spurs climbing into the Top Four, at present they’re in the basement, digging a hole.

After some remarkably high Score Fiveing in the opening weekend, we saw the opposite in the Prem’s second round of matches, as a succession of upsets combined to ensure that anyone who exceeded 20 points did very well.

From my observations of your predictions, there’s too much confidence in the average striker, especially when predicting games between the Big Boys and the lesser lights. Arsenal fans confidently predicted three, four, even five goal wins versus Fulham, much like the Man U hordes for their team a week earlier against Newcastle. Chelsea supporters expected more than a single goal against Wigan last Sunday. The rest of you, be warned!

You may have 70% possession, their ’keeper may play a blinder, and you may be denied two certain penalties, but…. How many times have you said “We should have got six!” Ah, should have - it rarely happens though, and the minnows regularly raise their game when they come up against the big boys. Last season, in the 24 matches between the Big Four and the three who were eventually relegated, only the abysmal Derby conceded four goals or more in a game. In the 16 games against Reading and Birmingham, the Champions League entrants won only 10, and scored a combined 24 goals = an average of 1.5 per game. See what I mean?

The OPTA Prem stats revealed that no team in 2007-08 even managed to get 50% of it’s shots/headers on target. (Portsmouth are among those hoping to move up to the 40%-accuracy level this season). With such poor finishing, you can understand why last season’s average goals-to-attempts ratio was only 1 in 8. The best was Aston Villa’s 1 in 6 – eat your hearts out, Big Four. And when teams average less than 10 goal attempts per game, you’re not going to see too many goal-fests. Well, unless you’re playing Derby, of course.

“OK, we’ve got the message, those eagerly-anticipated massacres don’t often occur” I hear you saying, “so what should we expect?” Here’s a fact to keep in mind – in 68% of last season’s Prem games, there were three goals or less, with neither team scoring three. Moral of the story? Aim low and you’re unlikely to be disappointed. Over the season, 1002 goals were scored in the 380 games, which obviously means 380 Home appearances and 380 Away appearances. Let’s see where the goals occurred:

Score Home Away Total

0 90 122 212

1 128 142 70

2 83 70 153

3 40 19 59

4+ 39 27 66

380 380

So, 1 is the most frequent score, followed by 0 then 2. If we divide the above numbers into weekly averages we get:

Score Home Away

0 2.35 3.21

1 3.37 3.74

2 2.18 1.84

3 1.05 0.50

4+ 1.02 0.71

On this basis, your Home predictions will usually have two or three 0s, three or four 1s, a couple of 2s, a 3 and a 4+. Your Aways will have three 0s, four 1s, a couple of 2s and one score of 3 or more. Simple eh? Now all you need to do is decide who gets which. We’ll have more on that subject next week, but as Mrs Statto is complaining about the state of the garden, it’s time I joined Spurs in doing some digging.

Regards,

Prof. Statto

PS: Two weeks ago during the upload of this column, one important line in the table of last season’s Prem scores got lost. Here’s the full list:

Score Matches Percentage

1 – 1 52 13.6 %

1 – 0 43 11.3 %

2 – 0 34 8.94 %

0 – 1 31 8.15 %

2 – 1 29 7.63 %

0 – 0 26 6.84 %

0 – 2 23 6.05 %

1 – 2 21 5.52 %

3 – 1 21 5.52 %

2 – 2 17 4.47 %

3 – 0 11 2.89 %

4 – 1 9 2.36 %

1 – 3 8 2.10 %

4 – 0 8 2.10 %

0 – 3 6 1.57 %

3 – 2 6 1.57 %

1 – 4 4 1.05 %

0 – 4 4 1.05 %

4 – 4 3 0.78 %

2 – 3 3 0.78 %

4 – 2 3 0.78 %

3 – 3 2 0.52 %

Other 16 4.21 %

Bye!!!