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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.

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Visit the Prof's 2008/09 season archives.

Previous analysis

World Cup 4.... World Cup 3.... World Cup 2.... Group Stage Round Up 1.... World Cup Scene-Setter.... Round 39

Spain, the Netherlands or You?

Hello again pals, and welcome back. I’m just popping in with a quick post-Semis update.

With 62 of 2010’s scheduled 64 games completed, it’s looking like the goals-per-game average will shrink again for the fifth World Cup in a row. Despite Germany’s valiant efforts, we’ve had only 129 goals at an average of 2.24, so we need eight from the weekend’s games to raise it to 2006’s average of 2.30. Come on, Germany, help us out….

Something to bear in mind for the weekend. By combining all previous World Cups, we see that the most frequent score was 1-0, or 13.84% of all games. The opposite side of that coin, 0-1, was until now only the ninth most frequent score, at 4.1%. South Africa has seen the revenge of 0-1. We’ve had 10 of them. The second most frequent is 1-1 (seven occurrences) with 1-0 third (six).

The ‘away’ teams (Spain and Germany) in games 63/64 are both odds-on….and Spain have won their last two 0-1. If you’re looking for pointers as to how the final will go, note that from their six games, Spain’s goal record is For 7 Against 2, while Holland are F12 A5.

Never mind Spain and Holland, what about the Big One?

While the World Cup Final will be an all-European affair, the winner of the ScoreFive competition could be a supporter of any one of 10 nations, and not all of them represented in South Africa. There’s a strong England/Australia representation in our Top 20, but we’ve also got two Scotsmen, a Northern Irishman, a Kiwi, a Frenchman, and supporters of Brazil, Portugal, Holland and Spain.

With 15 points still up for grabs from the Final and Third Place matches, I reckon that our top 16 players are all in with a realistic chance of being No. 1 come Sunday night. A minor miracle i.e. twin Perfectos could even deliver the title to anyone down to #20.

Speaking of miracles, God needs one. Contrary to accepted belief, he is not infallible – you’ll find him at #608 with 122 pts. It’s often been rumoured, but I can now officially confirm that he is an England supporter – clearly he was busy elsewhere when they came up against Germany. His league club? Liverpool. Maybe their fans really do never walk alone?

Highlights of the Semi-Finals

We had a perfect illustration of just how difficult it is to get two successive scores right. Here’s how your predictions divided:

	P5	Home	Draw	Away
Uruguay-Netherlands	1%	6.4%	10%	83.6%
Germany-Spain	4.5%	57.7%	21.5%	20.8%

After Holland got past Uruguay, there were five players with 10 points for a Perfecto with Banker, and a further two who had a Perfecto but had saved their Banker for the second game. We don’t see many 2-3s, so even before Germany-Spain kicked off, I was thinking “Some have already done the hard work - any low score and we could see a maximum”.

When Puyol’s bullet header was all that separated the sides, I looked forward to finding a lucky few with the max 15 points, but no – for the first time, Spain were not the better-backed team. A sizeable 57.7% of you had sided with the German goal machine, so from 20.8% Spain aficionados we had only 4.5% Perfectos – 31 players – and none of them from the seven who nailed the 2-3, though they do deserve a name check: Somy70, Cfcmark, Jammy, Bluegirl1, World Cup, Charlsie and Regorb.

For the record, here’s how the Semi-Final points played out. Average, 3.02 (inc.Banker, 6.77 pts). Perfectos at 2.8% were the second-lowest of the tournament. Bankers were a healthy 74.9% with most of you relying on the Dutch.

Top Players of the Semi-Finals

The Semi-Finals saw several players advance into potential winning positions: former #7 Yingmeow is now up to #2, former #12 Castro Wilson is now #7, both as a result of 12 pt hauls. Spare a thought for another 12er, Diptesh who is now at #12 without the benefit of any WC Bonus points – he didn’t join in the Group Stage Qualifiers predictions. With just an average 15 pts, he would now be well clear at the top. Lano23, our Premier League Champion is another who missed out on the WC Bonus. He also advanced courtesy of 12 pts and is now at #160, but could have been joint second.

You probably noticed all the players mentioned above picked up a nice neat dozen. So did 22 others: we had 26 sharing the top spot for the round.

Bank on Drew

We’ve had 19 Prediction rounds and DrewBusby is the only player with 17 correct Bankers, from which he’s accumulated 29 pts. That’s quite an achievement, considering there were days when almost everyone went wrong: on Day 1, only 9.3% of you bagged the bonus point. On Day 8, it was a miserly 2.6%.

Remember those real-life bankers UBS and their prediction of Brazil to win? And the other lot masquerading as Quantum Fizzi, now at #663 and sinking like a stricken submarine? I think I’ll put my money under the mattress from now on – or entrust it to Drew.

League leaders update

I was planning to bring you the leaders of the 10 Public leagues, but they’re missing the World Cup Bonus points, which is a bit like having shoes without laces. Hopefully, they’ll be in the right place by the time I do my prize-winners edition on Monday.

Enjoy the weekend, pals!

Prof. Statto