English Premier League Pythagorean
I’ve not posted this for a while so here is the latest Pythagorean for the English Premier League.
Football Pythagorean
If you’ve seen this before, it’s an adaptation of the baseball Pythagorean that allows you to estimate how many points a team would be expected to achieve on average based on the number of goals they have scored and conceded. It’s a simple equation but it is surprisingly accurate.
Take a look at my previous blog posts if you want to find out more about the theory behind it, how it was tested and what the equation itself actually looks like.
The Season So Far
Figure One below below shows the difference between how many points teams have achieved in the English Premier League and how many points their Pythagorean record predicts they should have.
Figure One: EPL Pythagorean Results So Far
Worryingly for Aston Villa they’ve currently got five points more than would be expected based on their goal record. These points were all from their crazy start to the season in which they were undefeated in their first four matches, somehow coming out with ten points even though they scored just four goals. However, they appear to have regressed somewhat since then managing just a single goal and zero points from their last six matches. It’s not looking good…
Chelsea are also up five points more than expected but in contrast things could not be looking better. They are playing well and gaining more points than their goal scoring record suggests. All the signs of potential champions – a good team that are exceeding their expected points. If you want to win the league you have to be good and lucky!
Comments
Anton Bashtavy - December 22, 2014
I’m not sure about Aston Villa – they appear to be unlucky with their shots/goals ratio. They score from every 15th shot on average (with 10 being the league average), and it’s not because they shoot a lot.
If both “clutch luck” and shots/goals ration reverse to mean, it’ll be more or less the same in terms of points per game.