November 26, 2012
Applying the Pythagorean Expectation to Football: Part One
Introduction to applying the baseball pythagorean to football.
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Insights, research, and analysis on football analytics
November 20, 2012
Disparity in European Football Leagues
Having mentioned the effect disparity plays on determining the league champions in previous posts I thought it would be interesting to look at the actual levels of disparity currently present in football.
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November 18, 2012
Analysis of André Villas-Boas Vs Harry Redknapp
Since taking over as manager of Tottenham Hotspur, André Villas-Boas has been trapped in former Spurs manager Harry Redknapp’s shadow. Every tactical decision or team selection Villas-Boas makes is seemingly compared with Redknapp’s previous achievements. And after Tottenham’s...
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November 12, 2012
Effect of Season Length on Deciding the League Champion
In my previous article I looked at the interplay between luck and skill in determining the league champions. There is another parameter though that also interacts with luck and that is the structure of the league itself.
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November 08, 2012
How Often Does The Best Team Win The League?
How often does the best team win the league? Probably not as often as you think as it is not just talent that is required for success; a decent amount of luck is needed too.
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November 02, 2012
The Poisson Model So Far
In my last article I wrote about my experiences using the Poisson distribution to predict the outcome of football matches. The results so far have been rather disappointing so I thought I would have a look at where things were going wrong.
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October 29, 2012
Using Poisson to Predict Football Matches
The Power Of Goals recently blogged about using the Poisson distribution to predict the outcome of football matches. I have been evaluating the predictive ability of the Poisson for the English Premier League (EPL) this season so I thought I would share my experiences too.
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October 26, 2012
Influence Of Clean Sheets
To make much sense of the statistics available for football we need to have an understanding of their context so I am planning on starting off simple by looking at baselines for various events and statistics while I build up the information required to start a mathematical model.
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October 22, 2012
Football + Mathematics
There are plenty of analytical football blogs already out there on the internet so I thought long and hard about whether to bother with pena.lt/y..
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October 19, 2012
It's Fergie Time
After Manchester United’s recent defeat to Tottenham, Sir Alex Ferguson was once again furious about the amount of injury time played. He even went as far as to claim the four minutes Chris Foy added was an ‘insult’.
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