Storeytime 14/15: Grim Edition

Scrumpet

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I thought it would be a good time to get the basic version of Storeytime underway. Maybe Eboue will do his super nerd version at some point.

As always the idea is to negate the impact of easy/hard fixture lists to see where teams are really at relative to each other. Par is to win the league with 83 points. To do that you need to:

Win all your home games: 57 points
Lose away against the Top 6: 0 points
Draw away against the Middle 8: 8 points
Win away against the Bottom 6: 18 points

The arbitrarily chosen tiers are:

Top 6: Chelsea, City, Arsenal, Liverpool, Spurs, Everton.*
Bottom 6: Burnley, QPR, Sunderland, Leicester, Crystal Palace, Aston Villa.
Middle 8: Errbody else.

*To make sure par is the same for everybody, I considered Everton a Middle 8 side for non-Top 6 teams.

After ten games the scores for the ten teams I did are:

+4: Chelsea, Southampton
+3:
+2:
+1:
0:
-1: Man City
-2:
-3:
-4:
-5:
-6: Swansea, Liverpool
-7: Arsenal, West Ham
-8: Spurs
-9:
-10: Everton
-11:
-12: Man United
 
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iBoss said:
-12 is good right.
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Maybe if we're playing golf, it's not a perfect formula but it does reflect how much we've cocked up against some the poorer teams. The results of the last couple of weeks would be no issue if we hadn't already dropped loads of points against very average sides.
 
:lol: good title.

Have been thinking about what our Storeytime league position might look like but had no idea it would be this awful.

Of course, all the usual provisos apply and the big one is that it doesn't allow for the possibility of a team finishing the season much stronger than they started. Which is something we will hopefully do.
 
It's a load of nonsense. Clubs don't follow the pattern to a tee, and never will. Villa won away at Liverpool and haven't won since, for example.
 
Buchan said:
It's a load of nonsense. Clubs don't follow the pattern to a tee, and never will. Villa won away at Liverpool and haven't won since, for example.
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Jaysus, what is it with comments like this every time one of these threads gets posted?

Nobody says it's a perfect system. Just that it gives you a better handle on how the season's gone so far as compared to looking at the league title alone.
 
Eboue said:
:lol:

You don't really get math do you?
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:rolleyes:

Pogue Mahone said:
Jaysus, what is it with comments like this every time one of these threads gets posted?

Nobody says it's a perfect system. Just that it gives you a better handle on how the season's gone so far as compared to looking at the league title alone.
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It's a load of old pony, that's why. Say we're due to play Aston Villa away in March. According to the "system", we should be beating them. Alas, Aston Villa, having spent £40 million on new players in January are unbeaten in twelve games and actually now mid-table, winning their last five at home. How is that comparable to say, Chelsea, who played them away in December when they'd only won once in twelve games? Chelsea faced a totally different Villa to the one we faced (hypothetically, of course).

It's a load of nonsense; there's far too many variables to consider and you cannot make generalising, sweeping presumptions on what way a fixture will go from way back in August.
 
Buchan said:
It's a load of old pony, that's why. Say we're due to play Aston Villa away in March. According to the "system", we should be beating them. Alas, Aston Villa, having spent £40 million on new players in January are unbeaten in twelve games and actually now mid-table, winning their last five at home. How is that comparable to say, Chelsea, who played them away in December when they'd only won once in twelve games? Chelsea faced a totally different Villa to the one we faced (hypothetically, of course).

It's a load of nonsense; there's far too many variables to consider and you cannot make generalising, sweeping presumptions on what way a fixture will go from way back in August.
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You're really not getting it. All we're talking about is probabilities here. It's not some magic system that can predict every result, months ahead. If anyone ever came up with a system like that, there time is wasted on redcafe!
 
RORY65 said:
The results of the last couple of weeks would be no issue if we hadn't already dropped loads of points against very average sides.
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Yep. It's depressing how everybody is jumping on the "worst start to a season in 25 years" thing, but it in reality it became the worst start to a season in 25 years in mid Septmeber when we had 5 points from 5 matches against Swansea, Sunderland, Burnley, QPR and Liecester!
Since then we've done OK - not brilliantly, certainly, but not bad. And we'd need to have done brilliantly since then to have avoided this "worst opening 10 matches" thing.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
it doesn't allow for the possibility of a team finishing the season much stronger than they started. Which is something we will hopefully do.
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Yep. The way I see it there's an obvious progression:

Matches 1 to 5: 5 points
Matches 6 to 10: 8 points
Matches 11 to 15: 11 points
Matches 16 to 20: 14 points
Matches 21 to 25: 17 points
Matches 26 to 30: 20 points
Matches 31 to 35: 23 points

Total of 98 points, league won, don't even have to worry about matches 36 to 38.

I can see no flaws whatsoever in my reasoning.
 
Buchan said:
:rolleyes:



It's a load of old pony, that's why. Say we're due to play Aston Villa away in March. According to the "system", we should be beating them. Alas, Aston Villa, having spent £40 million on new players in January are unbeaten in twelve games and actually now mid-table, winning their last five at home. How is that comparable to say, Chelsea, who played them away in December when they'd only won once in twelve games? Chelsea faced a totally different Villa to the one we faced (hypothetically, of course).

It's a load of nonsense; there's far too many variables to consider and you cannot make generalising, sweeping presumptions on what way a fixture will go from way back in August.
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You seem to be writing it off on the basis of unlikely hypothetical or even outliers. The system, such as it is, is fine. All it is is a broad way to find a base line and measure everyone against each other. The point of the system is that, even allowing for circumstances like your Villa example above, it will roughly even itself out over the course of a season. Of course it will slightly favour some and go against others but that's true of any broad model such as this.
 
Brophs said:
You seem to be writing it off on the basis of unlikely hypothetical or even outliers. The system, such as it is, is fine. All it is is a broad way to find a base line and measure everyone against each other. The point of the system is that, even allowing for circumstances like your Villa example above, it will roughly even itself out over the course of a season. Of course it will slightly favour some and go against others but that's true of any broad model such as this.
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The weather forecast must drive him absolutely demented.
 
I did a version of this but..

a) only had Burnley & QPR in the bottom tier as outright 'bad' 6pts for the taking, bigger middle tier all much of a muchness
b) had a lesser disparity between home/away with leeway for points to be dropped/gained a little bit at home**

Only a point between us & Liverpool and the early season fixture imbalance is now played out.

**Points are points wherever you get them from.

And tbh, the more subtle you make any system like this, the more it resembles the actual league table, might be interesting to look at it with 8 games left - but even then there's an argument that says the worst sides might be trying harder than the mid table teams
 
montpelier said:
I did a version of this but..

a) only had Burnley & QPR in the bottom tier as outright 'bad' 6pts for the taking, bigger middle tier all much of a muchness
b) had a lesser disparity between home/away with leeway for points to be dropped/gained a little bit at home**

Only a point between us & Liverpool and the early season fixture imbalance is now played out.

**Points are points wherever you get them from.

And tbh, the more subtle you make any system like this, the more it resembles the actual league table, might be interesting to look at it with 8 games left - but even then there's an argument that says the worst sides might be trying harder than the mid table teams
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I'm on board.
 
The reason it doesn't really work at the moment is that no one would really expect us to have 25 points from our fixtures so far, even in a title challenging season. We have played all of the games where we can't physically make any gains, but can make great losses.

The only real fixtures where you "gain" points are away at mid table sides (where you expect at least 1.5 points a game) and away at the top 6 teams (where anything is a gain) of which we have currently played only West Brom and City (the hardest fixture of this type). Take an example that we won every single game so far apart from losing to City at the weekend and drawing with Chelsea: we'd be on +0 even though in everyone's opinion we'd have had an amazing start to the season.

This is where this scoring system fails spectacularly. Our 6 (out of 7) remaining away games at mid table opposition occur 8th Dec, 1st Jan, 7th Feb, 21st Feb, 4th March, 24th May. Our 5 (out of 6) remaining away games vs top 6 happen 22nd Nov, 28th Dec, 21st March, 18th April, 25th April.

TL;DR: Out of our 10 games we have played 8 games where we couldn't physically gain any additional points. The fixtures that this model of point scoring favour, we don't play until later in the campaign: the likes of Newcastle, Stoke, Hull, Swansea away where we'd be looking for 6-9 points, rather than 4 which is par. Likewise Arsenal, Liverpool, Everton, Spurs away where we'd be looking for 4-6 points, rather than 0 which is par.
 
finneh said:
The reason it doesn't really work at the moment is that no one would really expect us to have 25 points from our fixtures so far, even in a title challenging season. We have played all of the games where we can't physically make any gains, but can make great losses.

The only real fixtures where you "gain" points are away at mid table sides (where you expect at least 1.5 points a game) and away at the top 6 teams (where anything is a gain) of which we have currently played only West Brom and City (the hardest fixture of this type). Take an example that we won every single game so far apart from losing to City at the weekend and drawing with Chelsea: we'd be on +0 even though in everyone's opinion we'd have had an amazing start to the season.

This is where this scoring system fails spectacularly. Our 6 (out of 7) remaining away games at mid table opposition occur 8th Dec, 1st Jan, 7th Feb, 21st Feb, 4th March, 24th May. Our 5 (out of 6) remaining away games vs top 6 happen 22nd Nov, 28th Dec, 21st March, 18th April, 25th April.

TL;DR: Out of our 10 games we have played 8 games where we couldn't physically gain any additional points. The fixtures that this model of point scoring favour, we don't play until later in the campaign: the likes of Newcastle, Stoke, Hull, Swansea away where we'd be looking for 6-9 points, rather than 4 which is par. Likewise Arsenal, Liverpool, Everton, Spurs away where we'd be looking for 4-6 points, rather than 0 which is par.
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I started replying to this but couldn't be bothered to finish, if we had won our first 8 games and currently sit at 25pts, I somehow doubt people will be claiming Chelsea are much better off than us currently.

The flaw of this system is that the "top teams" are looking as much to win away at the middle tier teams as they are to the so called bottom 6 teams.
 
Cal? said:
The flaw of this system is that the "top teams" are looking as much to win away at the middle tier teams as they are to the so called bottom 6 teams.
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It doesn't really matter since you all get a +2 for a middle tier away win. Scrumpet's version will likely need a +total to win the league (par 83). My version would be top 7 and the rest, which would lead to a -total (par 93).
 
peterstorey said:
It doesn't really matter since you all get a +2 for a middle tier away win. Scrumpet's version will likely need a +total to win the league (par 83). My version would be top 7 and the rest, which would lead to a -total (par 93).
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That's true and come the latter stages of the season it will all balance out, but the point remains that United are doing artificially badly in this version.
 
Cal? said:
I started replying to this but couldn't be bothered to finish, if we had won our first 8 games and currently sit at 25pts, I somehow doubt people will be claiming Chelsea are much better off than us currently.

The flaw of this system is that the "top teams" are looking as much to win away at the middle tier teams as they are to the so called bottom 6 teams.
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A less flawed system would probably end up with fractions of points for games and would be something like: 3 points at home vs bottom 11 (33), 2 points home at top 8 (16), 1.33 points away at top 9 (12), 2.5 away at bottom 10 (25). That would be 86 points as a split of 51 at home and 37 away from home. Last season City would have been -1 at home and +5 away whilst Liverpool would be par at home and -2 away. The season before United would be Champions with -3 at home and +6 away.

This makes more sense as firstly most Champions would aim for more than the par of 83 points (last 3 seasons won with 89, 89, 86 ), most Champions would also not be happy with 26 points away from home and finally would never realistically be able to achieve 19 wins out of 19 at home. Obviously it would still need tweaking as away at Swansea isn't the same as away at City, but you get the idea.

My randomly selected criteria would have us at -9 at the moment. Not great but bear in mind we would be -9 aiming at a tally of 88 (ie on course for 79 points), rather than -12 aiming for a tally of 83 points (ie on course for 71). That 8 point swing is pretty significant. It also changes the scope hugely as to how everyone is doing (according to my calculations):

Everton: -9
United: -9
Liverpool: -8
Spurs: -8
Arsenal: -6
So'ton: -1
City: -1
Chelsea: +4
 
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Scrumpet said:
As always the idea is to negate the impact of easy/hard fixture lists to see where teams are really at relative to each other. Par is to win the league with 83 points.
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what is par for coming top4 though? that is our realistic aim this season

in the past we have always looked at this from the perspective of a team who expects to win (or at least challenge) for the title but really we are not there at the moment
 
It actually would've been better if we had City, Chelsea and Arsenal as our first three games. LvGs learning curve, the injury crisis and new signings happened to coincide with three of the easiest games this season. I tend to forgot those first three games when judging our outlook on the season, as it's drastically changed from those games far more than any other team.
 
Rood said:
what is par for coming top4 though? that is our realistic aim this season

in the past we have always looked at this from the perspective of a team who expects to win (or at least challenge) for the title but really we are not there at the moment
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It doesn't matter so long as the same criteria are being applied to all the teams we're competing with for a place in the top four.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
It doesn't matter so long as the same criteria are being applied to all the teams we're competing with for a place in the top four.
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In relative terms in doesnt matter but in actual terms of just looking at our own score it does - i.e. we wouldnt be 12 points off target
 
finneh said:
A less flawed system would probably end up with fractions of points for games and would be something like: 3 points at home vs bottom 11 (33), 2 points home at top 8 (16), 1.33 points away at top 9 (12), 2.5 away at bottom 10 (25). That would be 86 points as a split of 51 at home and 37 away from home. Last season City would have been -1 at home and +5 away whilst Liverpool would be par at home and -2 away. The season before United would be Champions with -3 at home and +6 away.

This makes more sense as firstly most Champions would aim for more than the par of 83 points (last 3 seasons won with 89, 89, 86 ), most Champions would also not be happy with 26 points away from home and finally would never realistically be able to achieve 19 wins out of 19 at home. Obviously it would still need tweaking as away at Swansea isn't the same as away at City, but you get the idea.

My randomly selected criteria would have us at -9 at the moment. Not great but bear in mind we would be -9 aiming at a tally of 88 (ie on course for 79 points), rather than -12 aiming for a tally of 83 points (ie on course for 71). That 8 point swing is pretty significant. It also changes the scope hugely as to how everyone is doing (according to my calculations):

Everton: -9
United: -9
Liverpool: -8
Spurs: -8
Arsenal: -6
So'ton: -1
City: -1
Chelsea: +4
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The end result of this looks a lot like what I guess-timated at - and quite similar to the League table if you turn the last bit upside down, West Ham might be a bit peeved, obv. :)

Impressed by how close those scores for the Champs (and Liverpool). 3 seasons worth of data, nearly spot on.

As someone said though, it is all a bit of 'moveable feast' for how you want to lay out the target points. The '8pt swing' is kinda the possible error involved, maybe?
 
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