Performance in Comparative Fixtures

[Xen]

Some of you have probably seen some of the graphs/charts I've produced over the past year or so - and probably noted that I have way too much time on my hands! So I figured I'd embrace that, and make it a (semi-)regular thing that I maintain throughout the season.

 

To kick things off, I'll start with my comparative performance chart, which takes our fixtures and looks at the % of points that each team gained in the  fixtures from last season corresponding to our own this year. The intention of this is to show how well we're performing compared to last year's PL, and to hopefully reduce the number of knee-jerk reactions if we have a bad run in a difficult set of fixtures, or a bad performance in a fixture which appears easier than it may actually be.

 

Here's the table, set up for the Man Utd game, assuming that we LOSE tomorrow:

 

So, even in the (probable) case that we lose tomorrow, we would still be outperforming 60% of last year's PL, and tying with one other. From the bottom half, only TWO teams managed to get 3 points from any of those fixtures, and the majority struggled to get more than a single point. Considering that we came close to taking all 3 points from Everton and Arsenal, and things may have turned out very differently had we taken our chances at SB, then we could have feasibly been in the top 5 performers compared to teams last year...

A win tomorrow on the other hand puts us up to 8 points - up to 53% of those available. Moving us ahead of Tottenham and Southampton, and just behind Stoke and Everton (who's % is based on one game less).

And as you can see, we are by FAR outperforming last year's bottom half, and if we maintain this sort of level of performance then we should be more than comfortable of starting next season a PL club again.

 

I'll probably skip updating this tomorrow as I've posted this today, but I intend to post an update similar to this after each game of the season. For matches against Burnley/QPR I will use the teams that finished in comparable positions instead - Fulham/Cardiff respectively. Of course, this means that last year's matches involving Norwich account for nothing here (as they are the equivalent of ourselves). If anyone has an alternative suggestion for dealing with these fixtures, by all means let me know.

 

To save clogging up the forum with a ton of images, I'll hopefully migrate this to a google docs file at some point, and if I expand to produce more types of chart/graph/table, then I'll possibly try andset up an external blog in addition. 

 

If anyone has any suggestions for other things they'd like me to try and find stats on (be realistic please, I'm not Opta ) similar to my 'Championship where penalties don't count' table from last season, by all means suggest away.

 

Mods: Feel free to delete/lock/move (to PL 14/15 thread?) if deemed necessary - wasn't sure where to post this

 

 

And yes - I DO do this sort of thing for a living, . Unfortunately not sports-related though (yet).

[Stuliasz]

Good work. 

 

The most interesting / worrying thing for me is that the bottom half collectively only won 1 point against Man Utd at home last season, and that was during their worst season in memory. Probably stating the obvious but we'll have to be absolutely on it to get anything out of tomorrow, and hope Utd have an off day.

[Phube]

Love Excel spreadsheets. Good work!

Sadly I'm not being sarcastic!

[DallasFox]

Good Stuff Xen. I enjoyed your analysis.

[Carl the Llama]

I strongly disagree that your chart shows we're "by far outperforming last year's bottom half".  Norwich did pretty much as well as us in the same 4 fixtures last year and ended up getting relegated.  It's still too early for any stats to really mean anything substantial yet.

[Xen]

I strongly disagree that your chart shows we're "by far outperforming last year's bottom half".  Norwich did pretty much as well as us in the same 4 fixtures last year and ended up getting relegated.  It's still too early for any stats to really mean anything substantial yet.

 

I'm aware of that, and I should perhaps have included a caveat saying that the statistics only show possible implications and that we obviously cant draw any hard-and-fast conclusions after only an eighth of the season. And of course, the order/timing of the fixtures affects how different teams perform, also.

 

I was hoping that by keeping this updated it might be interesting to see a more equal comparison to date, rather than looking at the current league table and seeing teams like Villa near the top because they've had a run of fixtures which is in no way comparable to our own.

[Stadt]

Arsenal really are flat track bullies

[ealingfox]

What! We're 23rd in the league? Pearson Out!

[Larry_LCFC]

I haven't got a clue what you've just written, but it deserves a +1 for effort

[Carl the Llama]

I'm aware of that, and I should perhaps have included a caveat saying that the statistics only show possible implications and that we obviously cant draw any hard-and-fast conclusions after only an eighth of the season. And of course, the order/timing of the fixtures affects how different teams perform, also.

 

I was hoping that by keeping this updated it might be interesting to see a more equal comparison to date, rather than looking at the current league table and seeing teams like Villa near the top because they've had a run of fixtures which is in no way comparable to our own.

By all means keep updating - it'll be interesting to see how things evolve, I just wanted to point out what I pointed out.  Keep up the good work. 

[Phube]

Any chance of an update to this... since our performances have nose-dived? 

 

Be interesting to see...

[Xen]

Yeah I've been a bit slack recently and forgot to update. Will do when I get the chance.

[Xen]

Apologies for the massive delay in updating this, especially after I said I would last week. I wanted to wait til after the match and then work caught up with me

 

 

Not a great deal to say about this time. I substituted the Burnley match for last season's Fulham games, as the two teams finished 2nd of the promoted/relegated sides, respectively.

 

As it stands, we're just ahead of the average for the bottom half which - in an ideal world - would project us to finish 12th-15th, which isn't looking too bad, all things considered. It's probably clearer to see how we're performing compared to other teams last year by the key next to the percentages. Amber is for teams who took a similar ratio of points than us from the comparable fixtures (+/- 5%), green for teams we've outperformed and red for those who've outperformed us. With a RAG split of 10/5/5, we're not doing *too* badly, despite our awful form of late.

 

Everything else is pretty much expected. As you move right on the graph, there's less and less red as fixtures become -on paper - a little easier and teams picked up more points from those fixtures.

 

There are a number of teams who managed to steer clear of the drop despite doing much worse than us in these matches - Villa and Palace in particular - with both of those struggling significantly in these fixtures, before pulling it back around. Interestingly, from the first 5 fixtures which saw us take 8 points, those two teams only managed 1 between them. Suggesting perhaps that our strength is in playing against the big teams, whereas others stick to the status quo.

 

In fact, from the last 5(/4) games, only Norwich equalled our record, with every other team picking up at least 1 win from those 5... Make of that what you will.

 

-

 

I'll relax my previous commitments to this as I clearly can't keep up with that haha. Will aim to update this at least every other fixture (perhaps not with so much commentary) though.