Yes, specifically the part that says "pundits don't notice it, fans don't notice it" It's like you saw the word Twitter and leapt on that and missed the point entirely ...and you might notice the lack of audible gasps when I mention the possibility of you missing the point entirely. Now why would that be...?
You don't get luck, but you do get officials seemingly not noticing your players are five yards offside for goals far more often than the team in 12th do
I am going by rank correlation (PL placing vs revenue) . Do you wish to contend that the measures gathered over the PL era are not statistically significant ??
A 38 game season is enough to know for that year if a team has done well or not and it won’t be relevant to luck. You cannot luck your way to winning a title or finishing in the top six, you have to earn it through a variety of factors. Leicester achieved three top six finishes in the years from 2015 through til 2021, winning a title and FA Cup in the process, that’s not luck, that’s well executed football planning and tactics for a club that realistically shouldn’t be achieving as such based on their stature.
Not sure about that. It might not be luck per se, but once a title bid gains momentum it kind of generates it's own "luck". For example, the Leicester fairytale (TM) once established kind of led to officials letting them get away with certain dodgy tactics. And this season, once Arsenal was established as a contender, they started to get things like generous extra time (not saying wrong, but saying that generally matched don't seem to get as much as they should).
I think people develop an envy of teams doing well and then convince themselves these teams get beneficial decisions when in reality it’s probably still relatively even across the board, you just wouldn’t notice any long periods of extra time in a game between two teams that are say ranked 15th and 16th, likewise you probably wouldn’t notice if a team battling relegation had a few questionable decisions go in their favour in quick succession.
When teams get far too much rub of the green from officials than makes sense, for example Liverpool's habit of being awarded goals that were clearly offside when they were in the ascendency or various clubs getting yellows for challenges that were straight reds such as Partey's rugby tackle on Haaland last night you can say they are getting a kind of luck - but that luck is officials are scared of being blamed for potentially derailing a team's potentially title-winning season, which is best demonstrated by that time in the 2015-16 season where Jamie Vardy got a second yellow for a blatant dive and pundits and commentators howled in protest that the referee could have potentially derailed The Leicester City Fairytale™ instead of, you know, being one of the rare occasions a ref did their f'n job and actually booked somebody for diving
Luck plays a big part in football it's a feature of the game and one of the reasons games are difficult to predict. Compare football to cricket, golf, tennis and even rugby. In these games it is unusual for the 'underdog' to win. In football it happens all the time. It's unlikely, I agree that any one team would receive enough luck over one season to overturn the natural order and that is surely why we have leagues. In cup competitions (and I am talking top flight here) you can see that there are less 'upsets' on clubs reaching the finals. It seems that for teams like Brighton, Wigan, Palace, Sunderland getting to a final is probably more difficult now as is winning the league by anyone outside the top 6 (Spurs excluded) and this we have to put down to cash resources available to City, Chelsea and United. Liverpool and Arsenal have done well to be competing because it's not a level playing field is it? Despite the money sloshing around Sheffield United managed to beat a lacklustre Spurs because despite all the figures and league positions anyone watching Spurs this season would probably agree that they have been awful to watch and any luck we might have had (Brighton?) it was not enough to override the poor team performances. It's ironic that one of our best performances was against the best team in the league, adding weight to the contention that this group of players are not giving 100% most of the time. Luck comes into injuries, decisions on the pitch, the players that join the team, and simply being on form at the right time to name some of the factors.
I think a lot of what you've said here though isn't really luck-related. It's primarily footballing decision and/ or resources based. Arsenal challenging City this season has been down to good planning and decision making from Arteta and Edu to build a squad capable of going above their station. Whereas City generally smashing it is down to their resources at being able to assemble a £1bn squad and having someone like Pep that knows how to utilise those resources superbly, which comes from good decisions making both from him and the City hierarchy. When you predict the results for both of these teams this season, especially City, you'd predict them to win and probably 8/10 they will. Sheffield beating us was just rewards for their effort and our lack of it, as well as our likely complacency to think we could turn up and win with relative ease. I'd agree that injuries have elements of (bad) luck though, Bentancur landing awkwardly is something out of his control and that's certainly bad luck for instance, there's nothing he could've done to prevent that, damn shame too as we sorely miss him.
Luck is Manchester United playing all their cup games this season at Old Trafford.( except FA semi final and second leg in CC ). Just a reminder we went out of both cups away from home.
As I said, statistical tests say the opposite. If two teams were roughly as good as each other (say 1% difference in points) you would need about 1000 games to have any chance at all of telling which was better.
There is a good reason why football is different. Goals are infrequent and very important. Scoring two goals every second game usually gives a very different points outcome to scoring one each game. So when you score goals matters a lot and that isn't really under anyone's control.
Over several seasons that's the case but your comment that I was replying to was about a single season and the mean position of the 5th ranked club will be below 5th. So coming 5th is actually above mean.
Spurs and Leicester aren't equal teams though, we're a considerably bigger club and should essentially finish above them every season. A 1000 games or circa 20-25 years of results would generally show that. You implied though that they had luck for the seasons they achieved success and finished above us, when in reality they just had a good spell of footballing operations which was highlighted with smart signings and good business, a model that at the time many of us were rightly enviable of. It's not luck to finish a season in a good position and/ or win a trophy and 38 games can absolutely prove that.
Luck plays a part in every my sport. In cricket for example, one piece of luck can have a significant bearing on the outcome. How many batsmen have edged a ball inches wide of a fielder on 0, only to go on to make a 100? In golf, a lucky bounce can make the difference between the ball finishing up in the water or inches from the hole. It’s rare for that kind of luck to play a part in football. What I think most people are describing as “luck” is no such thing. It is bad decision making - whether perceived bias or incompetence. That is indiscriminate , whatever people may claim that certain teams benefit more than others. Some mistakes are more high profile because they involve those clubs, but they affect all teams.
I agree with that in principle, but still not sure about it's application in footie. This is because there is so much pressure on officials to get "the right" decisions for certain teams. This can introduce pressure even if the officials don't accept or realise it. For example a decision that goes against these certain teams is discussed and analysed for far longer than one against some other teams. That alone creates an 'easier path' to making a decision. Plus wasn't there an actual statistical analysis many seasons ago about the number of decisions ManU got at home? It was bonkers skewed in their favour! Plus I fear that all VAR does is give these teams a second chance of bias. So to conclude I get the idea that an "envy" factor could happen, but I'm not sure that it can account everything we see (or perceive).
If you should have learned anything about me and data analytics, I never talk in terms of a "single" anything.
