For those who love statistics (and can get passed the FT's paywall) England were demonstrably the unluckiest team at the world cup (by one measure): http://blogs.ft.com/ftdata/2014/06/...nluckiest-team-in-the-world-cup-group-stages/ The article looks at a stat called "PDO", which is essentially a measure of a teamâs fortune in front of goal (both its goal and that of its opponents) - i.e. shots scored per shots on target. It links to a lot of other interesting articles on football fortune v skill. What's interesting about this stat is that on here many of us repeatedly said the same about our luck last season. Time and again loads of us commented on the ridiculous number of shots on target it took us to score, while our opponents scored seemingly with every single shot on target. I haven't got the stats for Norwich's PDO last season, but I would be astonished if it is not very, very low. It was easy to excuse this as not being unlucky, but rather not being clinical and allowing our opponents goal-scoring opportunities. Well frankly I don't buy it - we were extraordinarily unlucky and just to pluck out a choice quote from those unable to read the article: "you might expect a team with top quality strikers to score a greater proportion of its shots, and a team with an outstanding goalkeeper to save an above-average share. But hereâs where it gets interesting. PDO regresses towards the mean more quickly than most other measures of performance, meaning its score in one or a small series of matches is influenced relatively heavily by random chance... only 37 per cent of the extent to which a teamâs PDO is above or below 1.0 can be explained by talent."
I get what you're trying to say, but we were terrible last season, didn't create anywhere near enough chances to win anywhere near enough games and fully, 100% deserved to go down.
Oh I completely agree with you. I just was pleased to see that there are statistical studies (for those that like stats) which show that luck is a massive, massive factor. And for all the mistakes made and poor substitutions etc, etc, there is also no getting away from the fact that the football gods decided it just wasn't to be
Do you think the supporters of a 'big' club get a taste of what supporting a team like Norwich is like, When they support England? I mean not going to win anything, in and out with the big boys get poor ref decisions lol
I cannot see how this can be used to measure luck (not that I was able to read it). You can measure success or failure but you cannot measure luck, far to many variables. It is impossible in the context of a football match.
They are not measuring luck as a whole, they have picked one particular statistic (goals per shots on target) and measured the luck for that. They can do this by weighting the goals per shots on targets for each match for each team. Over time, this ratio evens itself out for all teams, with the better teams having a better ratio. But, the interesting thing was, skill only accounts for 37% - which means when it comes to (only) goals per shots on target (which was one of our big problems last season), it's nearly 2/3 down to luck.
Sounds more like it is encompassing other things and labelling them as luck. 37% would be ample to determine a better side over another. Not that I believe it to be a true figure.
Inasmuch as it is defining anything that is "not skill" as luck, yes. But I'm not sure how else you'd perceive everything outside of skill in football. Absolutely, over a substantial number of matches the 37% will make a huge amount of difference. The point, though, is that because luck is such a huge percentage (nearly 2/3s), over the course of a 3 match group stage, or even over the course of a single season, that luck can make a significant difference. The narrower the band, the more impact a minor swing can make too, so the champions tend to have double the points or more of the relegated, which means luck won't impact much there, but in amongst the relegated... don't forget we only needed 10% more points than we got to be safe last season. Fine margins.
We weren't unlucky - we were almost uniformly awful, from the away game at Hull to the home game against Arsenal. I don't believe luck plays that much of a part in a league over the course of the season (although it certainly can in knock-out cup competitions). Let's just admit we were dire and try to build a team and a squad which doesn't need to get lucky this season.
We were unlucky last season, absolutely, and nobody will convince me otherwise. The amount of star man performances by goalkeepers and stunning goals against us was massively disproportionate at least, I thought even an idiot would have accepted that by now. However that's just part of the game, nothing we can do about it now. I like to think it's some kind of payback for the championship promotion season where we were on the right end of lots of good luck and fortune and everything seemed to go our way. Surely it's time for one of those again next season isn't it?
Except that we were unlucky as well as uniformly awful, which is why we got relegated. Other teams were uniformly awful (W Brom) but got lucky. You may not believe it, but the stats demonstrate otherwise - luck in football has a huge part. Skill plays a part too, but when the teams are near enough equally matched, luck is the deciding factor.
once again there is some dramatic exaggeration of events from last season being told. vietnam may claim that we were awful from opening game to last but it simply isn't true. i completely agree with munky and rob - we were unfortunate last season, more so than any other season i can recall since i started going in the late 80's. did we deserve to get relegated? of course, we didn't score enough goals or take enough points - but that's a different thing. in my opinion, you always finish where you deserve to based on 38 games of football. sometimes you get more luck some seasons than others. the year we went up to the premier league we had countless examples of lucky breaks going our way, but we still, ultimately deserved to finish 2nd and gain promotion that season. does luck even itself out? i would argue it does if given enough time - often 38 games isn't enough. there were many times last term when we were abject, more so than any usual season, but games against the likes of villa (h), chelsea (h), cardiff (h&a) west ham (a), man utd (h), stoke (h) - i'm sure there were others but these are the ones that spring to mind - we were downright unlucky. just taking one win from any of those games which we deserved to win may have made all the difference. i can't think of too many games where we won playing badly and struck lucky though (mind you, we didn't win many games!). combine this with an appalling and debilitating list of injuries throughout the season to key personnel and new signings, at key times (pre-season for example, going into the season without the right preparation, or just as a system had been found that works), and throw in sunderland's remarkable climax to the season - a run which they probably couldn't emulate if they tried 50 times - and i'm sorry, but norwich were quite unlucky. but you make your own luck at the end of the day. lets start making some good luck against wolves in early august
Great post Superman. I think people are mistaking my comment "we were unlucky" for "we did not play badly" or "we did not deserve to go down". That is not what I am saying at all. For the single most unfortunate match (in terms of misfortune in the match and the consequences) look no further than the 0-1 defeat to West Brom. In the second half we outplayed them and could easily have scored two goals, and theirs was a wonder strike. If it had been the other way around, look at the table!
last season was disappointing for so many reasons but it does grate when people make stuff up to suit their argument. fact is, we were relegated because we weren't good enough overall but that doesn't mean there wasn't the odd slice of bad luck thrown in too. given one or two different breaks i think we'd be preparing for a fourth premier league season on the spin. those are the fine margins in football and we were definitely on the wrong end of a few things last season. for whatever the reasons, it didn't happen for us - maybe we'll get a few slices of luck next season and be back at the top table.
Rob, I accept that feeling we were unlucky last season does not mean a belief that we didn't deserve to go down. And, in terms of injuries, I think we were unlucky. But the other 'bad luck' I feel we mainly brought on ourselves because of our approach to games. If a team sits back and invites the other team on to them so that the opposition spend a lot of time near or in their penalty area, a 'fair' distribution of luck will have an 'unfair' distribution of consequences. In other words, 'good luck' in their penalty area equals a goal scored, 'bad luck' in our penalty area equals a goal conceded. This is why people often complain that big teams get more penalties than little teams. I'd suggest it also explains why we tended to be 'unlucky' under Hughton and 'lucky' under Lambert. All those late goals in the promotion season happened because we were going for it in their penalty area because Lambert would go for the win. Hughton would go for the draw, sit back, and they're in our penalty area instead, and 'luck' would favour them.
whilst undoubtedly cautious on too many occasions, it was arguably the matches where we took the game to the opposition where we suffered our worst luck and i think that's the main point really. nobody is going to tell me that we sat back against any of the teams i mentioned yesterday - we had a right good go at all of them, created numerous chances and deserved to beat all of them but our luck was out for one reason or another. sometimes it was poor finishing, sometimes incredible goalkeeping, but a lucky rebound here, a lucky rebound there and we'd have stayed up. as i say, fine margins indeed. and our luck was certainly summed up by sunderland's extraordinary late surge which sealed our doom. in any other season they'd have failed to pick up even half the points they did in that run in, and they'd have dropped instead of us.
