MITO's Block of Four...

With all due respect to mito and the effort he and others have put into it, the chart and the block of four are only another way of putting a bit of excitement into a season.
I'm not knocking it (I look at it every week to chart our progress), but it only tells a narrow tale.
I don't want to put words into Waterdude's mouth, but it seems the answer he was given missed the point of his question. The fact is, the points progress of one club is meaningless without taking into account the progress of all the rival clubs.
Currently, only Arsenal are on target to hit the high 80's on an extrapolation of points gained so far. If all of the other usual suspects continue to drop points at the rate they have so far then it's likely that a significantly lower points haul will achieve the higher places.
Of course, we can't predict the future and we don't know whether or not the likes of City will get their fingers out eventually, but that's the beauty of the game and one of the reasons you can get fooled by mathematics alone.

What it boils down to is that no matter where we are on that chart, everyone else except Arsenal is still below us.

 

Don't anger the chart Saint

 

I agree saint, it is all for a bit of fun.

It's nothing much more than a way of saying don't panic when we lose and see that form is more than a consecutive run of games won or lost.

i'll bet you though 4th will not be far off 70 points and i think will be within one game of it (+/-3 points)

 

Since the table is purely points based, couldn't you just look at the league table and their fixture lists to see how others are doing? We don't need to to see their 'blocks' etc.

Understand your point though

 

Well exactly- that's my point, but I didn't want to insinuate that the whole exercise is futile. It's a good bit of fun and a way of analysing results in greater depth rather than just looking at league position (which is the only thing that really matters).

As for the 70pt threshold for 4th- I'm not sure about that this season, it's hard to tell with so many of the expected top teams being so inconsistent. It's only guesswork, but it looks like there's going to be a more even spread of points than there has been for a while.

Anyway, it all adds to the interest- it's just great that we're actually involved in it in a serious way -so far at least.

 

It is a bit of fun but it also offers perspective too.

Teams being hit and miss would surely make the anticipated points target lower rather than higher? However, as as been discussed in other threads, aim for the sky and failure will still see an achievement, aim for an target deemed acceptable and fail and you end up nowhere

 

Isn't that what I said?
I'm certainly not suggesting that we lower our ambition, only that the required total might not be as high as it has for the past few seasons.

 

Sorry, thought you were saying the season wouldn't be as straight forward as previous years; ie more OR less points than normal

 

Nope, I was just thinking about mito's guess that 4th would still require 70 points.
I'm just thinking that with the points being spread the way they currently are, high 60's might do it. Still only guesswork though, who knows what'll happen over the next few months?

 

I'm sticking to eight points per block to give us 76

 

bet you its be around the 70 point mark. there's no question history clearly points to it.

 

so lets say i took utd:

20 points after 12 games.

(70-20)/(38-12) - 1.923 points per game for 70 = 7.672 points out of 12 or in other words easy to get 4th as well.

equally

28 points after 12 games

(70-28)/(38-12) = 1.6153 points per games OR 6.46 points.

Of I could extrapolate a table of potential results per team per game and say at what point for example arsenal would reach a stage of being able to lose or draw half their games for the rest of the year and still reach 70 points.

For LFc that would be very simply (given 3 results possible per game means i'd have to write more complex algorithm) we would just about have to win the next 7 games to then be able to toss about for the rest of the season.

so i don't really see the point to going to that trouble then common sense tells me if we go on a run of 7 games won in a row we'll be right up there.

If we just go win the next 3 games i'll be happy, anything else and its not good enough.

 

Fortunately for you I'm not a betting man.

Seriously, you could well be right- I just think there's a chance that 68, 69 could do it. I think it's happened twice in the last 5 or 6 seasons, but I'm too idle to research it.

 

I think one of the times was us actually.

 

Changed your name again, Bluff?
You know how easily confused I am by such subterfuge.

 

BCR.... add to that 'Merican, don't think it could be anyone else! I apparently asked very late on Saturday after being out and about.

 

It's only because it was so obvious I wasn't fooled.

Be careful what you ask for after a long night on the razz.

 

I objected to it

 

Did you, I didn't go back on after I saw my post. Why would you object?

 

It makes him sound like a type of sandwich.