Yes but you think all teams are equal and each game is as hard to predict as a simple heads or tails of a coin toss
There is no doubt that at the tail end of the season there are usually more results going against form.Probably the result of sides with their backs against the wall playing a team with a safe upper half billet and nothing to play for.If the current situation with the whole of the bottom half persists we will see a rash of six pointers involving sides like West Brom and Swansea who we would have assumed would not be involved.Makes it interesting though.
No, I don't think all teams are equal, nor have I ever said they were. And it isn't what I think, it's what the statistics show to be the case. Since you obviously don't believe me, I suggest you find out for yourself about the relative roles of skill and fortune in deciding the outcome of football matches. If you take the trouble to do that, what you will learn (among other things) is that the "better" team wins only 50% of the time, and 50% of goals scored depend on the intervention of fortune rather than purely on skill.
ok, fulham away, we're well overdue a result there. their home form hasn't been great this season, i'm confident we can go there and get a result in april.
If you look at stats I'm sure Robbie is right and the chances of a side winning a given match maybe around 50/50. But as Munky says luck shouldn't come into it as it doesn't really exist. If a team hits the post is that luck that it didn't go in? No, it is just the shot was not accurate. The only thing that could be seen as luck is refs decisions as these are more down to their interpretation of the rules and not necessarily effected by how a team plays. For example it could be seen as unlucky Villa conceding a pen for what many people thought was a dive.
But surely that depends on how much better a team is? It must be a range, because I very much doubt that Man City has a 50% chance of winning against, I don't know, Yeovil. I would imagine it is closer to 90%. And then if you put Man City against, say, Chelsea, who I think Man City are better than, but only just, I would have thought the chances of Man City winning is something like 35%, with a draw being something like 40% and a Chelsea win being 25%. In other words, while your stat might be right, it is completely meaningless because it tells you nothing about the teams actually playing the match in question.
If you read Robbie's post, this is not what he says - he says the chance of the better team winning is 50%. I.e., they could also lose or draw. I think the luck point isn't necessarily quite as rigid as this. The question is, could the player, with more skill, have put the ball 5cm to the left, resulting in the ball going in the net? The answer is of course no. Take free kicks. The best freekick takers - take Beckham - won't be aiming for a specific cm. Beckham was aiming at an area in the top corners of the goal, c. 1-2sqm. The skill is being able to accurately get the into that 1-2sqm with any semblance of regularity. Luck comes in because very minor things - the spin of the ball, slight misplacement of the foot, wind currents, etc., will affect the shot in ways we can't predict. Yes, if we knew exactly what these were, we would be able to accurately aim to within millimetres (just like the technology for a targeted rocket), but we can't in football. That is where luck comes in - it's the taking a chance on variables that the human body can't measure on its own. Luck also comes into play with reactions - a player's reaction time varies within the game and their response also varies, so this is luck. Errors on the opponents part are also luck - not for the player making the error, that is fault, but it is for the opposition team because it is something out of their control.
One of the most interesting aspects of football analytics is the development of more precisely defined concepts in terms of which to describe what happens during a game of football. As I have said before, it's rather like physics starting with the everyday concept of speed (distance divided by time), then discovering that the concept you need to use (i.e. the concept that actually has the greatest explanatory value) is velocity. You start off with clear examples of a fortuitous event, e.g. a particular goal (Eto'o's first against Man Utd at the weekend for example), analyse what makes them fortuitous (e.g. a manifestly unplanned, unintended, uncontrolled element to them), apply the concept to other cases, refine it where necessary, and so on. It's a fact that football involves a far greater element of the unplanned and uncontrolled than other ball games.
With regards to what I said about Robbie, I was just saying I have no reason to doubt his stats. But I disagree with you on the luck thing, what you state is to do with accuracy not luck. To kick the ball in a slightly different way, more power/ spin etc is a choice of the player and in their control so it is to do with accuracy not luck. I find it annoying when a commentator says "he was unlucky there" after a player hits the post or hits it wide. No he is not unlucky it was just not accurate. Reaction time can vary due to tiredness and concentration but again that is not luck, that is down to many other things lack of fitness, lack of concentration, their mental state etc. Again not luck.
Fair enough Really comes down to what you perceive as luck. Personally I wouldn't necessarily regard "unplanned" actions as luck more to do with accuracy. It almost seems like religion vs science. Some may think events happen due to a greater power and others believe is is just down to science.
But this is the point, it is not their choice. The differences are so minute that the player does not have a choice, because it is not something they can control. The best players make it as much of a choice as humanly possible, but the tiniest little difference in muscle movement, connection with the ball, movement of air particles, etc., is not something that, humanly, we are capable of anticipating. If we played with robots, I would agree. But we don't.
In which case surely any shot is luck? You claim that they have a certain degree of accuracy and choice in what they do, so if they hit a shot and it goes in because they had exactly the right amount of spin and power on the ball is that luck?
To go back to the freekick: (1) Beckham has the choice of technique that he uses (2) Beckham has the choice of the area that he aims for Those are both choices, which with training make you a better player as you get closer and closer. If Beckham makes the wrong choice, then I agree it is not luck. If he hits the ball incorrectly or not how he wanted to, then I agree it is not luck. But there is a limit to a player's accuracy. An amateur footballer's limit is, say, that if he aimed a football from 20 metres away, he would be able to get it through two cones about four metres apart reasonably frequently. A professional footballer's limit is that they would be able to get it through two cones two metres apart. For the very best players the cones would be one metre apart. But that would be the limit - the players can't control the ball beyond those parameters, therefore where it goes within those cones is down to luck. A robot could do it pinpoint accurately, humans, even Messi, can't. So luck is that difference. To take another example. If I was to take a 30 yard free-kick against my mate in goal and it sailed beautifully into the top right corner, I wouldn't say "bloody hell, look how much skill I have" (well, I might, but only to piss off my mate...), rather I would think "bloody hell, that was lucky, normally it goes miles over". That is luck. Yes, skill reduces the level of "luckiness", but human physical capabilities means that skill cannot reduce luck to zero.
Yes, to a greater or lesser extent. The skill is being able to do it repeatedly with unerring accuracy. Yaya Toure, is he scores a free kick on a given instance, a contributor to him scoring in that instance was luck. But given that he scores them very frequently, luck was a small part as compared to, say, me. In which case it would be very lucky. So lucky, I would have wished I'd bought a lottery ticket instead and not wasted it on a bloody free kick!
Surely if your intention was to hit it into the top corner then that is not luck, just normally you lack the accuracy and skill. Think we will have to agree to disagree on this one.
Not so much a question of what you "perceive" as being luck, as how useful (from a descriptive and explanatory point of view) it is to classify events in this or that way. Regarding "unplanned", in the case of Eto'o's goal, the ball hitting Carrick's boot was clearly unplanned. The question of the limits of attainable accuracy do clearly bear on the question of whether an event could be said to be planned or not. If an event exceeds the limits of attainable accuracy, then it is certainly unplanned, but an event which is within those limits may nevertheless be unplanned. These sorts of questions are exactly what one needs to think about! As I see it, there are two "levels" at which stats are useful. The first is merely descriptive. If you look on this board after a match, you often get the impression people were watching different games. An example would be one person saying Bradley Johnson suddenly started to pass the ball far more accurately than usual in the Hull game, while another says he was his usual inaccurate self. The answer is: look at the stats and see whether BJ's pass completion rate in that game was significantly above his average. Many of the most opinionated posters on here say things that are simply not borne out by the stats. The second level is explanatory, i.e. providing insight not just into what happens but why. For example, understanding how fortune enters into a game allows you to devise ways of minimising your susceptibility to it. For instance, many goals are the result of deflections from defenders sticking a leg out; these are often circumstances in which the goalkeeper is best placed to prevent a goal. There are safe ways to block a shot, and unsafe ways, etc.
