I’m an Arsenal fan. It’s often not fun. That’s not a complaint about results. Most teams in the English league pyramid would love to have success like 18-straight Champions Leagues appearances (or whatever the number is). It’s just that the actual games themselves often make for stressful viewing because the Gunners rarely put teams away, […]
Why does having a good model matter? Well one reason is that so we don’t waste time. There’s a piece over at “Saturdays On the Couch” about Borussia Monchengladbach and the sizable outperformance of their expected goals (ExpG) total for the 12-13 and 13-14 seasons in the Bundesliga. Overall it’s a really good read. Seriously, […]
Sure it’s nice to be able to take data sets of 1000 variables and 100,000 observations and do meaningful calculations, but that doesn’t mean finding interesting information is solely the domain of complex algorithms.These are plots that are generated from nothing more than the season’s worth of league results (minus one week and one game) […]
First, I hate myself for having done this. But sometime after the Patriots were first caught deflating their balls, Sharp Football Analysis released a trilogy (also here and here) of pieces about the statistical (un)likelihood of how (in)frequently the Patriots fumbled the football. The presupposition being that an underinflated ball is easier to hold on […]
To this point in the season, the Chicago Fire have played more minutes against 10 men than any other team in MLS1. And it’s probably not luck.The Fire can run out a front line that, oh, challenges the positional awareness of MLS defenses. David Accam is fast, like very. Quincy Amarikwa and Joevin Jones are […]
After holding Valencia at home 1-1 last Thursday, Rayo Vallecano drew its second consecutive match by the same scoreline over the weekend at Espanyol. From a league standpoint the results were probably only notable for their negative impact on Rayo’s Europa aspirations. They’re now all but dead. From a statistical standpoint, though, the draws represent […]
The last 15 minutes of Arsenal’s annual exercise in handicapping themselves with a couple of extra fixtures were a little nervy. That’s mostly because they were only up one goal but suddenly down a man after referee Pedro Proenca sent off Mathieu Debuchy on a second yellow so soft you could sleep on it (the […]
There’s a post today over at Grantland about the NFL’s attempts to engineer a more interesting extra point. Given that the current success rate hovers right around 99%, the kick is currently a formality.For this preseason the NFL is experimenting with moving the spot of the PAT back to the 15-yard line. So instead of […]
Earlier this month David Ortiz sounded off on the Cubs continually being terrible. He attributed it to playing too many day games. It’s not an unreasonable assertion; plus, after a century of not winning, every remotely plausible theory on why the Cubs can’t win will eventually be formulated.Said Ortiz: “Through the years I’ve talked to […]
Germany goes into this weekend’s World Cup final against Argentina almost a full three years younger on average. That is a ridiculous spread. Yet, as a team, the Germans are somehow vastly more experienced in the international arena.How is that possible?Part of it is how you think about experience. This is sort of a follow-up […]