CB Fry

I don't need to read whatever it is you have rage-typed, as I understood the opening post of the thread, at first glance, right from the off. You've admitted that you didn't (apparently it's "impossible") but that's your issue not mine.

Needs more bold font and CAPITALS and underlines sweetheart.

At least you're taking it well.

All there on the thread. Some of us understood it at first glance. Others, let's call them you, started blathering on about how someone predicting one or two points from five games doesn't, er, know how many points you get for a draw. Or, when the phrase "available points" is used, it already includes points available for a draw. Bless x x

Well done on getting there in the end. I'm proud of you.

Its not me that looks at a prediction of one and a half points from 5 tough games and interprets it as "this person doesn't know how many points you get from a draw". Really not that complicated.

Like I say, you're massively over thinking it.

I think you are just massively massively over thinking it. 5 difficult games, 15 points up for grabs, but predict to get maybe one or two points - ie two draws at best. I don't see what you doing Pythagoras routine is adding to that prediction - it's a perfectly sound guess - 15 points but we'll likely get 10% of those points. Makes perfect sense. For the other end of the scale - the "easier games" - again 15 points up for grabs, but it make an assumption we'll get 9 points from them. 3 wins. Maybe two wins, three draws. That ballpark, 60% of the points available. Again, makes perfect sense. So far this season (including yesterday now) we've got 38% of the available points, this predictor (created before yesterday) assumes we'd get 35% of the remaining points. So if anything it is on the pessimistic side, but it's a perfectly sound set of predictions, and even with this pessimistic prediction it bottoms out that we are going to stay up. All makes perfect sense.

Sorry this makes no sense to me. If a predictor looks at say 5 tough games and comes back with a forecast of 1.5 points for those games then that means in reality that the forecaster thinks we are likely to draw one or maybe two of those five games. You don't need a separate and additional "likelihood of a draw" calculator on top. Just utterly pointless when the work is already done: five tough games, 1.5 points: we probably won't win any but we might draw one or two. Done. Pretty simple and obvious to me. I genuinely don't understand what you don't understand.

Mad for it.

Let's call it a draw and all go home.

You might as well put the league table up, we're home and dry.

Feels like our best available first eleven. Happy with that.

Feels fanciful to me, and based almost entirely on the fact that Norwich just so happened to win yesterday. If Leeds win then that goes a long way to helping their relegation fears and further fucks over Newcastle. A draw makes it more likely that they both stay up (because Leeds aren't going down) than it makes it likely that they both go down. Newcastle to lose every time.

Leeds and Newcastle are not both going to go down this season, that's a pointless hope. Leeds to win convincingly please. Newcastle getting zero points is what we should want a) as Saints fans and b) as people who f**king hate Newcastle now

Glad you have now described it as a city (which it is) rather than a small town (which it isn't).

You've never been to Newcastle then. But nice try.

Pretty twattish thing to say unless he truly thinks that thousands of people who have Asthma or Liver disease were all just about to drop down dead anyway in 2020 or 2021.

You can see Pep wants JWP to marry his daughter.

Absolutely insane that they've been allowed to go. Never have a team so deserved to be relegated.

But it doesn't do that. For a start the estimated final points tally around 17 points which is an impossibility to achieve with wins only and no draws. Secondly it clearly clusters games by difficulty, and assumes in some cases we will get a point or two from some clusters of games. Which can only be achieved by drawing them. For example: one and a half points from Man C/Man U/Chelsea/Spurs/Liverpool suggests we, at best, will draw two, therefore winning none. Which feels fair enough. So it's not really thinking about wins and draws per se, its just doing the old SaintsWeb favourite of "I reckon we'll get 5 points from the next six games" routine and extrapolating it across half a season. It doesn't actually say we are going to win or draw any specific match.

You don't half come out with a load of old shit sometimes.

Recent results have made me much more confident - we need about 12 points from 17 games, so even a horrendous drop in form to Norwich/Watford levels should see us stay up. By the time we play Leeds in April I'd hope we've got most of what we need. The final tally feels like it is going to be pretty low this year. Newcastle staying up with 33 points or something.

Except, obviously, it is nothing of the sort. Calm down.

Except, it's not. It's a considered piece with appropriate inputs from those involved and/or those representing those involved. The Athletic is no tabloid. Yours is a tabloid trash reaction to it, though.