SaintBobby

did anyone at SMS see this? dead leg sort-of-thing or worse by the looks?

I can't recall exactly, but - to be fair - he wanted more than half of their team (not just 4) and I don't think Cornet was one of them (was he even there at the time?). I'd take Pope, Tarkowski & Cornet probably. So, maybe 2 or 3. Anyway, time has moved on.

Yeah, over a 15 year time span, I guess you expect these things to change. Over 6 months...hmmm....maybe a bit less so....

He's been a good stopgap for sure. Next season he obviously won't be here. Who to go for? (Pope if Burnely go down? Henderson?)

A while back (start of the season) someone did make a case for that. You, I think? It's was quite strange and funny then. Now, it's even funnier tbh. So, thanks for the chuckles!

Didn’t someone work out that last season, it turned out we were safe by January or something crazy? Am looking forward to Turkish popping up and explaining how he wishes 6 Burnley players were in our starting XI (today, that might have been true in fairness)

Burnley 0 Watford 0. A match so dire I think my retinas are permanently scarred.

Classic "got away with that". Still think the win shouldn't deflect from that WTF starting XI. Very, very lucky. Props to Coventry.

Surely make 3 changes right now and reset the team?

Get to half-time and reboot. I've lost track of sub rules...is it 3 and 1 extra if it goes to extra time?

That has been coming. Really poor opening 20 mins.

This is an unnerving start. Hope the major rotation in starting XI doesn't stuff us. Surely, we are free to focus on the cup given the current league situation?

These all seem like good things, but it's nothing to do with "sustainability". Being a home for bats is nice. But not being a home for bats is just as sustainable!

God bless, mate.

It's weird, but not inconceivable. I guess there are v few knock-on effects of a 17 year old signing an extension. Pure speculation - but you can imagine reasons why an extension for Stephens or McCarthy might be better to remain private (most obviously if you don't want other simialr players to get extensions, but also don't want to demotivate those players)

Is this our quietest ever January window? It feels like it. Not that I'm too bothered - I think holding what we have is basically fine.

Cool. Looking forward to next season, I think we will obtain the winning margin in 14 league games. So, that will mean we finish on 42 points, which should be enough to stay up, I think 🤔

Is there a difference between "obtaining the winning margin" and "winning"?

No one denies you get points from wins and draws. We have 15 from wins so far and 10 from draws. The issue is that original post only projected average expected points likely to accrue from wins. You would need to add on to that the points you expect to accrue from draws. Either his "chance of winning" is wrong or his "expected points" are wrong. They can't both be right - unless you think the chance of drawing a match is 0%. He forgot to include the possibility of draws in his projection. That's why his predicted number of points falls short.

That is true on the face of it. If people suddenly put £10m on Saints to win the FA Cup, our odds will shorten. Massively. If these people are just mad (and I guess they would be!) then those shortened odds don't mean we actually have a better chance of winning the cup. But...but...but...by and large people aren't mad. If you think odds shorten and that leads people to place bets on those shortened odds, you could make millions as a bookmaker every day. Somewhere in the noise, there is often a signal. Not always, but sometimes. I think it's still unlikely he will come to Saints, but I do think a big shortening of the odds means it's probably more likely than it was.

He only applied the % chance of winning. Yes, you can get "40% from a 15 point cluster" from wins and draws. You can get 3 points from a 3 game cluster from (a) only draws or (b) only wins. If you're trying to work out how many points you will actually get from a "cluster", you apply the chance that you will win and add on the chance you will draw. He only considered the chance to win. I understood it at one glance from the first post. He was trying to apply %s of likely outcomes to the possible points haul. However, he left out the chance you can draw a match from his %s.

That just isn’t what the original post says. Sure, you can say “I’m glad he’s disregarded draws…a dose of pessimism is helpful”. What just isn’t true is that he included draws in his analysis. He didn’t.

You can’t get 1.5 points at all. You can’t get 1.5 points from draws or from wins. There are no decimal points available. The expected value of a game can be to decimal points though. It reflects a percentage chance and an expected average value. In the original post, he’s factored in the expected value of winning (a 50% chance of winning is worth 1.5…of course, you will actually end up with 3, 1 or 0…but 1.5 is the average expectation at the outset…) but he did not factor in an expected value of drawing. One way to look at is this. You have a ticket. It is worth £300 if we beat Brentford, £100 if we draw with Brentford and £0 if we lose to Brentford. Our chances of beating Brentford are 50%, drawing 25% and losing 25%. What’s the market value of that ticket? The answer is £175 (even though you can’t win £175…you can only win £300, £100 or £0). If you said the answer was £150 that’s because you only factored in the 50% chance of winning £300 and overlooked the chance of a draw and thereby winning £100. That’s what the OP did on expected points. He only factored in the return to a possible win, not the return to a possible draw.

It’s rather amusing for the rest of us, but you might want to stop digging. Everyone else has worked out that the original post doesn’t include draws in its modelling - just an average expected value of the points we could expect from wins. Draws are absent from the model used, not intrinsic it to it as you inaccurately stated. Absent. It only projects a statistical average of points we will get from the original poster’s estimated “chance of winning”. It predicts absolutely no points at all from a chance of drawing. Zero. Everyone else on the thread seems to have grasped this. If you reread the thread again, maybe you will. But if you want to keep digging a deeper hole, I am sure finding it amusing. So thanks.

Deaths reported amongst the crowd at the AFCON match between Cameroon and Comoros. Ghastly stuff. The competition had had its share of farce, but looks like it could now have a horrible tragedy.