SaintBobby

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.

My guess? About 5.

I have no idea what you’re screaming about. The post at the top of this thread only assumes points from wins. This has been pointed out to you endless times and it is there in black and white in the original post. You might notice this by him using the term “chance of winning”. If the chance of Saints winning in each of our remaining games is 50%, we are going to get more than 1.5 points per game over the season. Because we will draw some. The original post gives that guy’s prediction of the number of points will we likely get from winning matches. He forgot to include predicted points from drawing matches. So, the total will be higher. I appreciate that you consider the chance of drawing “isn’t a f***ing thing”. But it is. And, in the real world, you add together the points you get from wins and draws. So, unless you believe that the chance of drawing “isn’t a f***ing thing”, then in the real world of predictions you should add together the points you might reasonably expect from wins to those you might expect from draws. This will give you a higher number and explains why the OP came up short - even on his own numbers. He only calculated likely returns from wins. He didn’t factor in draws. There are likely to be some draws. You add these expected value from draws - worth 1 point each - to the expected value from wins (worth 3 points each) to get your estimated final total. So, once again, to put it plainly…if you think our “chances of winning” at Brentford away are 50%, which the OP does, the expected value of that match isn’t just 1.5 points…you have to add on to that expected value the chance of drawing. So, probably, say, another 0.2 points or so. To help you finally grasp this…if, instead of playing a match, a die was rolled at the start of the game, with a 1 or 2 meaning “lose”, a 3 or 4 meaning “draw” and a 5 or 6 meaning “win”, you have a 67% chance of getting some points and an expected rate of return of 1.33 points. If you only consider the “chances of winning”, as our original poster did, you’ll put the “chances of winning” at 33% and the expected points at just 1. But that’s wrong. There’s also a chance of drawing and that boasts it to 1.33. This oversight explains why the OP wrongly (on his own numbers) says he expects us to get fewer points per game in the remaining matches than in those already played. This is simply because he forgot to factor in the points we might reasonably expect to get from draws. And, whether you like it or not, draws are a thing.

Yep. You’ve got it. Despite CB Fry’s bizarre assertion that the chance of drawing “isn’t a f***ing thing”, actually it is. (As those of us on Saturday witnessed!) So, for each match, you could work out our chance of winning it. Multiply that by 3 points. But additionally, we have a chance of drawing it - bolt that on and just work it out as a proportion of 1 point. If every time we play Man City we have a 10% chance of winning that’s worth 0.3 points. If we also have a 20% chance of drawing that’s another 0.2 points. So, at the outset we are expecting to get 0.5 points (obviously, you actually get 3, 1 or 0…but it all averages out in the long run). The original post had the bare bones of a good approach to calculate how many more points we will get this season. But only included points we might expect from winning games. So far, 40% of our points have come from draws. And, despite CB Fry’s claim that this “isn’t a f***ing thing”, it’s pretty likely that we will pick up some more draws in our remaining games. If the original poster had remembered to plug this in, he’d probably have ended up concluding that we will finish the season on about 46 points, not 41 or 42. Because draws count. They are a thing.

😂😂😂😂 Trying to imagine someone attempting a pre match discussion with CB Fry. “What do you think our chances of winning are today, CB?” ”Very good. I’d say over 50%” ”Really, I think we will only get a draw, CB” ”I agree. I also think we’ll draw. That is intrinsic to the model” 😂😂😂

😂😂😂😂 utterly amazing how 10 of our matches have ended in draws if the chance of drawing “isn’t a thing”. What are the odds on that? 😂😂😂😂

Can you read? He isn’t predicting we will take 10% of the points from those tough games. He is predicting we have a 10% “chance of winning” each of them. If you have a really tough run of ten games, where you have a 10% “chance of winning” in each case, how many points would you guess we’d take from those games? (A) 3 points? Or (B) More than 3 points? (I’ll give you a clue. It’s B). So, and this requires some complex division now, if you have a 10% “chance of winning” in a run of just five (rather than ten) tough games what’s the expected points value of those games (to as many decimal places as you like as it’s an expected average value)? Is it: (A) 1.5 points? or (B) more than 1.5 points? (I’ll give you a clue - it’s B). If you can follow this high value, advanced maths, you should be able to work out why the OP has undercalculated our likely points haul from the remaining fixtures. Give it time. It will percolate through soon enough.