S5M4: Palace & the Pink Glasses

Before the Monday night match, much was made of the anomalous number of home wins this season. Without wanting to blow me own trumpet too much, I'd noticed that over the last 2 weeks, I spoke to Jermain Defoe about the probability of this lasting, versus a regression to the mean, and he told me that for every away win, it made a home win twice as likely the next time around. Of course, I didn't mention it, and now it's easy to be smart after the fact, but I'd never lie to you lovely folk.

Palace were the only team to take advantage of playing at home this weekend, with a late rifled winner. Therefore, I'm going all Home wins for the rest of the season now, in the old red-black roulette thing. Although, it's totally different, mathswise.

The other thing I noticed from this week is that Gooners are an delusional optimistic lot. As you'll have seen from the first week of the season, there are a lot of Arsenal fans who play this game. To a (wo)man this weekend, they all went for an Arsenal win. Nevermind the fact that we've been rubbish in front of goal this season, or that Liverpool have yet to concede. Nevermind that we haven't scored at home in ages, excluding the WBA game, where they really couldn't have cared less. Nah, let's all go Red. The smarter ones - those without the bias - saw 2 flawed teams and plumped for a draw. Well done. Fortunately, Man Utd fans, the next largest contingent don't get to gloat 'cos they suffered the exact same fate. Liverpool fans can gloat, 'cos they're all pessimists anyway, so refused to back their team.

In other news, Bournemouth are the new Blackpool. Cracking good fun, only ruined by Sam Allardyce being a guest on MOTD. Watford have found a cure for insomnia apparently. City are great and Chelsea rode their luck a little - but I think that's their blip over.

Let's get statty:

This week, 28 people played
Most popular prediction: Man Utd WIN (28/28)
Most disputed predictions: Watford vs Southampton & Norwich vs Stoke (7-10-11 split) & Leicester vs Spurs (10-11-7 split)

Highest odds: Ryan Wain (13, 420/1)
Lowest odds: Sam Ruback (1214/1 - pipped me by 1)
Average odds: 4471/1

Best predictor: Stan Collymore (6/10)
Worst predictors: Zoe Daniels & David Silverman (2/10)
Average score: 4.04/10

Best predicted result: Palace WIN (25/28)
Worst predicted result: Man Utd vs Newcastle DRAW & Bournemouth WIN (0/28)

Swing: Defoe's equaliser for Sunderland left 24 people cursing

Everybody's results:

And for the first time this season, the Leadeboard! For those new to the game, or those with memories that fail after a few months, the qualification criterion for the leaderboard is having played >2/3 of available weeks (ie this week, you must have played all 3 weeks). This is to ensure that it reflects consistent quality and safeguards against players having a brilliant opening and then never coming back.

So, newbie Nick Jones goes straight to the top with a commanding lead. The next thing to mention is the poor start from the statistical models, and finally, a warm welcome back to Ryan Wain - it's as if you'd never left (please don't leave me again x)

This week's predictions:

Newcastle vs Arsenal - ARSENAL

Aston Villa vs Sunderland - SUNDERLAND

Bournemouth vs Leicester - DRAW

Chelsea vs Crystal Palace - CHELSEA

Liverpool vs West Ham - LIVERPOOL

Man City vs Watford - MAN CITY

Stoke vs WBA - STOKE

Spurs vs Everton - EVERTON

Southampton vs Norwich - SOUTHAMPTON

Swansea vs Man Utd - SWANSEA

Total odds: 2885/1 (PaddyPower)

Good luck guys, and anyone who hasn't done the quick survey in the "Reminders" tab in the top, please do!

S5M3: Sergi o' Love

Let's start with the obvious. Sergio Agüero is a ridiculously good footballer. He's like Alexis (and I love me some Alexis) but more deadly in front of goal. The payoff is that his hamstrings are made out of real appealable cheese, but watching him turn Terry et al into an entire circus of clowns in the first 20 minutes on Sunday stirred something inside me. He's been one of my favourite players in the league for many years now, and I genuinely think that he could stay fit, he'd be talked about in Messi/Ronaldo terms. He also seems to not be a total Terry Vulgaris, or even a semi-Jeremy Hunt in the way so many footballers seem to be. I reckon after the final whistle on Sunday, he went straight to the local Co-op (wants his money to go to a community, not an evil no-Ribena stocking corporation), bought a load of steaks, and then went to his local old-age home and put on the best Asado this side of the Rio Plate for orphans and widows. He seems that kind of a chap.

Man City then, eh? They've decided to win the league this year, and nobody's going to stop them. Nobody, except the Tinkerman, who has turned Leicester into a maelstrom of attacking verve and defensive,  er....well, they ain't playing catenaccio, that's for sure. Completing the 100% crew are the mutually uninspiring northern Red giants...each holding a pair of scrappy 1-0 wins. Everton, like Man City are rediscovering their form of 2 years ago, with a cracking result away at Southampton. Spurs spurs'd it up (1 striker, no defence, gonna be another cracker of a season at the Lane) and Sunderland are already relegated. They really are shocking, and any team who fails to beat them Home & Away needs to take a good look at themselves. Arsenal will now lose both games - wait and see.

In that vein, Gooner-bogey team Swansea also look quite tasty this year - I'd argue they're even more fairytaley than Bournemouth. Schteve still hasn't managed to eradicate the Carver cobwebs on the Newcastle training ground. A brief mention too for Aleksander Mitrovic, who I ummed & ah'd over getting into my FF team - couldn't afford him, but massively regret this, even though he would for sure be costing me points. He's a basket case in the spirit of former Geordie legend T. Ketsbaia, and I'm loving his work so far. Finally, Arsenal continued their streak of 2-1 victories over Crystal Palace, and Coquelin was lucky to stay on the pitch - none of his fouls were that bad, but when you've been warned, and warned again, and then warned once more.....well, I was expecting the worst.

I was wrong. The worst came the next day when newspaper subs tried to force the words "Coq" and "hard" into every single article. Kill me now.

Behind the scenes, I've also been busy here. You'll notice the top right tab now says "Reminders". If you click it, you'll see a short questionnaire that allows you to 1) let me know the best way to remind you and 2) tells you how to make sure you never miss a week & therefore guarantee you'll be on the leaderboard at season end. Bespoke service - you're very welcome.

The second thing is the launch of the new Impossibilitee Twitter account - @ImposAccyAccy. Annoyingly, some Twitterbot owns @Impossibilitee, and the hilariously punny @Impossibilitweet is too long. So yeah, separation of church & state and all that - you can still catch me at my personal twitter @ccdaniels65, although, be warned, I use Twitter in phases, tell terrible jokes and talk a load of nonsense. But you know that already...

Finally, welcome to our latest player, Dagmar. Yo Abbott's been spreading the Impossibiligospel I see. So here's the referral scheme: for every 5 new players you bring to the game who play a whole season, you get.....a signed (by me) photo of Mark Lawrenson. With Moustache. So...yeah, keep them coming...

Let's get statty:

This week, 29 people played
Most popular predicted result: Liverpool WIN (26/29)
Most disputed result: Watford vs WBA (13-10-5 split)

Highest odds: Zoe Daniels (11077/1 - troll. Keep this up and you get your own line)
Lowest odds:  Sam Ruback (1100/1)
Average odds: 4395/1

Best predictor: Nick Jones (7/10)
Worst predictors: Andrew Feneley's Mum, Marc Salomon & Ryan Wain (2/10)
Average score: 4.64/10

Best predicted result: Liverpool WIN (26/29)
Worst predicted result: Everton WIN (0/29)

Swing: Mame Biram Diouf's equaliser for Stoke - 22 of us had Spurs to win.

Everyone's results:

The FinkTank failed to predict for the Friday night game - so probably lost a point as I'm pretty confident that mathematically, Man Utd would have been favourites to win. 

To this week's predictions:

Man Utd vs Newcastle - MAN UTD
Crystal Palace vs Aston Villa - CRYSTAL PALACE
Leicester vs Spurs - DRAW
Norwich vs Stoke - NORWICH
Sunderland vs Swansea - SWANSEA
West Ham vs Bournemouth - WEST HAM
WBA vs Chelsea - CHELSEA
Everton vs Man City - MAN CITY
Watford vs Southampton - WATFORD
Arsenal vs Liverpool - ARSENAL

Total odds: 1215/1 (PaddyPower)

So, that's it for this week. Remember, fill in the survey & do the predos. Good luck!

S5M2: Generous to a Fault

So...turns out I didn't really miss football all that much. Should have stuck with the cricket.

The season kicked off with a dull ass game where Rooney ballsed up the opportunity to earn me shedloads of FF captain points (yeah...I'm doing this year for the first time in 10 years....hit me up with some codes and I'll show you why I don't do FF). Then the promoted teams all failed to start off with a win, each conceding later goals. Ranieri's return to a less-racist Leicester was a bundle of fun. Ya know, like Chelsea used to be with Zola, before a sour-faced Portuguese bloke did the ultimate deflection tactic and blamed a doctor for his team's point dropping. Well, you know what, Jose? You're on the list.

This list is an original. I definitely didn't just create it for a prop based om the previous paragraph. Even if I did, it's just a written Top 3 of a long list in my head. I'm quite a vengeful person, but am seeing someone, thanks for the concerns.
And no-one  forge my handwriting on stuff!

Petr Cech failed to win a trophy for the 1st time in 4 games, unless it was the trophy for worst debut. He made 2 poor calls, although they were compounded by poor defensive play all round. West Ham now have a new cult hero, who is younger than Pokemon. Yeah.

Liverpool didn't lose 6-1 at Stoke, which is much less funny, and actually Coutinho'd in a winner in the only way Coutinho knows how, and Schteve did alreet against an actual Dutchman at whatever St James' Park is now known as. Then in the late game, Man City recorded the most comfortable result of the weekend, which is baffling as EVERYBODY has written City off this year. I don't know why either.

In prediction terms, we were all very kind to Bournemouth, who we thought would get off to a cracker. Now, I've seen them play maybe twice, so this was probably due to the whole romance of the situation, and maybe slightly influenced by the Sherwood in the other dugout. Tim's Happy Face makes me sad.

Let's get statty:

This week, 29 people played

Most predicted result: Arsenal WIN (29/29)

Most disputed result: Stoke vs Liverpool (7-10-12 split)

Highest odds: Aron Kleiman (8299/1)

Lowest odds: Admiral Circumspect himself, Sam Ruback (799/1)

Average odds: 2841 /1

Best predictor: Menachem Grunewald (6/10)

Worst predictor: Reigning Champion Josh Gaon (1/10)

Average score: 3.52/10

Best predicted result: Man City WIN (26/29)

Worst predicted result: West Ham WIN (0/29)

Goal-swing: Mahrez's (eventual) winner for Leicester - shafted 16 people banking on the draw. Although it was to go 3-0 up so not sure if this counts technically.

Everyone's results:

No leaderboard this week, or next week. This feature returns after Matchday 3.

To this week's predictions:

Aston Villa vs Man Utd - MAN UTD

Southampton vs Everton - SOUTHAMPTON

Sunderland vs Norwich - NORWICH

Swansea vs Newcastle - DRAW

Spurs vs Stoke - SPURS

Watford vs WBA - WATFORD

West Ham vs Leicester - WEST HAM

Crystal Palace vs Arsenal - ARSENAL

Man City vs Chelsea - MAN CITY

Liverpool vs Bournemouth - LIVERPOOL

Totals odds: 1,684/1 (Paddypower)

Good luck guys!

S5M1: Impossibiliback with a 4 Year Retrospective Analysis Bang

Well hello there good folks of Impossibililand.

It's not been so long since I last sat down to type a blog post, which is in part because of the truncated close season, and mainly due to my late completion of the FA Cup stuff. Even so, how's your break been? Go anywhere nice? A little jaunt to SouthEast Asia perhaps, or maybe 2 weeks touring thr Antipodes. The old Coast-Coast US road trip's also been popular this summer. The old Amsterdam tournament seems to have been a victim of these far-flung commercial trips.

And new shiny toys? Man Utd and Liverpool fans certainly have a few to marvel at before eventually discarding when the next sale starts at Players R'Us. Us Gooners are pretty happy with our recycled gift from West London, who is currently going at a trophy a game. Obviously to maintain this record, we can't use him in the league until lifting-the-trophy-day which is a minor issue, but I'm sure Arsene Knows. Spurs have bought some defenders and now Poch will get the sack for not following the Blanchflower ideology of glorious failure. Southampton have continued their (successful) policy of going Dutch and will be looking at improving on last season's cracking effort. In East Landan, a crazy Croat cult hero will be looking to end the tenure at Upton Park with a bang (trying hard not to crowbar a bubble burst joke in here....).

Leicester City have lost a manager and a midfield leader, and Palaca have pulled off some blinding signings, including Cabaye. The newbies - well....I reckon they're gonna struggle from the off. No signings I've seen there to get the pulse racing. Finally, Newcastle fans have got their wish and had a few great signings. Now they just need "Schteve" to turn into "Wayey Steve" and they'll be sorted.

That's enough previewing, 'cos I now want to turn to the past. I've sat down over the summer with all the databases from each of the last 4 seasons to see if we can see a few things. The first thing to say is that there are minor gaps in the S3 database so these numbers are subject to change if I ever go back through the individual blog comments. The second thing is to say that the "Historical Leaderboard", "FA Cup Game" & "Historical Stats" tabs at the top of the page are now up-to-date, so have a look there. Now to the meat of the matter...

So, looking back at the last 4 years:

In total, 59 people have played Impossibilitee since inception
S1: 34 people - S2: 35 people - S3: 34 people - S4: 26 people

The average score over 4 seasons is 4.66 as a season average
S1: 4.69 - S2: 4.28 - S3: 4.97 - S4: 4.70

The highest weekly score is 10 (Fink Tank, EuroClubIndex - same matchday in S3).
The lowest weekly score is 0 (Will O'Doherty S1 & David Silverman S4)

The best scoring week was S3M30 (7.23 average) and the worst was S4M20 (2.79).

Now to look at who's played - I thought I'd divide it by Club supported...

So ~1/3 of players are Arsenal fans (likely driven by family), whilst Man Utd & Spurs feature highly too. The Unknowns are the random people who've come once or twice but are uncontactable to find out now. Neutral is the statistical models (ECI, WSC & FT).

So which segment predicts the best?

So over 4 years of data (ie, increasing the power of the study), the statistical models predict better than any human players. Interestingly, PNE (or Mark Lawrenson) is also ranked pretty highly. He does get a lot of unfair stick, but this is most likely driven by his nonsense chat to justify his scores - the predictions themselves aren't too bad.

Man Utd fans win their first silverware since the Moyes era by being the best of the rest. Stan Collymore (Villa) also ranks highly. Though it pains me to say it, Chelsea are next best, followed by the statistical anomaly that is our lone Watford fan. At least Arsenal are better than the delusional Scousers, and St Totteringham is alive and well in Impossibililand.

Looking at a week-by-week analysis, we can see that S3 was a high point in weekly participation, and also marginally improved average scores. However, it's fair to say that there's no real progress year on year. Sort it out guys, we're not learning!

Actually, having reflected on that in the time it took to press return twice, that's clearly not true. S3 + S4 are much improved on S1 + S2. More data needed. 

The final leaderboards are up-to-date on the tabs, but looking at leaderboard range (from winner to lowest scorer on final leaderboard) , we could argue that Impossibilitee is a microcosm of football and society in general...the gap keeps widening

S1: 0.99 - S2: 1.2 - S3: 1.15 - S4: 1.23

So now we come to the big one...who is the best predictor? If we go by Silverware, it has to be Josh Gaon with 2 FA Cups and a League title to his name. However, I've not included FA Cup games in this analysis so going by league, I've created the following 3 tables:

Best of the Rest:

This table contains anyone who has played in an infrequent/ad hoc fashion or has only played one season so not enough data exists to give an idea of form/overall quality. Couple of name changes in this piece - Joe Abbott has become YO to avoid confusion with Jonny Ainley - you can find your own name. Similar, all the DD and DW have been rebranded. Don't know who RG, BEN and DANIEL are. LG, CTW, MPN87 and KM are all with Ryan Wain I believe - please pass this on if you know who these relate to!

Column 2 is Games played.

Bobby C is of course our guest star Sir Bobby Charlton (gent). SC is Stan Collymore and MK is Martin Keown - both of whom have been dropped from the game for inconsistent predictions (often incomplete games weeks).

Now to Table 2: Those who play regular over the last 4 years, but not enough to qualify for the leaderboard under standard rules (>2/3 available weeks)

So the first thing to comment on here is that of the consistent players, the Fink Tank is the highest scoring. In due course, this will likely become the dominant prediction model. The second thing to mention is that this is roughly split down the middle. Josh Gaon and above fit nicely into the upper half of the next leaderboard, so could shake things up if they play regularly (and continue current scoring) next year. The lower half are a little more disparate. Most of these guys have missed a full season, so are disadvantaged by the application of the same rule to create the final table...

THE 4 YEAR IMPOSSIBILITEE TABLE - for those who have played >2/3 games over a 4 years period 

So, as could be predicted by the information above, the modellers (and Lawro) do very well. EuroClubIndex is the best predictor by a significant amount. The best human predictor is Sam Ruback - who has notoriously low odds on a regular basis. It's almost like slow and steady wins the race or some other fable.

Special mention to the commitment from Sam & Josh Daniels. As a final note, I know that 38 x 4 is 152. 4 game weeks in 4 years have been dropped due to not enough fixtures being played as to not distort the season averages. I know this is controversial, I know some disagree with this policy. Too bad. That's how it is for now.

As a special treat, I've also produced a confusing graph showing the season-by-season trends for all players who have played in all 4 seasons:

ECI's standout S3 gives it the commanding lead, whilst JT pretty much threw his toys out the pram at the beginning of S4, which is a shame as regression to the mean would likely have come in to play, bringing his green line up somewhere to the middle.

I'm also going to work on a couple of Impossibilialternate universes during the season, to see how results would differ with some other scoring systems. We'll leave all that for an international break.

So, to this week's predictions:

Man Utd vs Spurs - MAN UTD

Bournemouth vs Aston Villa - BOURNEMOUTH

Everton vs Watford - EVERTON

Leicester vs Sunderland - SUNDERLAND

Norwich vs Crystal Palace - CRYSTAL PALACE

Chelsea vs Swansea - CHELSEA

Arsenal vs West Ham - ARSENAL

Newcastle vs Southampton - DRAW

Stoke vs Liverpool - LIVERPOOL

WBA vs Man City - MAN CITY

Total odds: 1362/1 (Paddypower)

It's good to be back folks. Good luck for the season. To old friends, please join again, it'd be a pleasure to have you back and competing. And if anyone has a friend, colleague, relative etc who would be interested to play, then please...the more the merrier. The rules are in a tab at the top - direct them thatta way.

It's back. Let's make this the highest scoring season yet!