Matchday 21 results & Matchday 22 Predictions

A decent weekend of footy I thought, removing my Arsenal hat (and scarf, and replica shirt, and tie, and...never mind). The big "shock" came at the Liberty Stadium, although it wasn't really a shock if I'm honest, and the surprising thing is that only Doron called it!

Torres looked interested for the first time in months, some ginger bloke wound up Wazza, some other ginger bloke "did a Thierry" and Liverpool are still dreadful. I can say that, some of my best mates are Scouse.

My favourite moment of the weekend came in the Monday night game at the DW. Figueroa's amazing handball brought back memories of my 1st year of Sunday league football playing for Pinner U10s. We weren't a great team (thought we weren't bad either) and it was basically run for the co-managers' sons to have a run about. Anyway, one game I was in defence and we were getting beat. We had a corner and I was the last man back - needless to say, when you play junior football on large pitches, corners rarely come to much and this was no exception. They cleared the ball, and inexplicably, on the halfway line, I punched the ball back (at a comfortable heading height). The ref gave the free kick (durrrr) and asked me why I'd done it - totally lied and just told him I'd tried to head it and missed. Apparently it was better to be malcoordinated than to be a cheat. Didn't even get a booking - I don't recall if the opposition manager was waving an imaginary card. I'd love to know if Ol' Maynor gave the same excuse...

Anyway, to the stats:

A better week this week - the average score was 4, so we're moving in the right direction. A welcome too, to a new player, Jonathan Chernick. No beginners' luck for him, with a score of 3, but think of it like a January signing - the lad has until May to acclimatise to the world of English predictions and will be expected to be firing on all cylinders come the new season.

This week, 18 people played

Most popular predicted result: Man City WIN (18/18 or 100% concordance)

Most disputed result: Aston Villa vs Everton (6-6-6 split)

Longest odds: Ryan Wain 4800.2/1

Shortest odds: Will O'Doherty 303/1

Best predictors: Yanik Joshi, Sam Ruback and Doron Salomon (6/10)

Worst predictors: Will O'Doherty, Jonathan Chernick, JT, Josh Benson and Dan Davis (3/10)

Best predicted result: Man City WIN (18/18)

Worst predicted results: Spurs vs Wolves DRAW & Swansea WIN (1/18 - Well done Yanik & Doron)

Villain of the week: No-one scored highly enough for there to be a true villain, but I'm going with Arsene Wenger for his glaring oversight on Sunday. He's not a trainers kind-of-guy. It looks a bit like my dad in exercise gear - stick to the suits in future, son.

Everyone's scores:

To the leaderboard:

Just as a reminder, you need to have played >2/3 of weeks to get on the leaderboard (or 15/21). All those Xmas no shows have cost Ryan and Doron places here - and they'll have to wait a few weeks to get on - next week, Yanik should join too. No massive movers - you could argue that there are 2 distinct mid-table packs forming, but the margins are so small that could all change in one week. Joe Miller still way out ahead, but will that be the case when the 3 above get on the board...

To this week's predictions:

Norwich vs Chelsea - CHELSEA

Everton vs Blackburn - DRAW

Fulham vs Newcastle - NEWCASTLE

QPR vs Wigan - WIGAN

Sunderland vs Swansea - DRAW

Stoke vs WBA - STOKE

Wolves vs Aston Villa - WOLVES

Bolton vs Liverpool - LIVERPOOL

Man City vs Spurs - MAN CITY

Arsenal vs Man Utd - DRAW (not really but I'll never bet on a defeat)

Total odds:12769/1 (Paddypower) - pretty pretty please come in this week...

Predictions in the comments below as per usual, good luck!

Xmas Stats and Matchday 21: Back to the league

Isn't rheumatoid arthritis great!

Well, I don't exactly mean great. Certainly not from my perspective, and definitely not from a sufferer's perspective. However, learning about it for the 93rd time in a week meant that I could use my time to finally sit down and hammer out the stats from the last 5 games.

As my football viewing over Xmas was limited to 23 minutes of Sunderland vs Everton (before I fell asleep), and a few snatched highlights off 101greatgoals, I didn't really feel I was in a position to comment on games, villains etc. It'd have been quite tedious for everyone to have sat through a mega blog post breaking down the stats matchday by matchday. Therefore, I thought I'd synopsise in true F365 style, with my "16 conclusions of the Impossibilitee Xmas"*

• Do you lot need your mothers to get you up in the mornings? I go away for a few short weeks, and without my nagging, numbers dropped by half!
• On that note, those of you who only gave one set of predictions to a blog post with 2 sets of fixtures in it....absolutely baffled! How long would it have taken to do the 2nd set! Complaint over
• All in all, we were rubbish over Xmas. The average score was a smidgen over 4. By contrast, the season average is 4.66. Does this suggest that the fixture congestion throws up crazy results, or are we all just a bit jaded?
• Boxing Day was the worst matchday of the season to date, with an average score of 3. Even the lunacy of the next set of matches when Chelsea, Man Utd and Man City all lost wasn't as terrible, scoring an average of 3.43.
• Individually, JT scored the highest over the 6 matches, with an 8 in the 1st week.
• Lowest scores were Lawro and Sam Ruback with 1.
• Joe Miller has opened up a decent lead at the top. Thanks for putting the message out whilst I was away.
• The rest of the table is still very congested. Lots still to play for.
• It feels a bit Moneyball-y. By this I mean that the numbers disagree with my intuition as to how everyone did. When I was working all this out, I thought some did better than they actually did, and thought others (myself included) did worse.

*If you want to know why this doesn't add up to 16, then you don't read F365. Your loss (most of the time). Great article today about homophobia in football.

Here are the average scores for those who played 2 or more rounds over Xmas. JT, Will O'Doherty and Josh Daniels get gold stars. Sam Ruback get the lump of coal.

The new table is below. Ryan missed 1 week to many, so has dropped out, but he and 1 or 2 others should join next week if they play. To summarise, other than the 3 with the gold stars above, everyone else went down. It's pretty tightly contested however.

To make up for the rush last week, I'm putting the predictions out now in plenty of time.

Blackburn vs Fulham - DRAW

Chelsea vs Sunderland - CHELSEA

Aston Villa vs Everton - EVERTON

Spurs vs Wolves - SPURS

WBA vs Norwich - NORWICH

Liverpool vs Stoke - STOKE

Man Utd vs Bolton - MAN UTD

Newcastle vs QPR - NEWCASTLE

Swansea vs Arsenal - ARSENAL

Wigan vs Man City - MAN CITY

Total odds: 2422/1 with PaddyPower.

The Spurs vs Everton game this week from the opening day is being ignored, as not enough people made predictions back then for me to include it fairly.

Predos in the comments below as per usual - it's a new year and let's get back on track!

Finally, if anyone is/knows a web developer who is footy mad (or otherwise willing to work for beer), please pass them my way. I'm looking to develop this for next season and want to run ideas past someone technical. Any RTs/reccommendations to that effect will be gratefully received, and may result in said beer for you!

Good luck guys!

Last Gasp New Years Post

Hi Guys!

Hope that your festive period was fun and food-filled.

Due to a combination of fog, airline incompetence and jet lag, this blog is later than planned and therefore a bit of a scramble.

I haven't decided whether or not it'll be included in the actual stats, as there isn't a huge amount of notice being given - I guess it'll depend on how many people are able to enter in time! Even if you miss one or 2 games, still enter results/predos as I might do an average score or something.

My predictions are as follows:

QPR vs Norwich - NORWICH

Blackburn vs Stoke - BLACKBURN

Wolves vs Chelsea - CHELSEA

Aston Villa vs Swansea - ASTON VILLA

Fulham vs Arsenal - ARSENAL

Spurs vs WBA - SPURS

Wigan vs Sunderland - DRAW

Man City vs Liverpool - DRAW

Newcastle vs Man Utd - MAN UTD

Everton vs Bolton - EVERTON

Total odds: 2101/1 (Paddypower)

I'll try and process all the stats from the last few weeks and get a massive post done later this week.

Good luck!

Week 17: Boxing Day & NYE matchdays

*Witty comment about last set of fixtures/Despair at Arsenal mauling in Manchester....*

New set of fixtures:

Chelsea vs Fulham - CHELSEA

Arsenal vs Wolves -ARSENAL

Bolton vs Newcastle - DRAW

Liverpool vs Blackburn - LIVERPOOL

Man Utd vs Wigan - MAN UTD

Sunderland vs Everton - DRAW

WBA vs Man City - MAN CITY

Stoke vs Aston Villa - STOKE

Swansea vs QPR - DRAW

Norwich vs Spurs - SPURS

and finally, the NYE games:

Liverpool vs Newcastle - LIVERPOOL

Man Utd vs Blackburn - MAN UTD

Arsenal vs QPR - ARSENAL

Bolton vs Wolves - BOLTON

Chelsea vs Aston Villa - CHELSEA

Norwich vs Fulham - NORWICH

Stoke vs Wigan - STOKE

Swansea vs Spurs - SPURS

WBA vs Everton - DRAW

Sunderland vs Man City - MAN CITY

I'll be back for the New Year's day games, so will do a new blog for that! However, if people know they aren't going to be able to do another blog, then feel free to give your predictions for those games in the comments and I'll sort it out.

That's going to be one hell of a stats session!

Good luck!

Week 16 Bets: Remote Posting....

This post (and all the others for the next few weeks) have been written in advance and set to post automatically at the relevant time. So please excuse the total lack of knowledge about current affairs/weather/football scores etc.

Blackburn vs WBA - DRAW

Everton vs Norwich - EVERTON

Fulham vs Bolton - FULHAM

Newcastle vs Swansea - DRAW

Wolves vs Stoke - WOLVES

Wigan vs Chelsea - CHELSEA

QPR vs Man Utd - MAN UTD

Aston Villa vs Liverpool - LIVERPOOL

Spurs vs Sunderland - SPURS

Man City vs Arsenal - DRAW

No idea what my odds are! Will try and post a bet from afar!

The second round of games this week:

Wolves vs Norwich - NORWICH

Blackburn vs Bolton - BOLTON

Aston Villa vs Arsenal - ARSENAL

Man City vs Stoke -MAN CITY

Newcastle vs WBA - NEWCASTLE

Everton vs Swansea - EVERTON

Fulham vs Man Utd - DRAW

QPR vs Sunderland - QPR

Wigan vs Liverpool - LIVERPOOL

Spurs vs Chelsea - SPURS

Good luck guys, and check back on Thursday for the new blog post!

Week 14 Results, Week 15 Predictions & an apology!

It was a very tight week this week, with nearly everyone doing alright. I think the key games were the Chelsea win, along with the Sunday games, and then last night's result at Liverpool. I say that, because 3 of those 4 games were the only games were the result that occurred wasn't the most predicted result between us. These 4 games separated the men from the boys, or rather the grizzled obsessives from the chancers. Or something like that...

I think it's fair to say that the "Big 6" have now broken away, and I supposed there is an argument to say that Liverpool are straggling behind in that group. The question will be, can Spurs & Arsenal keep up their good form, and can Man Utd & Chelsea improve to maintain pressure. I know Utd have been grinding out the wins, but they haven't been playing well, and unless they start scoring more, I think that over the next month they'll drop some points as fatigue sets in (and Rio's dodgy back goes again). Man City look relentless meanwhile, like some sky-blue verion of the Soviet forces at the Battle of Stalingrad (I may have watched Enemy at the Gates recently....). I was going to ask who can stop them....but that would be asking who is going to try and be the Nazis...so I think I'll quit whilst I'm behind.

Full breakdown:

This week, 16 people played

Most popular predicted result: Spurs & Man City WINS (16/16 or 100% concordance)

Most disputed result: Blackburn vs Swansea (6-5-5 split)

Longest odds: Ryan Wain 5565/1

Shortest odds: Joe Miller 747/1

Best predictor: Lawro, Doron Salomon, Joe Miller & Yanik Joshi (again - it's good for us all he doesn't qualify for the leaderboard...yet) (7/10)

Worst predictor: Ryan Wain (3/10)

Best predicted result: Spurs & Man City WINS (16/16)

Worst predicted result: Stoke & Fulham WINS (1/16 - congrats to me & Doron)

Villain of the week: I'm breaking my own rule here. Technically, none of us performed well enough for there to be a villain, but the David Luiz incident was so spectacularly bad, and so game changing that I'm going to have to go with MIKE DEAN.

Everyone's results:

Because the results were so tightly grouped, there wasn't much movement on the leaderboard. Lawro jumps up 2 places, but otherwise it's as you were. There are a couple of players who should join the leaderboard in the next few weeks, and shake it up a little. Joel Salamon stays close enough to Joe Miller to keep him honest.



I'm going away for 3 weeks tomorrow, and am not entirely sure what my internet access is going to be like. There will definitely still be posts though - so life will continue as normal for you all, although I won't be hassling you! If for whatever reason, I can't get a bets post done one week, please just stick the predos in the comments for the last week's post and I'll sort out all the results when I get back. Total nightmare - going on holiday over the xmas period. The football schedule is so unhelpful....

Here are my predos for this weekend's games:

Norwich vs Newcastle - NEWCASTLE

Arsenal vs Everton - ARSENAL

Liverpool vs QPR - DRAW

Swansea vs Fulham - DRAW

WBA vs Wigan - WBA

Bolton vs Aston Villa - BOLTON

Man Utd vs Wolves - MAN UTD

Sunderland vs Blackburn - SUNDERLAND

Stoke vs Tottenham - SPURS

Chelsea vs Man City - CHELSEA

Total odds: 3618/1 with PaddyPower.

Good luck guys, have a great festive season however you celebrate it, and set a reminder for yourself to check the blog every week!

Week 14: Could be a tricky one...

So we've entered December, and I finally feel the Christmas period is upon us. Not 'cos I've just had my first mince pie, nor because Mariah Carey's warbling (not wobbling...filthy buggers) amused me the other day.

Nope, it's 'cos we've had a sacking! Can't reach Christmas without some poor manager or other losing their job. Steve Bruce must have seen it coming, but similarly must have wondered why couldn't the Venkys lot have bought Sunderland instead - their patience seems inexhaustible!

Quite a nice group of fixtures this week I think - nothing too exciting (although AVB must be nervous if they don't get something this weekend), but I reckon that works both ways. It's going to be tricky to call some of these fixtures, so I reckon we might have some interesting scores this week.

I've gone for:

Newcastle vs Chelsea - DRAW

Wigan vs Arsenal -ARSENAL

Spurs vs Bolton - SPURS

Man City vs Norwich - MAN CITY

QPR vs WBA - QPR

Blackburn vs Swansea - DRAW

Aston Villa vs Man Utd - MAN UTD

Everton vs Stoke -STOKE

Wolves vs Sunderland - DRAW

Fulham vs Liverpool -LIVERPOOL

Total odds of 3908/1 (Paddypower)

Bets/predos in the comments as usual.

Please remember to get them in before kick-off in the first game - otherwise you'll be penalised!

Good luck everyone!