Matchday 7 & a Colossal results blog

There's a lot to get through from the last 6 weeks, so I'm just gonna get straight to it...

Matchday 1:

23 people played.
Most popular predicted result: Chelsea WIN (23/23)
Most disputed result: Reading vs Stoke (8-8-7)

Longest odds: Steven Daniels 4260/1
Shortest odds: Josh Daniels 1236/1
Average odds:2478/1

Best Predictor:  Steven Daniels (on debut) & Ryan Wain (6/10)
Worst Predictor: Me, Feneley and Jonny Chernick (2/10)
Average Score: 4

Best predicted result: Chelsea WIN (23/23)
Worst predicted result: WBA & Everton WINS (0/23)

No villain of the week awards for any weeks to date as I haven't followed closely enough.

Everyone's results:

Matchday 2:


12 people played.
Most popular predicted result: Spurs, Chelsea & Swansea WINS (7/12)
Most disputed result: Norwich vs QPR (4-4-4)

Longest odds: Jonny Chernick 18525/1
Shortest odds:Sam Ruback 1583/1
Average odds: 7206/1

Best Predictor: JT & Lawro (5/10)
Worst Predictor: er....Me again.... (2/10)
Average Score: 4/10

Best predicted result: Chelsea & Swansea WINS (7/10)
Worst predicted result: Wigan WIN (0/10)

Everyone's results:

Matchday 3:


12 people played.
Most popular predicted result: Man City & Newcastle WINS (12/12)
Most disputed result: Liverpool vs Arsenal (4-5-3)

Longest odds: Josh Daniels 8667/1
Shortest odds: Doron Salomon 343/1
Average odds: 2936/1

Best Predictor: Josh Daniels (5/10)
Worst Predictors: Feneley, Doron, Ryan Wain and Me (completing a very unwanted hat-trick) 2/10
Average Score: 3/10

Best predicted result: Man City WIN (12/12)
Worst predicted result: Newcastle vs Aston Villa DRAW (0/12)

Everyone's results:

Matchday 4:


15 people played.
Most popular predicted result: Arsenal & Man Utd WINS (13/15)
Most disputed result: Sunderland vs Liverpool (6-5-4)

Longest odds: Josh Daniels (again) 27,465/1
Shortest odds: Feneley 1327/1
Average odds: 9858/1

Best Predictor: Lawro (7/10)
Worst Predictor: Nick Collins (2/10)
Average Score: 5/10

Best predicted result: Arsenal & Man Utd WINS (13/15)
Worst predicted result: Villa WIN (1/15)

Everyone's results:

Matchday 5:


15 people played.
Most popular predicted result: Newcastle WIN (15/15)
Most disputed result: West Ham vs Sunderland (4-6-5)

Longest odds: Tarek Najm 84,469/1 (!!!)
Shortest odds: Steven Daniels 3968/1
Average odds: 28,132/1

Best Predictor: Whoscored.com (8/10)
Worst Predictor: Jonny Chernick & Tarek Najm (2/10)
Average Score: 5/10

Best predicted result: Newcastle WIN (15/15)
Worst predicted result: Everton WIN (2/15)

Everyone's results:

Matchday 6:

11 people played.

Most popular predicted result: Everton & Man Utd WINS (11/11)
Most disputed result: Aston Villa vs WBA & QPR vs West Ham (5-3-2 and 3-5-2 respectively)

Longest odds: Doron Salomon 7073/1
Shortest odds: Sam Ruback 311/1
Average odds: 3107/1

Best Predictor: Steven Daniels (8/10)
Worst Predictor: Me again! (3/10)
Average Score 5/10

Best predicted result:  Everton WIN (11/11)
Worst predicted result: Spurs WIN (0/11)

Everyone's results:

I really hope that's correct, but if you feel I've got your results wrong if you've been checking yourself, please let me know and I'll update it in the records. It gets very messy when trying to get through this many numbers manually! Also, in week one, there were a lot of names that were unclear to whom they belonged....please claim them and I'll create/amalgamate the records (ie Josh, Ben, Daniel etc). Thanks! To the first league table of the season...

As for the league table, I've created it for those who have played 2/3 of games (or 4 of 6 weeks). Whilst it doesn't show too much after only 6 weeks, it's clear that the "pros" are doing pretty well, along with my father who is using his maths brain to good effect. I've had an appalling start, but am blaming that on geographical isolation, and plan to change that around, starting with this weeks predictions...

I'm going for:

Man City vs Sunderland - MAN CITY
Chelsea vs Norwich - CHELSEA
Swansea vs Reading - SWANSEA
WBA vs QPR - WBA
Wigan vs Everton - EVERTON
West Ham vs Arsenal - ARSENAL
Southampton vs Fulham - DRAW
Liverpool vs Stoke - LIVERPOOL
Tottenham vs Aston Villa - SPURS
Newcastle vs Man Utd - DRAW

Total odds: 574/1 (Paddypower)

Good luck guys, and let's try and get the numbers up this week....or else I'll start with the social media harassments again....

Matchday 6: Starting to take shape

This, my friends, will be the last blog post where you are in the dark over results so far this season. That right there, is a Ricky D Guarantee. I'm returning to London this weekend, and have a very long flight in which I plan to sort out all the stats thus far. Therefore, this time next week, the bragging rights will be up for grabs once again - and I genuinely have no idea how anyone (including myself) has done so far!

The downside of that, is that you must bear with me, yet again whilst I stick up just my predictions - perhaps some of you prefer the waffle-less system, but it's my party and I'll waffle if I want to!

This week, I'm going:

Arsenal vs Chelsea - ARSENAL
Everton vs Southampton - EVERTON
Fulham vs Man City - MAN CITY
Norwich vs Liverpool - LIVERPOOL
Reading vs Newcastle - NEWCASTLE
Stoke vs Swansea - DRAW
Sunderland vs Wigan - WIGAN
Man Utd vs Tottenham - MAN UTD (obviously, do Spurs ever do anything else but lose to Man Utd?)
Aston Villa vs WBA- VILLA
QPR vs West Ham - QPR

Total odds from PaddyPower: 3012/1

Just a quick story about a man I met in a pub last week watching the CL matches. He told me he was a Man City fan - I remarked about how unusual that was here (it's almost entirely Man Utd or Liverpool fans) and he told me that he was a Liverpool fan for 20 years, but had switched to City now Liverpool were rubbish...

Still....he bought me a drink, so he's not all bad!

Good luck, enjoy your weekends and check back next week for a mega-stats blog!

Matchday 5: Nice and Early this time!

The thing that was drummed into my head about the Romans when I was a young'un was that the reason their empire was so strong was because they learned from their mistakes.

I always wanted to be a Roman - I liked the idea of wearing sandals and red baggy pants and being paid in salt (running out of Roman stuff now) - and so have taken this maxim on-board and therefore am doing this week's post in good time.

My predictions are as follows:

Swansea vs Everton - DRAW
Chelsea vs Stoke - CHELSEA
Newcastle vs Norwich - NEWCASTLE
Southampton vs Aston Villa - SOUTHAMPTON
WBA vs Reading - READING
West Ham vs Sunderland - WEST HAM
Wigan vs Fulham - FULHAM
Liverpool vs Man Utd - LIVERPOOL
Man City vs Arsenal - DRAW
Spurs vs QPR - SPURS

Total match odds: a ridiculous 39,027/1. Quite hoping that this week is the week I win :D

Just as an aside - I watched the Arsenal match last week in 30-odd degree heat on the beach. That, my friends, is called winning.

Good luck, you know what to do by now.

Matchday 4: A Million Apologies

I'm so so so sorry guys. 42 weeks in and I've majorly dropped the ball. Can't even blame lack of wifi access on this one - it just slipped my mind to do the blog.

Therefore, unless we get more than 10 real players (ie not me and not a website) this week, it won't count towards the league table (when it arrives), out of fairness as I'm sure many people won't have time to do this before the first kick off. Sorry once again.

My predictions are as follows:

Norwich vs West Ham - WEST HAM
Arsenal vs Southampton - ARSENAL
Aston Villa vs Swansea - SWANSEA
Fulham vs WBA - FULHAM
Man Utd vs Wigan - MAN UTD
QPR vs Chelsea - DRAW
Stoke vs Man City - MAN CITY
Sunderland vs Liverpool - LIVERPOOL
Reading vs Spurs - SPURS
Everton vs Newcastle - EVERTON

Total odds with PaddyPower: 1482/1

Apologies once again - if Club Impossibilitee could work the magic extra hard this week and make sure everyone sees this late blog, you guys might be able to cover my slip up.

Good luck

Matchday 3: I feel so out of touch

Last Sunday marked my first 90 mins of the season. The 20th match played by my calculations. In a sports mad country that shows 7-8 PL games a week, this is a very poor show. Unfortunately, its not going to change for the next few weeks, and this has left me feeling like I am very out of touch with what's going on!

Apologies if it seems like I'm phoning it in at the minute....WiFi is hard to come by but I promise that there will be a results post (for all weeks) in the next 2 weeks. For now, its just the predictions.

West Ham vs Fulham - Fulham
Swansea vs Sunderland - Draw
Spurs vs Norwich - Spurs
WBA vs Everton - Everton
Wigan vs Stoke - Wigan
Man City vs QPR - Man City
Liverpool vs Arsenal - Draw
Newcastle vs Aston Villa - Newcastle
Southampton vs Man Utd - Southampton (6-3 anyone?)

No odds this week as Paddypower website wouldn't load before my internet timed out!

Sorry this is a bit rubbish atm guys, bear with me for just a few weeks more. When I'm back in Blighty, I'll make it up.

Good luck

Matchday 2: Hopefully this week I'll catch some football

The trouble with having 12GB of internet for a month between 15 people is that it doesn't leave streaming football matches as a realistic option. Consequently, the only football I've seen so far this season was the last 10 minutes of Chelsea vs Reading on Wednesday. Therefore, I can't comment on anything that's happened other than Torres being offside and the whole goalie going up for the corner thing - it works so rarely....what exactly is the point? Jimmy Glass moments are few and far between.

Anyway, I also haven't done any stats from last week because 1) it's tedious through this internet connection and I need to copy and paste it all, 2) I've been busy with trying to find somewhere to live next month last minute in my free time and 3) the numbers have swollen to the extent that I don't know who everyone who played is! That's brilliant, but if possible, could you identify your predictions from last week and use a unique handle in future weeks - either first name & surname or your twitter names - that makes my life so much easier!

Anyway - onto this weeks predictions:

Swansea vs West Ham - DRAW
Aston Villa vs Everton - EVERTON
Man Utd vs Fulham - DRAW
Norwich vs QPR - NORWICH
Southampton vs Wigan - SOUTHAMPTON
Sunderland vs Reading - DRAW
Spurs vs WBA - SPURS
Chelsea vs Newcastle - CHELSEA
Stoke vs Arsenal - ARSENAL
Liverpool vs Man City - MAN CITY

Total odds: 8177/1 with PaddyPower.

Sorry for it being short and sweet, but its 2am and I've just got off a 10 hour shift. I'll try to do a stats post before the 3rd set of predictions.

Good luck!

Back for the new season

Welcome back old friends, and hopefully welcome for the first time to some new players too!

After a summer break to take in the Euros and the Olympics (and from my perspective, to try a pass a bloody difficult set of exams), it's time to get those virtual accumulator forms dusted off and try to show that after a year's practice, this is the year where we, collectively, hit the bookies where it hurts. Failing  that, let's just have some fun!

Quick recap of the rules of the game for those with poor memories/never played before. Before each round of PL games, I'll post a blog up here with the matches and my predictions - either which team I think will win or a draw if that's how I see it going. I'll then put the odds I got for an accumulator bet from a bookie. You do the same in the comments section (without the odds if you're not a gambler) and then I'll do my stats wizardry after the round is completed. 1 point for calling a match correctly, and the weekly scores are accumulated into a league table so you can see how you do against everyone else. I'll also be incorporating the predictions from Mark Lawrenson on the BBC Sport website, and a couple of statistical predictors to see if they're better than our intuitive approach.

Words can be confusing, so to explain above, I'll do my predictions for this opening set of fixtures.

Arsenal vs Sunderland - ARSENAL
Fulham vs Norwich - DRAW
QPR vs Swansea - QPR
Reading vs Stoke - READING
WBA vs Liverpool - LIVERPOOL
West Ham vs Aston Villa - DRAW
Newcastle vs Tottenham - DRAW
Wigan vs Chelsea - CHELSEA
Man City vs Southampton - MAN CITY
Everton vs Man Utd - DRAW

Total odds with PaddyPower: 3309/1

So copy and paste that into the comments section and change the results for what you think will happen.

I'm abroad until the end of September, and have patchy internet access at best so I'm not going to be able to remind/harass you guys like I did last year so if we could foster a "Club Impossibilitee" mentality and remind one another that'd be awesome! Those of you who have each other on Facebook/Twitter, please give everyone a nudge and if you have any friends who'd be interested, then please invite them along. I also can't guarantee that I'll do a stats post every week, but I promise that the predictions will be up, at least 2 days before the matches take place. If you add your twitter names to your predictions this week, then it makes it easier for others to find you and remind you. You'll also get new followers.....and most of you are worth following!

The new season starts here - I'm excited and hoping to pick up where we all left off last year. Good luck guys!