Thursday, February 24, 2011

(Free) Falling Standards in English League Football

1. After 32 games of a 46-game league season, Stockport County have conceded seventy-three goals, which is sixteen more than the next worst defence in League Two. They are still not bottom.

2. In League One, MK Dons have a goal difference of -2 and are 6th. Notts County have conceded as many as they have scored, but are 18th in a 24-team league. This is because they have played six games fewer than MK Dons, as of this writing. If they win all six games they have in hand over MK Dons, they will be 3rd in the current table. They will not win all six games, because they are not 'games in hand' in any realistic sense. The term, I believe, is 'fixture pile-up'.

3. Leeds United are the highest scorers in the Championship but have the worst defence outside the bottom three of the 24-team league. They are, somehow, sixth in the table with thirteen games left and would hold that position even if every other team had played as many games.

4. In the Premier League, Wolverhampton Wanderers, bottom, have won more games than 13th-placed Fulham, with both teams to play twelve more games. The teams are separated by only six points and the bottom team is just fourteen points off sixth place. The gap between first and fifth, with an equal number of games played, is...also fourteen points. (Addendum: Following West Ham's 3-1 win at home to Liverpool on February 27, the gap between 6th and 20th, with an equal number of games played, is now just twelve points. That's near-as-dammit the gap between Manchester City in 3rd and Liverpool in 6th -- indeed, 7th and 20th are separated by exactly the same margin as 4th and 7th.)  

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You forgot the most important argument - Man U is leading the EPL.

Prabhat said...

This is why grading on a curve is a bad idea.

I'm not sure if there's a point to this story but I'm going to tell it again.

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I've been wilfully caught up in the self-defeating quest to get to know myself for years. I've never expected anything beneficial to result from such a quest. I tend to evoke extremely polarised reactions from people I get to know in passing. Consequently, only those people who know me inside-out would honestly claim that I'm a person who's just "alright." It's not a coincidence that the description I've laid out above has no fewer than, title included, eleven references to me (make that twelve). I'm affectionately referred to as "Ego." I think that last statement might have given away a tad too much. Welcome Aboard.

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