The final bit on the methodology page shows the true motive, it's advertising for intel.
Manchester United were the luckiest team in the league last year
- Thread starter Wumminator
- Start date
What a laugh. Luck technically doesn’t even exist. One team is not luckier than another, everything that happens is caused by something else. Not some kind of supernatural force.
Cause and effect.
Cause and effect.
I showed my mate Bry who has got a 2:2 in Maths from Chester and he said he thought it looked interesting.
Two of these barely make a difference, the only one that sometimes has an impact is home advantage.
I'm fine with this, regardless of the merits of this particular study. Football is subject to a massive amount of variation, so luck (for lack of a better word) does play a big role. It's difficult to score, but scoring can come unintentionally or fortunately.
It was apparent throughout of the course of the season, both from performance metrics and from watching games live, that we were riding our luck and getting more points than we'd otherwise expect. Play like that again this season and the odds on us ending up with a similar number of points are very unlikely.
Hopefully, our performances will improve though. Surely we will concede fewer shots and create more chances, particularly those of higher quality.
It was apparent throughout of the course of the season, both from performance metrics and from watching games live, that we were riding our luck and getting more points than we'd otherwise expect. Play like that again this season and the odds on us ending up with a similar number of points are very unlikely.
Hopefully, our performances will improve though. Surely we will concede fewer shots and create more chances, particularly those of higher quality.
They’re always the victim aren’t they.
I’m sure they will be “unlucky” again this season.
I’m sure they will be “unlucky” again this season.
Technically a peer review tbf.Time for them to get another petition going. I'm surprised Ramos wasn't involved in any of our rogue points.
I don't think it's even possible to take articles like this seriously.
There isn't. One persons lucky is another's unlucky. It's a subjective label. There is only chance and probability influenced by, often, an incredibly large number of variables.
Unless you actually believe there is some metaphysical force that gives some people good outcomes and some people bad outcomes - which is up to you, but unsupported by empirical evidence.
If Pogue is defending Jose's United then it must be a load of shite!
feckin hell, was this written by a scouser by any chance? and does it have an alternative league table based on luck per minutes?Everyone makes this a Liverpool/United thing "written by a scouser, what a load of bollocks" etc other dismissive stuff. Read the thing and make up your own mind.
The real beef is the relegated Stoke and Leicester/Brighton with millions of pounds at stake. THAT should have been the headline. "Stoke relegated and loses millions because of refs"
For Pool/Man Utd/Spurs it's just egotripping.
Luck (be that refs, bounces, player getting injured and whatnot) plays and have been playing it's part in football. Otherwise it would be a really boring sport.
The real beef is the relegated Stoke and Leicester/Brighton with millions of pounds at stake. THAT should have been the headline. "Stoke relegated and loses millions because of refs"
For Pool/Man Utd/Spurs it's just egotripping.
Luck (be that refs, bounces, player getting injured and whatnot) plays and have been playing it's part in football. Otherwise it would be a really boring sport.
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This is a United forum, of course it's going to be about us ffs, nobody gives a shit about Stoke except Stoke fans.
But wait, City were lucky last season and will never repeat their freak season, right??? Right??????
If deflected goals are lucky then why aren't unlucky deflections that take the ball away from goal included in the study?
The fact that Sterling, a useless piece of shit in front of goal, scored at least 4-5 goals to win games in the dying minutes surely should put City as the #1 spot for luck?
I know right, it's almost as if this was agenda driven and they picked and chose the moments that suited their narrative.
Does this mean eXpected Luck will be the most important metric this season?
That's a disgusting and nasty stereotype you're propagating.
They'd never turn down an opened can of food either.
As for the study I don't really mind it as a talking point. To be honest pound for pound we probably were luckier than Liverpool last season, in as much as we made more league points out of inferior football, but when they throw in a 4-0 win against Swansea as a stroke of luck it makes their argument much less serious.
The whole concept is mad as bag of snakes but I guess an any deflection is just an inaccurate strike. When an inaccurate strike results in a goal then that could be considered lucky.
Colloquially, we call it "luck" when factors you cannot influence or predict unexpectedly play a part in the outcome of some event. So if a sudden breeze alters the direction of your shot, that is called "lucky" (or unlucky, depending on your perspective of course).
I'm sure there are people who do believe there are supernatural forces at play that can determine your "luck" but most of us understand that what we call luck is chance influenced by large number of variables, as you said. Denying that "luck" exists is nonsense: it's an abstract concept with a reasonably well-defined meaning.
Utter shit
Luck has many faces, not just goals. From individual player form to the spin of the ball in the penalty area. It all evens itself out over the course of a season and certainly does over the course of a managers career... Unless SAF was lucky to win the title time after time.
You make yer own luck
In fact having read the methodology involved in getting these stats.... it would appear even more luck has been introduced into the results...
Flag incidents based on just 9 of the 35 influencers
uses 3 untrained guys to flag incidents
ex ref looks at random selection from above
Add in :
o Time of incident
o Penalty conversion rates
o Red card coefficients
o and other stuff
Wow, random!
Luck has many faces, not just goals. From individual player form to the spin of the ball in the penalty area. It all evens itself out over the course of a season and certainly does over the course of a managers career... Unless SAF was lucky to win the title time after time.
You make yer own luck
In fact having read the methodology involved in getting these stats.... it would appear even more luck has been introduced into the results...
Flag incidents based on just 9 of the 35 influencers
uses 3 untrained guys to flag incidents
ex ref looks at random selection from above
Add in :
o Time of incident
o Penalty conversion rates
o Red card coefficients
o and other stuff
Wow, random!
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They ran thousands of simulations of what the game result would have been, and took the median score from the game. In most situations, I suppose you would get a penalty taker scoring the goal.
Statistically, a fair study, but not by any means an exact science.
Still, it does give some insight into how "luck" changed the final outcome for so many teams. Liverpool fans will be happy they were only 10 points of City, luck notwithstanding. Stoke fans will be livid that they got relegated, when perhaps it should have been Huddersfield.
United fans....well, I suppose you can read the posts here to see how they feel about the study, haha.
Building on Cyberman's point, I reckon deflections can be classed into six main categories
- lucky - on target, but keeper had it covered and deflection created goal
- not lucky - on target, keeper hadn't got it covered and deflection made no difference
- lucky - off target, deflection put ball on target, keeper put in wrong position or wrong footed
- unlucky - on target and deflected off target
- lucky - off target, deflection improved the attacking teams situation
- neither lucky nor unlucky - deflection occurred to off target shot, didn't impact the run of play
The British media agenda against United is really shameful. Sure You can be lucky or unlucky sometimes but the table never lies. It represents your form during a 9 month period playing every single team home and away. And it really pisses me of that the article is on BBC sport since I rate then highly
http://www.espn.co.uk/espn/story/_/id/20272112/liverpool-wins-uk-greatest-sporting-city-2017
Pro Liverpool bollocks. Same University found them to be just brilliant
Pro Liverpool bollocks. Same University found them to be just brilliant
Aside from the fact that the methodology used is utter bollix, this is the part which really sticks out:
Leicester gained more points from "lucky" decisions. They also gained 5 places in the league table compared to our 2. Yet United are the "luckiest team in the league" because we had less lucky incidents than they did. If this is a real University they should have their funding cut for crimes against academia.
I'm not sure the study understands the definition of "luck" if I am honest.
I dunno, there's plenty of shots struck cleanly that's just deflected wide by a defender hopefully sticking his leg out for example.
A defender not knowing where the ball is but gets to it anyway could be considered unlucky
Yeah it was carried out by RAWK.
Talking of luck , who remembers when the Scousers used to devise long essays about how lucky we are ? I remember reading a huge rant on RAWK about “Mister Ferguson” controlling the FA. It was a genuinely fleshed out conspiracy theory and you could just feel the bitterness radiating off it.
Those were the days
Those were the days
This is an awful lot of time and effort put into to proving absolutely nothing at all.
I'm guessing the actual results just weren't very interesting so they've cherry picked and tinkered around with it in order for the likes of the BBC to carry it.
The Liverpool vs Spurs game is particularly suspicious. The incorrect decision in this game was a penalty which Harry Kane subsequently missed, and which Liverpool then scored off the back of. Spurs then scored a second penalty off the back of that. This all happened right at the end of the game so even with "simulation" based on likely events, the best you can come up with without being deliberately selective, is that the game could have ended 1-1. If you go by purely ruling out clear incorrect decisions, the game ends 2-2 exactly as it did. If you go purely by who was lucky to get a result out of the game, you would have to conclude Spurs should have won quite comfortably.
Then there's all the thousands of games that haven't been mentioned at all, where obvious incorrect decisions were made? ...like Young hacking a City player in half in our area when we were 3-2 up, which would have suited the results of the study so had no reason to be omitted. Which makes you suspect that actually, they haven't bothered doing the study at all in the first place and have just made some shit up...
I'm guessing the actual results just weren't very interesting so they've cherry picked and tinkered around with it in order for the likes of the BBC to carry it.
The Liverpool vs Spurs game is particularly suspicious. The incorrect decision in this game was a penalty which Harry Kane subsequently missed, and which Liverpool then scored off the back of. Spurs then scored a second penalty off the back of that. This all happened right at the end of the game so even with "simulation" based on likely events, the best you can come up with without being deliberately selective, is that the game could have ended 1-1. If you go by purely ruling out clear incorrect decisions, the game ends 2-2 exactly as it did. If you go purely by who was lucky to get a result out of the game, you would have to conclude Spurs should have won quite comfortably.
Then there's all the thousands of games that haven't been mentioned at all, where obvious incorrect decisions were made? ...like Young hacking a City player in half in our area when we were 3-2 up, which would have suited the results of the study so had no reason to be omitted. Which makes you suspect that actually, they haven't bothered doing the study at all in the first place and have just made some shit up...
It would not be so satisfying for the Mourinho out camp. I'm pretty sure they will be hoping for us to lose so that he gets sacked and they will probably be devastated if we won the league.
No, it is just that we do not know all the variables and how they affect each other nor do we have a divine calculator with the power to calculate them all.
Everything has a cause. We label things fortunate and unfortunate via arbitrary paradigms relativistically
I would say that is more down to probability and other teams strengthening. Even United under SAF the GOAT didn’t dominate in the
Same fashion every season nor the Peak Barca
Things change teams adapt players get older
That BBC website really is getting worse all the time!
I am a Liverpool fan and even this makes me cringe.
I expect it will be claimed as another trophy - ‘Liverpool unluckiest’ trophy by rivals and a minority of Liverpool fans.
It’s a pointless study. Move on.
I expect it will be claimed as another trophy - ‘Liverpool unluckiest’ trophy by rivals and a minority of Liverpool fans.
It’s a pointless study. Move on.
Yeah, not taking these people's advice on maths