End of the Year Comments

As I end my first (partial) year of blogging about Southampton FC, I have some thoughts both about the blogging process and about our club.

First, I recognize that at its core blogging is an intensely self-centered and personal enterprise.  I am not blogging for the greater good of humanity or even the greater good of the Southampton FC community, I am blogging because I enjoy it.  At times I enjoy it too much and I spend time blogging that I should have spent earning money as a lawyer.  As a self-employed lawyer, the processes of working for money and blogging are very similar:  I think, I research, I write, and I rewrite.  Right now blogging is usually, but not always, more fun so I spend too much time blogging.  (It is not always more fun, of course.  I recently won a big case and that was lots and lots of fun. )  In any case, I would appreciate if no one told my mother how much time I have been spending blogging. 

Because I blog for my own pleasure, I have, obviously, chosen the topics for my posts almost entirely because the subject matter interested me or I thought it would interest me and by the time I realized it did not I had put in enough work that I decided to go ahead and finish.  But sometimes, I did not finish and those articles languish half written on my hard drive.  Some posts may interest me less than others but require so much less work that I go ahead and do them.  Other posts required massive amounts of work such that, under any objective standard, they were probably not an efficient use of my time.  As an example, the two posts covering the mid-season statistical analysis took over 30 hours.  I spent the time because the process was, for a while, interesting and entertaining.  I was also very interested in learning what I would learn when I finished.  Yet, by the time I finish compiling everything, I was sufficiently drained that I did not actually provide a great deal of substantive analysis of the statistics.  Oh well.

On the other hand, by far the most popular new post (in terms of page hits) in the past three months was the “Possible Reasons for not signing Jack Cork Right Now.”  That post took less than an hour from initial conception to publication.

All things being equal, I would prefer to write things that interest me and that people want to read but it is not always clear to me what those might be.  There was some interest in the match previews that I did in September but they were a lot of work and after I figured out how to do them it was not that interesting repeating the process again and again.  Also, I was using the data from Football Manager 2014 which was becoming more and more out of date.  I could have started doing match previews again after Football Manager 2015 came out but by that point my attorney workload was so heavy that I just did not have time and wanted to spend what blogging time I did on other things.  Also, to be fair, I was playing World of Warcraft’s Warlords of Draenor expansion which used up most of my spare time.

Nevertheless, I have enjoyed the blogging experience and intend to continue it.  I particularly appreciate how the people who have been reading my blog and my posts on Saintsweb have made me, for the most part, feel welcome in the Southampton FC community.  I hope that I have at times offered a useful insight on some issues or, at least, an interesting perspective on them.  Certainly, this was my goal when I started the blog because the triggering event was the intense panic over the summer transfer dealings for which I believed, as it turned out partially mistakenly, I had a plausible explanation.

In any case, I wish to thank those of you who have been reading my blog.  If anyone has suggestions or requests for subjects that I could write about, I would be happy to hear them.  Please feel free to post suggestions to the comments in the blog or to the threads devoted to my blog on SaintsWeb or The Ugly Inside.  I cannot promise I will fulfill those requests, but if I have something to say on the subject I will certainly give it a try.  Thank you again.

A Few Thoughts about Loans

Since Southampton has recently announced a deal to loan Eljero Elia for the rest of the season with an option to buy and strongly hinted that there would be no permanent transfers in the January 2015 transfer window, I thought this would be a good time to finish the article about loans upon which I have working for a while.

From the perspective of an American sports fan, loans are very strange.  Grammatically speaking, they are just plain wrong.  Surely, we are borrowing Elia, not loaning him. 

As far as I know, in North American sports, players must play for the team that employs them.  Certainly, I cannot remember a North American football (by which, I mean the football that is the big sport in the United States and Canada), baseball, basketball, or hockey player being loaned from one club to another.

There are a number of reasons for the lack of such transactions other than the simple lack of a tradition of loaning.  With the exception of the Canadian Football League, the North American sports leagues are all at the top of the world’s feeding chain in their individual sports.  If the New York Yankees have a player who was not good enough to play for them but needed game time, there would be no appropriate league to which to loan the player.  As a practical matter, the Yankees would never want to loan out a player because they have their own hierarchy of minor league baseball teams.  Baseball players who are not ready for the major leagues simply play regularly for the appropriate minor league team.  (There are some aspects of this transaction which bear a superficial resemblance to the loan process, but not really.)

Moreover, North American sports leagues impose very strict roster limitations and salary caps that fundamentally make it impossible for even the richest team to stockpile players.  In American football, the rosters are a fixed size.  With exceptions that are not relevant to this discussion, no team can keep extra players.  Instead, they are forced to cut the extra players who are then available to be picked up on waivers by other teams in the league with the weaker teams getting first choice.  Baseball has a more complicated process but it ultimately boils down to a similar result which is that there is a limited number of players that a major league team can retain and a limited amount of money they can pay them without suffering significant financial penalties.

Thus, in the context of North American Sports, Chelsea’s rather clever strategy for developing younger players while making financial fair play profit is a complete nonstarter.  Chelsea has dozens of players out on loan and they sell those players, on a regular basis, for a profit.  If the Premier League worked like a North American league, Chelsea would be forced to release their excess players and their contracts could be picked up for free by other teams in the Premier League.  For that matter, Chelsea would not be able to afford the extra players because the salary cap is the same for all teams and not dependent on how much money the team had spent the previous year.

The strangeness of the institution notwithstanding, it seems unlikely that loans are going to go away.  Therefore, I will focus on Southampton’s recent loan activity and how it seems to have significantly benefited the team.

I don’t think anyone can reasonably dispute that the two most successful summer transfers for Southampton were Ryan Bertrand and Toby Alderweireld.  Other than Toby’s short injury stint, neither player has done much of anything wrong the whole season.  On the other hand, the permanent transfers have all had their periods of underperformance and their occasional serious error.  Is this difference because players on loan have something to prove and work harder?  Who knows?  I am certainly in no position to make that judgment.  That being said, given his disciplinary history, it is entirely possible that the decision to loan, rather than buy, Elia is based in part on a desire that he understand that he needs to prove himself.  This would not be an unreasonable approach.  Emmanuel Adebayor never played as well for the Spurs as he did during the season he was on loan with them.

Given the success of the incoming loans this year so far, one might be tempted to suggest that Southampton should increase its participation in the loan market and purchase fewer actual players.  Given subsequent developments, we certainly wished we had loaned Osvaldo, Ramirez, and Mayuka.  Millions of pounds would have been saved if the first two players had been loaned rather than purchased.  (The club could have given out its season tickets free this year and come out ahead financially over buying those three players.)  On the other hand, if we had loaned, rather than bought, Dejan Lovren, even with an option to buy, he undoubtedly would have refused to sign for us at the end of last season and pushed through a direct sale from Lyon to Liverpool with all the profit going to Lyon rather than Southampton.

There are salary cap and financial fair play and cash flow issues as well.  Very likely despite the very large nominal profits made by last summer’s transfer dealings, the cash was not there to buy both Bertrand and Alderweireld outright.  (Since the option to buy Alderweireld is somewhat peculiar, it was probably not possible to buy him outright even if we wanted to.)

The primary disadvantages of loans, over purchases, is you don’t get a permanent member of your squad to develop over the years and you don’t get the profit from future transfers.  Of course, if the loans are made with an option to buy at a reasonable price and if the player has already agreed to contract terms, then neither of those problems exists.  Under such terms loans may always be better than purchases.  On the other hand, I do not know if contract terms have been agreed in advance with Bertrand or Alderweireld.  Not being inside the Southampton Black Box and never having run a football team other than in Football Manager, I cannot really be sure.

In addition, to the successful incoming loans, outgoing loans have also been an important part of Southampton’s transfer activities this year.  As best I can determine, Southampton currently has eight players loaned out.  Each of these loans appears to be a success for Southampton given the underlying purpose of the loan.  Gaston Ramirez and Pablo Osvaldo were both loaned out because they are not wanted at the parent club and we want some or all of their salary to be covered by somewhere else.  Artur Boruc is loaned out to Bournemouth to keep him happy and playing but hopefully he is nearby recalled if Forster gets injured.  Jos Hooiveld had been loaned out to Norwich to run out his contract because he was never going to play for us again and we wanted him to have the opportunity to play somewhere particularly given how hard he worked for Southampton while he was here.  Unfortunately, he has only played six games so the loan does not appear to be working out for him.  Will Britt, Jake Sinclair, Jack Stephens, and Jordan Turnbull have all be loaned out to smaller clubs where they will play and develop.

Since I have no ability or time to watch their games, I cannot really be sure how those loans are going but it certainly appears that Stephens and Turnbull are doing well at Swindon Town FC.  Turnbull has played in all 28 of Swindon Town’s games.  Stephens arrived later and came down with tonsillitis but has played in all the games since he recovered in late September.  The local paper’s website publishes players rating article after each game.  They have given Turnbull an average of 6.71 and Stephens and average of 6.65 which are both good ratings.  On the other hand, there is nothing to suggest that either player is ready to step up to the Premier League right now.  But they are playing together which down the road actually might be helpful.  Stephen’s loan is due to end in January, but there is talk of extending it for the rest of the season.  Whatever happens, those two players and Southampton are clearly better off for the extensive playing time they have been given this season.  Even if, ultimately, Southampton sells them to a championship or league one team, their value has been increased by their performances on loan.

In my view, Boruc’s loan is particularly successful.  He appears to be playing well and, more importantly, Bournemouth (FC) is playing well.  They are in first place with a good goal differential.  I have indicated elsewhere that I have no emotional involvement in the local rivalries but I believe that Bournemouth being promoted to the Premier League would be good for Southampton.  I have no reason to change my opinion.  Further, from an American perspective, I do not see the point of rivalry games that are never played.  It may be all fun and jolly to laugh at Portsmouth for being in League Two, but I think it would be more fun to occasionally play and beat them.  Since that doesn’t look like its going to happen for a few years – at least – it would be nice to play another local team a couple times next year.

Swindon Town is also doing very well being in second place after 23 games and 15 points ahead of the seventh place team.  Being involved in a promotion battle can only be good experience for Stephens and Turnbull.

Looking to the future, there are a number of things Southampton can do with respect to loans that can strengthen the team.  Premier League rules impose a number of limitations on “temporary transfers” which is what loans are officially called.  Loan players cannot play against their parent club.  During the season, a team may receive no more than four in country loans and only two of those loans may be active at the same time, with the discretionary exception of a loan of an emergency goal keeper.  This rule does not limit the ability to loan players from foreign teams.  Finally, only one player, at a time, can be loaned from the same domestic club.  Thus, right now, the Ryan Bertrand loan prohibits us from loaning another player from Chelsea but if we were to make the transfer permanent we could, once again, loan a Chelsea player. The loan deals for Alderweireld and Elia are unaffected by these rules and we could, in theory, loan additional players from foreign clubs.

Given these rules, the past successful loan transactions, and the club’s future goals which include both progression by the team as a whole and financial sustainability, I think additional loans can be a critical part of the club’s future development.  In particular, it would be a good idea to keep friendly relations with Chelsea and perhaps routinely plan to loan a first team regular to Chelsea every year.

Frankly, if Chelsea were open to the deal, I think Southampton should pay Chelsea a “retainer fee” to give Southampton first choice each summer from among the players Chelsea intends to loan out.  Unless the Russian economy crashes so badly that Roman Abramovich has to liquidate Chelsea to cover his losses, Chelsea is always going to have extra players who are not good enough for Chelsea but would be plenty good for us.  Further, they will often be willing to agree to purchase options for these players given their need, under the financial fair play rules, to make consistent transfer profits.  It would be a very unusual young Chelsea player who would refuse to play for us if strongly urged to do so by the Chelsea management so such an arrangement would pretty much guarantee a solid player every year and the flexibility to pick a player that fits the club’s current needs.  In fact, such an arrangement might be better and cheaper than the actual purchase of a player.  Similarly, Manchester City looks likely to have loanable players on a consistent basis and, at the very least, the possibility of loaning players from them should be investigated.

From the hints we get from the media, it seems likely that Elia is the only winger that the team is going to bring in in January, but this does not mean that it might not be possible to loan another player to fill another opening on the team.  Certainly, we could use another striker. In an earlier article, found here, I used Football Manager 2015 to generate a list of potential striker candidates. Somewhere in Europe there must be a available striker who can help our squad.

I reject the concept that Rickie Lambert would return on loan to us.  Any such transaction would amount to an admission that the transfer was a mistake by both Lambert and Liverpool.  I think, as a practical matter the egos involved would not permit such an admission.  That problem aside, Lambert obviously wanted to be in Liverpool with his family and is unlikely to want to spend the next five months living in Southampton without his family.  (As I am living in California, I have no way of ascertaining whether Lambert has sold his home.  I suppose if he has not sold his home, his family could move right back into it.)  Besides, I still believe Lambert could help Liverpool if they had the slightest clue as to how to use him.  Of course, part of the problem of both Lambert and Balotelli at Liverpool is that some of the strongest aspects of their games are removed because Steven Gerrard is on the team.  Both Lambert and Balotelli are better penalty kickers than Gerrard and they are both good free kickers although, possibly, Gerrard is still better than either of them.  This is yet another reason to be highly skeptical of Liverpool’s flawed transfer decision making process.  Obviously, they did not really consider the fact that either player would lose so much scoring ability with Steven Gerrard still the captain.  But I digress.

The final aspect of the loan process that interests me is its potential corrupting effect on the competition itself.  A player who is employed by one club but playing for another club can have mixed motivations.  I do not mean to suggest that every player in that position would play to benefit his parent team rather than his current team but it would also be unreasonable to suggest that the conflicting motivations would never have any effect whatsoever.  In England, the issue is addressed by prohibiting loan players from playing against their parent club.  However, this does not really address the issue because it forces a club to field a weaker team against one specific opponent effectively at the expense of all their other opponents.

On the other hand, as we saw last year in the Champions League, European rules forced Chelsea to permit Thibaut Courtoris to play against them without Athletico Madrid paying the contractually required fee.  Apparently from the European perspective, the more significant corrupting effect would have been if Chelsea could stop their opponent from playing their best team.

I am not sure how this all sorts out.  Since Atheltico Madrid beat Chelsea, it appears that Courtoris did not feel obligated to throw the competition in favor of Chelsea.  Yet, from my American perspective, none of this feels exactly kosher.

Given that the loaning process is here to stay I wonder if Southampton should try to emulate Chelsea, if on a smaller scale.  Given the current reputation of our academy, we ought to be able to sign good young players from all over Europe, bring them in for a year or two of development, sign them to a professional contract, and then either play them or loan them out as appropriate.  If handled properly, this could be a source of good players or transfer profits or both.

Certainly, Chelsea intends to continue to take advantage of this business model.  There is no reason why Southampton should do so as well both by loaning out its own players and by following up on the success of the Ryan Bertrand loan by loaning (or borrowing) players from Chelsea on a regular basis.  Likewise, for those younger Southampton players who are not yet ready to play for our first team, it is certainly worth sending them out on loan if first team football in a lower division is better for their future development then playing for the under 21s.

New Year's Resolutions

Here are my (mostly) Southampton FC related New Year’s resolutions.

1)      To keep remembering to call soccer “football” and football “American football.”

2)      To try to remember (when appropriate) to put the date before the month even though it looks wrong because it really does make more sense that way.

3)      To learn the best way to type the pound sign on my American computer.

4)      To lose weight so as to enhance the chances I will live long enough to see Southampton win a trophy.

5)      To avoid arguing with the idiots who disagree with me on the internet.

6)      To debate intelligently the non-idiots who disagree with me on the internet.

7)      To admit all mistakes I make on my blog and some of my mistakes I make in the rest of my life.

8)      To finish at least one of the three long blog articles that I have spent ten or more hours on before I bogged down—but not to lose track of the concept of sunk costs in the process.

9)      To not make up some bogus resolution just because the list ought to have ten things on it.

Midseason Statistical Over Analysis (Part Two)

Below is a chart arranging teams by their point total after 19 games and showing both where that point total put them at the time and where they ended the season.  This chart covers only the Premier League seasons with a 20 team league.

I was not completely surprised to find that, in some ways, tabulating this information at the halfway point of the season did not necessarily provide much additional clarity over my earlier charts.

Compare this chart with the first one I did found here.  Because of the smaller number of data points and the greater number of teams with each point total, the picture seems clearer in the earlier study.  That apparent clarity is enhanced because I did not summarize the league from top to bottom and, instead, stopped at 17 points.  The equivalent stopping point after 19 games would be 32 points—only one point below where we are now.  Possibly the new chart would look clearer if I cut it off at 32 points.  I chose not to do that both because I am a glutton for punishment and because I wanted the option to look at relegation issues not just European qualifying.

A few caveats:  my results are based on the table position and statistics for each club after it played exactly 19 games.  In some years not all clubs reached 19 games at the same time.  These totals apply to each club for their first 19 games of their season—not for one game against each opponent.  For example, in 2010-2011, the first five clubs hit 19 games on December 27, but the other teams had only played 17 or 18 games.  Manchester United played its 18^th game on December 29 and its 19^th game on January 1.  I counted both those games in my totals for Manchester United, but not for its opponents if they had already played 19 games. I did not include goal differentials on this chart—not because they would not have been interesting—but because it was way too much additional work.

19 GAMES                                           FINAL

Pts          Clubs     AvPo     PsRg       AvgPs     PsRg        AvgPts      PtsRng

52            1             1              1              1              1              91           91

47            1             1              1              1              1              89           89

46            3             1              1              1.7          1-3          86.3       75-95

45            6             1.5          1-2          1.5          1-2          86.7        83-90

44            2             1.5          1-2          3.0          3             76.0        69-83

43            3             1.3          1-2          1.3          1-2          82.7        77-91

42            5             1.8          1-3          2.6          1-4          79.8        69-86

41            8             2.1          1-3          1.9          1-3          82.8        75-90

40            3             3.0          3              3.0          2-4          76.0        61-85

39            4             1.5          1-2          3.5          2-6          71.3        58-78

38            4             2.5          1-3          3.3          2-4          72.8        63-85

37            6             3.2          2-4          4.2          2-7          71.7        58-80

36            8             2.9          1-5          3.0          1-6          72.5        55-87

35            10           3.5          2-5          5.1          1-13       66.8        48-71

34            18           4.5          3-7          5.0          1-10       65.1        51-79

33            17           5.4          4-8          5.5          1-12       62.9        43-79

32            9             5.4          4-7          4.9          2-8          64.6        55-78

31            10           7.0          4-7          7.3          2-13       57.4        43-68

30            6             6.3          4-8          6.7          5-9          59.3        51-65

29            10           7.1          5-9          8.8         4-16        53.1        42-63

28            11           7.9          6-10       9.9          5-15        49.2        42-60

Pts          Clubs     AvPo     PsRg       AvgPs      PsRg      AvgPts   PtsRng

27            16           9.0          7-11       9.9          6-17       52.1        35-63

26            14           9.1          7-11       10.7        5-16       49.1        39-61

25            17           10.6        8-13       9.4          4-19       52.3        39-68

24            11           11.5        9-13       11.6        6-16       47.7        39-56

23            14           11.7        10-14     12.7        6-18       46.1        37-61

22            25           12.9        11-15     13.0        7-18       45.0        33-61

21            16           13.7        11-16     13.4        9-20       44.6        33-52

20            19           15.4        13-18     13.2        8-19       44.3        32-52

19            10           16.2        14-18     15.5        8-19       39.5        30-49

18            14           16.6        15-19     17.2        13-20     36.2        19-45

17            15           17.2        15-19     16.0        11-20     38.3        25-50

16            11           17.9        16-20     17.1        11-20     36.1        26-45

15            10           18.6        17-20     16.8        12-20     37.0        32-43

14            10           19.1        18-20     17.7        14-20     35.2        28-42

13            4             19.5        19-20     18.3        17-20     36.3        34-41

12            3             19.7        19-20     19.7        19-20     30.0        26-34    

11            2             19.5        19-20     20.0        20           26.0        24-28

10            4             19.8        19-20     19           17-20     29           25-34

9              1             20           20           19           19           31           31

7              1             20           20           20           20           11           11

6              1             20           20           20           20           15           15

Pts          Clubs     AvgPs    PsRg       AvgPs     PsRg      AvgPts   PtsRng

19 GAMES                                           FINAL

Pts:  The clubs’ point total after 19 games

Clubs:    The historical number of clubs with this point total.

AvgPs:  The average table position for clubs with this point total at 19 games or the full season depending.

PsRg:  The range of table positions for clubs with this point total at 19 games or the full season depending.

AvgPts:  Average number of points for clubs in this position after the full season.

PtsRng:  The range of points for clubs in this position after the full season.

Our point total of 33 does not seem to say very much about where we are likely to finish—other than well out of any relegation battle.  Finishing first Is unlikely, but the team that did finish first from 33 points, Arsenal in 1997-1998, was in sixth place ten full points behind the leaders.  However, they won the championship with just 78 points.  Both Chelsea and Manchester City are virtually certain to exceed that point total.

If you want to use this information to make predictions: no club has ever won the league with fewer than 33 points after 19 games.  No club has finished fourth or higher with fewer than 25 points.  No club has ever been relegated with more than 25 points.  No club with fewer than 14 points has ever avoided relegation.  Not surprisingly, the cut off point for probably avoiding relegation is one point a game.  The cut off point for probably making the Champions League is 35 points after 19 games.

Combining the final ranges with this season's table I created this chart of where clubs can be expected to finish historically.  The third column adds in the information from my prior post using each club’s current table spot.  However, after making this chart, I decided that it probably does not add much insight.  On the other hand, it is done and it won’t burn your eyes out or anything.  Feel free to ignore it.

Chelsea                                1-3                          1-3

Man City                              1-2                          1-2

Man Utd                              1-6                          1-6

Southampton                     1-12                       2-8

Arsenal                                 1-12                       2-12

West Ham                           2-13                       2-13

 Spurs                                   2-13                       5-11

Liverpool                             5-15                       6-15

Swansea                              5-16                       6-16

Newcastle                           5-16                       6-16

Stoke                                    4-19                       6-19

Everton                                9-20                       9-18

 Aston Villa                          9-20                       9-20

Sunderland                         8-19                       8-19

QPR                                      13-20                     13-17

West Brom                         11-20                     11-20

Hull                                      11-20                     11-19

Crystal Palace                    11-20                     12-20

Burnley                               11-20                     14-20

Leicester                             17-20                     14-20

This is probably the end of my Midseason Statistical Over Analyses.

I Make Predictions (Round 20)

Over the weekend, using his scoring system, Mark Lawrenson got three games right for three points.  His celebrity guest got two games right for two points.  I got four games right for six points.  As I was watching the results come in on Sunday I thought I was doing quite poorly, but then when I looked at the other two set of picks I felt better.  This was a considerably less predictable round of games that the last bunch.

Since I started eight rounds ago I have predicted 41 out of 80 games correctly for 65 points.  Lawrenson got 41 games correct for 51 points.

I will link to Lawrenson’s new predictions when they are published.  They will be found here.

Here are my predictions using the same rules outlined here. 

Stoke-Man U                                    1-2

Aston Villa-Palace                            2-1

Hull-Everton                                     1-1

Liverpool-Leicester                         2-1

Man City-Sunderland                     1-0

Newcastle-Burnley                         2-1

QPR-Swansea                                   1-1

Southampton-Arsenal                    2-1

West Ham-West Brom                   2-1

Spurs-Chelsea                                  1-1

At the end of last round’s picks I indicated how I would have modified my predictions if I were going to add a subjective factor.  I would have been worse off.  I would have lost four points (three from our game and one from the Man U game) and picked up only three (Arsenal) so there’s that.  I should and will stick to my system.

Midseason Statistical Over Analysis (Part One)

As regular readers of my blog know, back in November I was doing reports on how Premier League teams historically finished their season depending on how many points they had earned after various numbers of games.  As I got busy I had less time to do such reports and, when we started losing, they became less fun.  Instead of doing a small report each week, I decided to try to finish a big report for the halfway point of the season.

Unfortunately, the project turned out to be far more time consuming than I expected, although not more time consuming than I should have expected.  As a result, I have decided to publish each part of the study as I finish it rather than waiting for the entire study to be complete.  It is possible that I will lose interest or run out of time before I can finish everything so it is better that something get published—if only to encourage me to keep going.

A few caveats:  my results are based on the table position and statistics for each club after it played exactly 19 games.  In some years not all clubs reached 19 games at the same time.  These totals apply to each club for their first 19 games of their season—not for one game against each opponent.  For example, in 2010-2011, the first five clubs hit 19 games on December 27, but the other teams had only played 17 or 18 games.  Manchester United played its 18^th game on December 29 and its 19^th game on January 1.  I counted both those games in my totals for Manchester United, but not for its opponents if they had already played 19 games.

This chart summarizes where clubs stood in the table after 19 games with the points and goal differential it took to get there as well as where the clubs ended the season and their points and goal differential at the end of the season.

AFTER 19 GAMES                                                         FINAL POSITION

Pos         AvgPts  PtsRng  GDAvg  GDRng                AvgPos PosRng AvgPts  PtsRng  GDAvg  GDRng

1              43.2        36-52     24.1        14-37              2.1          1-4         85.7     68-95    42.2     15-71

2              39.8        35-45     20.7        10-33              2.6          1-6         77.8     55-91    38.2       5-65

3              37.6        34-42     16.0        7-26                3.2          1-13       74.3     48-90    31.1       -12-44

4              34.3        30-37     12.1        1-21                4.7          2-8         66.4      53-77    20.1       -1-39

5              33.2        29-36     10.5        4-21                4.7          2-12      64.27    43-84    18.3       -15-51

6              31.6        28-34     9.7         -1-18                6.1         1-14       61.6      46-78    16.1       -6-37

7              29.7        26-34     3.3         -2-11                7.6         5-11       55.2      45-69     1.5       -11-26

8              27.8       24-33     0.7          -10-8              10.7        6-17       49.2       35-60     -5.0      -25-20

9              26.7       22-31     2.2          -5-10              10.2        6-16       49.8       39-61     -1.7      -23-23

10            25.2       24-28     -0.9        -6-2                10.9        6-16       49.1       37-63     -3.2      -20-28

11            24.1       21-27     -2.7        -11-3             10.5         6-19       49.7       39-61     -5.0    -20-26

12            22.9       21-25     -4.2        -11-1              11.3       4-18       47.9       34-68     -6.4       -25-21

13            22.3       20-25     -4.6        -15-4              11.8       6-20       45.9       33-58     -10.0    -34-5

14            21.3       18-25     -6.6        -16-1              14.4       7-19       41.8       30-54     -13.3     -40-6

15            19.9       17-22     -6.2        -16-8              13.4       9-17       44.3       36-52     -9.3       -24-9

16            18.6       17-21     -10.9      -23- -             15.5        8-20      40.2       25-52     -17.8      -42-2

17            17.7       15-20     -11.9      -20- -             15.7        8-19      39.6       32-50     -17.7      -35-6

18            16.5       14-20     -13.8      -22- -5           16.2       12-20     37.6       19-45     -21.9      -45- -1

19            15.0       10-18     -15.3      -26- -8           17.2       14-20     35.3       24-42     -23.7      -42-0

20            12.2       6-18       -20.6      -34-               19.2        14-20     28.4       11-42     -33.6      -69- -17

Pos:  The clubs’ position in the Table after 19 games

AvgPts:  Average number of points for clubs in this position after either 19 games or the full season, depending.

PtsRng:  The range of points for clubs in this position after either 19 games or the full season, depending.

GDAvg: The average goal differential for clubs in this position after either 19 games or the full season, depending.

GDRng:  The range of goal differentials for clubs in this position after either 19 games or the full season, depending.

AvgPos:  The average table position for clubs at the end of the season.

PosRng:  The range of table positions for clubs at the end of the season.

The most surprising (to me as a recent American fan of English football) thing I discovered in doing this project was the second half performance of the 2002-2003 Sunderland club.  I never would have guessed that a team that earned 18 points in their first 19 games would only earn 1 point is their second 19 games.  That must have been a miserable season.  I assume it was also the type of historic collapse that is still remembered and talked about.

At the halfway point of the season, the top of the table holds good teams playing well and average teams playing very well.  The bottom of the table contains bad teams playing poorly and average team playing very poorly.  The middle of the table contains average teams playing averagely, good teams playing poorly, and poor teams playing well.

Perhaps this seems obviously, but it explains why no team that finished the first nineteen games in 10^th place or better has ever been relegated and only one team has ever reached a Champions League spot (as currently defined) if they were not in the top six after nineteen games.  (Leeds in 2001-2002: Fourth place didn’t qualify them for a Champions League berth under the rules at that time.)  We will end the first half of the season between 3^rd and 6^th place with 29, 30, or 32 points. That puts us in great shape to avoid relegation and gives us a shot at the Champions League.  No one really could have hoped for more last summer.

Of course, we could let the “what ifs” run wild:  we should have beaten Liverpool, Aston Villa, Manchester United, West Brom, and Burnley.  We should have drawn with Arsenal and Tottenham.  That is 15 points dropped.  So we should be in second place with 44 points—already safe from relegation and virtually assured of a Champions League spot.  I suspect, however, that all our rivals have their own “what ifs.”

It is worth noting that in terms of points earned Chelsea is an above average 1^st place team, even if we beat them Sunday.  Manchester City is an above average 2^nd place team even if they lose Sunday. We, however, would be a below average 3^rd, 4^th, or 5^th place team and just an average 6^th place team.

Our goal differential paints a more optimistic picture, however.  Unless, we get clobbered by Chelsea, our goal differential will be well above average for whatever place we end the half season at.  The 19 game goal differential figure seems to be a pretty good indicator of team quality. If you look at the 8, 9, and 10 slots on the chart you can see that the otherwise inexplicable poor performance by teams that finish 19 games in 8^th place appears to be explained by their poor goal differential both at 19 games and over the whole season.  Of course, this is a fairly small sample size but I am convinced that goal differential is as good a predictor of future performance as most anything else.

On the other end of the table, the chart shows just how desperate Leicester is.  Unless, they beat Hull, they will be a below average 20^th place team which is further than average from safety.  Even if they beat Hull they are not in good shape.

That concludes the first part of my midseason statistical over analysis.  I hope you enjoyed it.

Edit:  While working on the next phase of the project, I noticed 45 minor errors.  I actually only made two minor errors but they infested about a quarter of the chart.  None of them were significant and I have fixed them.  Just to give one example, the goal difference average for 4th place after 19 games is 12.1 not 11.6 as originally posted.  Sorry.