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[MSE Lawrence]

This is the discussion to link on the back of Martin's blog. Please read the blog first, as this discussion follows it.

Read Martin's "The Premier League Table Redesigned: Making mid-season tables more effective." Blog.

Please click reply to discuss below.

[456789]

heh this really is hardcore nerd-dom

[nickoxford]

Haha... you have too much free time on your hands Martin ! But...... i love the idea of the Points per game average. In the USA they have batting averages for the players in baseball and it does help you to understand how players are doing mid-season.

Maybe you can start posting the table each week... it could drive more traffic to your blog !

[worto03]

so whatever happens we (Villa) end up 6th. not very exciting is it.

[mikehill17]

This is exactly what every fan does to contort the table according to their needs throughout the season! How often have you heard someone say something along the lines of "we're 5 points behind x, but we've got 2 games in hand!" Personally, I'd rather have 5 points on the board than the opportunity to win up to 6.

My opinion is that the most important factor to determining progress is actually fixtures played to date. For example, Sunderland, Stoke, Wigan, Spurs, Man City and Burnley have all already played 3 of the 'big 4', whereas Wolves have yet to play any of them and Everton, Blackburn, West Ham and Portsmouth have all only played 1. It's therefore arguable that the 12 points gained from 9 matches played by Burnley are more valuable than the 11 points gained from 8 so far by Everton, given that Everton have more potentially tough matches ahead of them.

The league table as it stands is the fairest measure, and as a Spurs fan I'm glad we have the points on the board rather than the opportunity to win more!

[Casanova]

Adjusting for games in hand is easy - it is just the number of points per game. Any further iterations based simply on number of games played and points obtained are fudge factors, sorry!

What would be really good to represent somehow is a points table that is weighted by the difficulty of games played thus far. With a normal table, this factor is only ever shaken out and equalised at the end of the season (i.e. when every team has played every other). Difficulty of games could be weighted by current position of the opposition in the table. But like every method, it would be far from perfect...

[MSE Martin]

Originally Posted by Casanova

Adjusting for games in hand is easy - it is just the number of points per game. Any further iterations based simply on number of games played and points obtained are fudge factors, sorry!

What would be really good to represent somehow is a points table that is weighted by the difficulty of games played thus far. With a normal table, this factor is only ever shaken out and equalised at the end of the season (i.e. when every team has played every other). Difficulty of games could be weighted by current position of the opposition in the table. But like every method, it would be far from perfect...

That actually shouldn't be that difficult to do - you could weight it based on the average points per game of the team played. Though its a much bigger job to set up the initial data.

[john s]

This is a nice way of displaying a league table, which I picked up from the confguide forum a few years ago. I think it's self-explanatory and it's easy to see how wide apart the teams are, and where the league is tight. It also displays quite well on messageboards!

27 Chelsea
26
25
24
23
22 Arsenal Man Utd
21 Liverpool
20
19 Tottenham
18 Man City Aston Villa
17 Sunderland
16 Stoke
15
14
13 Wigan Burnley
12 Everton
11 Bolton Fulham
10 Birmingham Wolverhampton Blackburn
9 Hull
8
7 West Ham Portsmouth