Lies, lies, damn lies and statistics

[seriouslyred]

The latest eratings model from experimental 361 now gives us a 32% chance of making the play-offs. As per the league table the top four is sewn up but there are five clubs chasing 5th and 6th places.

experimental361.com/2018/03/31/e-ratings-update-league-1-31-mar-2018/

We have climbed a few places under Bow because the stats have been so good. The quality of our chances created is roughly double where we were under KR. Too small a sample but the stats compare very favourably to the top four on the eratings.

As a rough estimate, every win will improve our chances of making the top six by around 7%. As posted elsewhere, Monday will tell us if we are in with a real shout.

[Deleted]

As requested in a PM from seriouslyred
The latest version of the table I have been updating during the season, showing Charlton's progress compared to the 2016/17 season, in relation to three 'targets';

Average points required for automatic promotion = 85 points
Average points required to finish 6th = 72 points
Average points required to avoid relegation = 49 points

(The averages were worked out from the last 12 League One seasons)



(EDIT)

I just noticed an error - the PPG margin below target for automatic promotion should read 0.28, not 0.35 

[Deleted]

Apr 6, 2018 15:47:02 GMT @lardiman said:

As requested in a PM from seriouslyred
The latest version of the table I have been updating during the season, showing Charlton's progress compared to the 2016/17 season, in relation to three 'targets';

Average points required for automatic promotion = 85 points
Average points required to finish 6th = 72 points
Average points required to avoid relegation = 49 points

(The averages were worked out from the last 12 League One seasons)



(EDIT)

I just noticed an error - the PPG margin below target for automatic promotion should read 0.28, not 0.35 

Great stuff, Lardi. Good to have you back.

[seriouslyred]

Thanks @lardiman

So what can we say about this chart? We have exceeded last year's tally with a few games to go - so what?!

What we can clearly see is that we have been on the edge of the play-offs all season and that there are times where we "flatlined" with just a few points over a period of time. We did that last season too and for long periods of time. In other words, we were in intensive care.

Now, if one looks at experimental 361, several things become more clear. We are one of five clubs chasing two play-off slots as we were before. But now we are favourites!

And we have climbed from 12th to 8th when it comes to expected goals. And that's in just three games - we are the best of the rest. Whether we have watched one, two or all three games under Bow it's a step change. And yet to early to quantify or be certain that this will hold up.

Well for a statistician yes... But I'll put it out there and state that we are playing like a top three side - thus we will qualify for the play-offs unless something changes. And I'd hope we were favourites to go to Wembley but probably too early to call.

In a couple of weeks, our performances against top sides will either strike fear into our rivals or show up weaknesses. Then we will know where we stand.

[Deleted]

Still convinced we have the best squad out of the playoff sides, plus momentum, bounce, new era phenomenons have average success cycles of 13 games, which ironically is the same amount of games from Plymouth to the final, our momentum cycle.

My probability / pattern generator is rarely wrong 

[Deleted]

Graph updated to account for yesterday's away draw at Bristol Rovers...





It's beginning to look like Charlton, Peterborough and Portsmouth might be the three teams slugging it out for 6th place during the next few weeks (assuming Scunthorpe continue to fall away).

Plymouth Argyle have what looks like a rather easier run-in than us, so I think they will secure 5th place.

[Mundell]

Yesterday’s timelines from Experimental 3-6-1 provide further evidence of the transformation in our performances since Lee Bowyer took over from Karl Robinson. Xg against of less than one and Xg for of nearly two is clearly promotion form if sustained over a full season. We weren’t delivering metrics even close to this under Robinson even when we were winning regularly. 

And here are the latest Eratings. We’ve drifted a little further up the rankings and our chances of making the playoffs have also improved a little. Plymouth’s win against Peterborough was highly significant yesterday and they’ve edged slightly ahead of us as result. However, the way I’d read this analysis is that we’re in a very close four horse race with the three ‘P’s for two playoff places with struggling Scunthorpe outsiders at this point. This could all change very quickly though with a number of six pointers on the horizon for each of the clubs in the mix.

Perhaps the most important point though is that we are clearly playing better than at any stage this season.

[seriouslyred]

No doubt about that we are playing like a top three side with an xG of 2:1 these last four games. Next Saturday sees Plymouth at home to Portsmouth whilst we have a chance to dash Scunthorpe's hopes.

Will there still be five clubs in the hunt for two slots or perhaps as few as three?

Our last games are against four of the top eight in the experimental ratings. So if we make it to the play-offs, we will be real contenders.

As for the final points target, the graph from @lardiman suggests that we need ten more points. All we really know for sure is that we have to do better than the sides below us. A win on Tuesday and next week will take us a long way towards our goal - let's see what the graph by experimental 361 looks like next weekend. Ben has also produced a new feature, "games that matter" showing the impact on percentage chances of a "six pointer". The swing on the Plymouth vs Peterborough game was somewhat dramatic.

[seriouslyred]

Apr 6, 2018 19:04:05 GMT @timbercroft said:

Still convinced we have the best squad out of the playoff sides, plus momentum, bounce, new era phenomenons have average success cycles of 13 games, which ironically is the same amount of games from Plymouth to the final, our momentum cycle.

My probability / pattern generator is rarely wrong 

An interesting stat - any articles on "new era phenomenons"? Riga arrived back in 2014 and delivered much improved results over 16 games. Peeters with a new squad also delivered 24 points from 16 before it went horribly wrong... And Luzon also had a great start.

On this basis Bow might take us to Wembley - it would be interesting to know about any research. I recall that some have suggested that the new manager bounce is actually quite limited.

Will the real Charlton please stand up?!

[Mundell]

Apr 8, 2018 8:43:45 GMT seriouslyred said:

Ben has also produced a new feature, "games that matter" showing the impact on percentage chances of a "six pointer". The swing on the Plymouth vs Peterborough game was somewhat dramatic.

Yes, I saw that. The results are highly counterintuitive, to me at least. I assume that what he does is ‘fix’ the result of the match in question (H, D, A) and then runs the simulations as normal. That seems straightforward and clearly ought to produce the right outcome, but for Plymouth’s chances of a top six place to vary from just over 50% (H) to as low as just over 15% (A), based on the result of just one match with six still to play is hard to believe, again, for me at least.

However, completely counterintuitive results are often the most interesting and if this is ‘correct statistically’ it further emphasises the significant randomness in final league table positions. Plymouth won with a penalty in injury time. Steve Evans was furious with the referee, though to be fair the timelines for the game suggest that Plymouth were worthy winners. 

[Mundell]

Nothing we don’t already know from the eye witness reports, but Experimental’s timeline for our match at Wimbledon confirms that they stopped us playing and creating chances. AFC ran out deserved winners. The first real setback for Lee Bowyer. It will be interesting to see how his players respond on Saturday. 

[seriouslyred]

Apr 11, 2018 18:43:51 GMT Mundell said:

Nothing we don’t already know from the eye witness reports, but Experimental’s timeline for our match at Wimbledon confirms that they stopped us playing and creating chances. AFC ran out deserved winners. The first real setback for Lee Bowyer. It will be interesting to see how his players respond on Saturday. 

Let's see the team sheet and where we are at 4pm on Saturday - halftime. Bow is a very different animal to his predecessor plus there's another six pointer down in Plymouth.

Perhaps experimental will deliver a graphic to show the impact of the two vital games?

[jonkool]

Apr 11, 2018 20:03:20 GMT seriouslyred said:

Apr 11, 2018 18:43:51 GMT Mundell said:

Nothing we don’t already know from the eye witness reports, but Experimental’s timeline for our match at Wimbledon confirms that they stopped us playing and creating chances. AFC ran out deserved winners. The first real setback for Lee Bowyer. It will be interesting to see how his players respond on Saturday. 

Let's see the team sheet and where we are at 4pm on Saturday - halftime. Bow is a very different animal to his predecessor plus there's another six pointer down in Plymouth.

Perhaps experimental will deliver a graphic to show the impact of the two vital games?

Bow will not accept the disregard to his instructions and knowing the Scunthorpe scouts will brief their boss to physically press us in our own half he will deliver the message to play quickly and in a forward direction. Woe betide anyone who starts faffing about at the back or in midfield or anyone who shirks a tackle - take serious note Mr Zyro!

[Deleted]

Not encouraging numbers perhaps, but here is the latest update on that graph taking into account the AFC Wimbledon result...





I think 72 points will be needed to secure 6th place this season, we will need to average 2 per game now to get there.
Basically there's no room left for poor performances.

[seriouslyred]

Somebody has suggested to me that the end result will be 71 points with a standard deviation of 1.5 points. Therefore 69-73 range (not counting goal difference).

The simple message is to win on Saturday - there's a more complex one which requires some thought.

Ultimately what matters is whether Bow can transform a shite performance bank into a top four side - and that's a big ask.

[seriouslyred]

Ben Mayhew has delivered his usual sharp analysis with this latest piece:
experimental361.com/2018/04/12/matches-that-will-matter-14-apr-2018/

Win on Saturday and we restore a 50% chance of making the play-offs. Similar story at Plymouth.

All to play for.

[Deleted]

I don't know where to apportion blame for the Wimbledon defeat, as I'm not too up on tactics and formation, but it feels a lot down to Bowyer.

[Mundell]

Apr 12, 2018 19:13:18 GMT seriouslyred said:

Ben Mayhew has delivered his usual sharp analysis with this latest piece:
experimental361.com/2018/04/12/matches-that-will-matter-14-apr-2018/

Win on Saturday and we restore a 50% chance of making the play-offs. Similar story at Plymouth.

All to play for.

I’d say our situation is really quite different to Plymouth’s and indeed this analysis demonstrates just how damaging our defeat at Wimbledon and failure to win at Bristol Rovers have been.

If Scunthorpe, Plymouth or Portsmouth win, their chances of a playoff place increase to 68%, 78% and 67% respectively. Even if we win on Saturday our playoff chances remain below 50%. Alternatively, if we lose we become a one in ten shot while the playoff chances of the other three sides would remain much higher if they lose.

We simply have to beat Scunthorpe and could ideally do with Plymouth and Portsmouth sharing the spoils. The lower the points total needed to finish sixth, the better our chances, obviously.

[Deleted]

Table updated to include the Scunthorpe defeat...





Sad to say it, but I have to concede that our chances of finishing in 6th place are now only mathematical, bearing in mind the poor performances in our last two or three games.

There is still the tiniest sliver of hope, but many unlikely things now have to happen.
All we can do is see if Lee Bowyer can somehow motivate his players to steal a win at Shrewsbury, even an undeserved one.

[Deleted]

What a difference 72 hours can make...





Last night's fantastic result against Shrewsbury has restored some realistic (rather than just mathematical) hope of Charlton finishing this season in 6th place.
I believe we still need 6 or 7 points from our last three games, but if we can go to Shrewsbury and win then anything is possible at Portsmouth this coming Saturday.

Here is another table not seen for a while here - our progress this season compared to all our other recent 3rd tier seasons...





Lee Bowyer's time so far as our caretaker manager has been a bit of a roller coaster, but it has seen Charlton rise from 9th to 5th place so far.
Granted other teams have games in hand now, but considering the poor form we were in for a long time before Karl Robinson departed the last few weeks have been a definite improvement.

[seriouslyred]

The stats for Bow's first four games on experimental 361 we're outstanding compared to KR. We had a great result last night but the first half had zero chances.

How did he change it and can he repeat for Saturday against a different team with different formation and strengths. It's impossible to predict on recent form as we simply don't know which team will show up.

The bookies now have us as third favourites in the five horse race for the final two play-off places. All to play for!

[Mundell]

“What a difference 72 hours can make .... “ Indeed, @lardiman, indeed. It’s a funny old game, as they say, but it’s beauty is it’s inherent unpredictability. Moreover, our intuition often fails to grasp the sheer randomness which is ever present in any one-off contest.

The result of last night’s win is that our odds of making the playoffs have improved to 2/1 against, or just less than one in three, when allowance is made for the bookmakers’ margin. We are now almost twice as likely to finish in the top six than we were after Saturday’s home defeat against Scunthorpe when we were quoted at 5/1 against.

We still have it all to do though and Plymouth, at 4/5 on, and Scunthorpe, at 2/7 on, are still much more likely to make it than we are. The problem, of course, is our fixture list. The bookmakers have us at between 2/1 and 3/1 to win at Portsmouth on Saturday, implying a probability of as little as 25%. The chances of us beating both Portsmouth and Blackburn are probably not much better than one in ten. That’s a measure of the task ahead of us.

One in ten shots come in, of course, but it’s obvious that what Scunthorpe and Plymouth do will be critical to our chances. Scunthorpe have Walsall (H), MK Dons (A), Plymouth (H) and Bradford City (H), while Plymouth play Northampton (A), Rochdale (A), Rotherham (H), Scunthorpe (A) and Gillingham (A). Much less daunting.

Returning to last night’s ‘randomness’, based on Experimental 3-6-1’s analysis our ‘expected goals for’ were just 0.6, no better than against AFC Wimbledon or Scunthorpe. Once again, we created very little it seems, but this time we managed to ‘grab’ two goals nevertheless. The big difference last night was that we limited Shrewsbury’s opportunities far more effectively than we did Wimbledon’s or Scunthorpe’s. Shrewsbury carried much less of a threat than our two previous opponents, it seems.

Portsmouth is likely to be an even more difficult game in which we’ll need to be equally robust while keeping fingers crossed that once again the randomness rolls our way.

The fat lady has sat down, but she may not be seated for long. Important to stay positive while we can though.

[seriouslyred]

Once again, we feature on the "matches that matter" analysis on experimental 361:
experimental361.com/2018/04/19/matches-that-will-matter-19-21-apr-2018/

Winner takes all on Saturday giving us a 65% chance of making the play-offs IF we can beat Portsmouth.

As zenga commented elsewhere, if somebody had offered this end of season last August, many would have taken it. A win on Saturday makes for a fantastic atmosphere vs Blackburn in nine days time. We lose and the pessimists will finally be "proved right" - in the same way that a stopped clock is right twice a day!

[Mundell]

Not sure I would have taken our current odds of making the playoffs when the season began. I still think we’ve underperformed reasonable expectations.

I very much enjoy Experimental 3-6-1’s statistical analysis, but while always very interesting, the output needs be interpreted with considerable care.

First, Experimental estimates that our chances of winning at Portsmouth are just less than 30%, i.e. we could win at Portsmouth, but we are not very likely to. If we lose, which Experimental estimates to be more likely, our chances will fall to just over 10%.

Second, IF we win then our chances of a playoff place MIGHT increase to 65% depending on results elsewhere. Depending on results elsewhere, our playoff chances might increase less markedly or, potentially, could increase still further.

What Experimental’s analysis says is that if we win at Portsmouth our chances of a playoff place will be 65% before account is taken of the results of Plymouth at Northampton and Scunthorpe at home to Walsall (and Peterborough’s result at Blackburn tonight, for that matter).

What is in the analysis is the ‘expected’ result (or more accurately expected points total) for those matches. For Plymouth that’s 1.5 points and for Scunthorpe 1.8. In other words, not only does the 65% estimate require us to win a game we’re more likely to lose, but it also assumes, implicitly, that both Scunthorpe and Plymouth drop points.

Lies, lies, damn lies and statistics!!!

[seriouslyred]

Obviously Mundell there are many permutations for the five horses in this race. What Ben appears to be saying is that between us, Portsmouth and Charlton have a 67% chance of making the play-offs and that Saturday is virtually a nil sum game.

We win and we take 65% whereas a draw reduces our combined chances since we both drop two points.

Very hard to predict the final points total required. All the lads can do is beat what's in front of them. And then we await results on Tuesday when many clubs play a game in hand.

Where we would probably agree is that any points dropped at this stage are potentially terminal for our chances.

[jonkool]

Apr 19, 2018 19:57:22 GMT Mundell said:

Not sure I would have taken our current odds of making the playoffs when the season began. I still think we’ve underperformed reasonable expectations.

I very much enjoy Experimental 3-6-1’s statistical analysis, but while always very interesting, the output needs be interpreted with considerable care.

First, Experimental estimates that our chances of winning at Portsmouth are just less than 30%, i.e. we could win at Portsmouth, but we are not very likely to. If we lose, which Experimental estimates to be more likely, our chances will fall to just over 10%.

Second, IF we win then our chances of a playoff place MIGHT increase to 65% depending on results elsewhere. Depending on results elsewhere, our playoff chances might increase less markedly or, potentially, could increase still further.

What Experimental’s analysis says is that if we win at Portsmouth our chances of a playoff place will be 65% before account is taken of the results of Plymouth at Northampton and Scunthorpe at home to Walsall (and Peterborough’s result at Blackburn tonight, for that matter).



What is in the analysis is the ‘expected’ result (or more accurately expected points total) for those matches. For Plymouth that’s 1.5 points and for Scunthorpe 1.8. In other words, not only does the 65% estimate require us to win a game we’re more likely to lose, but it also assumes, implicitly, that both Scunthorpe and Plymouth drop points.

Lies, lies, damn lies and statistics.

If our expectation last August was based on comparable wage bills I think we are underwhelmed. But if we factor in the reliance on effectively one striker for most of the season who cost the club £100k and only scored his first goal with his feet on the 17th April then 5th with a couple of games to go is far from unimpressive

[Mundell]

Apr 19, 2018 20:10:48 GMT seriouslyred said:

We win and we take 65%. 

All the lads can do is beat what's in front of them. 

Depending on results elsewhere!! Our chances will not be 65% if both Scunthorpe and Plymouth also win, for example. 

I agree that all we can do is try to win the game. 

[jonkool]

Well if the current score from Lancashire doesn’t change in the final 5 minutes plus injury time then the queue for the playoffs will be slightly less crowded and our odds marginally improved

[jonkool]

3-1 and we sleep just a tad easier as Posh look to have a little too much to do now.

[seriouslyred]

Apr 19, 2018 20:30:39 GMT jonkool said:

Well if the current score from Lancashire doesn’t change in the final 5 minutes plus injury time then the queue for the playoffs will be slightly less crowded and our odds marginally improved

Indeed! We are now third favourites with the bookies in the five horse race for fifth and sixth.