Statgasm 2

After a somewhat shocking night, Burnley's win over Man U means they jump to the top, 3pts better than what West Brom did last season.  Not looking good for Pompey...

D    Team
3    Burnley
2    Arsenal
2    Chelsea
2    Fulham
2    Liverpool
2    Manchester City
2    Sunderland
2    West Ham United
2    Wigan Athletic
1    Birmingham City
0    Tottenham Hotspur
-1    Aston Villa
-1    Blackburn Rovers
-1    Bolton Wanderers
-1    Everton
-1    Hull City
-1    Manchester United
-1    Stoke City
-1    Wolverhampton Wanderers
-2    Portsmouth


So, the predicted league table is interesting; Liverpool actually close the gap to a point and Hull fall into the Drop zone...

       Team
89    Manchester United
88    Liverpool
85    Chelsea
74    Arsenal
62    Everton
61    Aston Villa
55    Fulham
53    West Ham United
52    Manchester City
51    Tottenham Hotspur
47    Wigan Athletic
44    Stoke City
40    Bolton Wanderers
40    Blackburn Rovers
39    Portsmouth
38    Sunderland
35    Birmingham City
35    Burnley
34    Hull City
31    Wolverhampton Wanderers

Yeah, so it's still pointless, but a bit more meaningful...

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Statgasm

Okay, here's the first entry then. One of my main gripes is how the league table starts after the first game (and on the BBC website this year, they have a live table, so effectively from the first minute), and is obviously meaningless. This hasn't stopped a lot of blogging on the horrendous start to Liverpool's season.

But is it horrendous? Managers talk of "getting 40 points" or "if he can get 20 goals for us", and this article on Liverpool's horrendous start had an interesting comment; they got beaten by Spurs at White Hart Lane last year. Also, they drew away to Stoke; therefore, if they beat Stoke, they're actually 2pts up on last season. Tottenham, by contrast, beat Liverpool, so they're headed to the same points total.

There are some assumptions in this statgasm - Birmingham, Wolves and Burnley replace Newcastle, Boro and West Brom by virtue of finishing in the corresponding places, and hence take their results - so it's not quite perfect, but it works.

And it makes for interesting reading:

Diff Team
2 Arsenal
2 Chelsea
2 Fulham
2 Manchester City
2 Manchester United
2 Sunderland
2 West Ham United
2 Wigan Athletic
0 Burnley
0 Liverpool
0 Stoke City
0 Tottenham Hotspur
-1 Aston Villa
-1 Birmingham City
-1 Blackburn Rovers
-1 Bolton Wanderers
-1 Everton
-1 Hull City
-1 Portsmouth
-1 Wolverhampton Wanderers


Keep this up, and Fulham will do even better than last year. Unfortunately, Hull will do worse. Actually, that's not a bad thing at all.

This is after the games last night. More to come.

Have you tried restarting?

I'm restarting this blog.  I did for a few months in 2007 and got too busy, but I think the time is write to start again.

I will usually do a post every day, and try to focus more on indepth thoughts and analysis of news, rather than reporting.  I hope to get a post about Michael Owen up today or tomorrow.

Thanks,
Jamie

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