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.