Great stuff...Wonder if Chelsea can maintain that defensive form against ManU?

Nice work , Berahino looking ever more juicy

Should I go Drogba or Benteke for WK 9? Thanks!

Floodgates opening

I had used last week's numbers and gone one step further in analysing a team's goal-scoring potential against its opposition's defense. Based on The Sarjeant's grading system, i assigned them a rank of 1-20 in attack and defense. Then i calculated Goal Scoring Potential (GSP), as

GSP = Defensive rank of opponent/attacking rank of team

for eg,
MCI - Attack rank 3, defense rank 9
TOT - Att 13, Def 7

To make the ranking more comparable 1 - 20 was considered as 101 - 120. This was done to avoid situations where ATT rank 1 team would have an abnormally high GSP bcos you're dividing opponent's defensive rank by 1. While using 101-120 isn't mathematically accurate (since rank 2 team might have scored a lot more goals than rank 3), it gives a crude estimate.

So GSP of City was, 107/103 = 1.038
TOT = 109/113 = 0.96

So with these numbers, i created a new GSP ranklist, and predicted game outcomes

MCI* vs TOT
MUN* vs WBA
ARS vs HUL* (adjacent ranks, but Hull higher)
BUR vs whu*
CRY vs CHE*
EVE* vs AVL
NEW vs LEI*
SOU* vs SUN
QPR vs LIV*
STO* vs SWA (against popular expectation)

* - team with higher GSP

The final results showed,
Correct prediction - 7 games
Draw - 2 games (Ars & Hul GSP were almost equal so a draw was a possibility)
Incorrect - 1 (New held out against a more favoured Lei attack)

Its a pretty decent success percentage, especially the Sto-Swan and Ars-Hull games. These numbers work best when comparing a team with its opponent, rather than with any other team. While i understand this method is not very scientific, it may be of interest to those who think there is some sense behind it. I did it to break the boredom of Internationals week, so forgive me 😀

Predictions for the upcoming GW 9

WHU vs MCI* or Draw
LIV vs HUL*
SOU* vs STO
SUN vs ARS* or Draw
WBA* vs CRY
SWA* vs LEI
BUR vs EVE*
TOT vs NEW* or Draw
MUN vs CHE*
QPR* vs AVL