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A Bunch of Fives So when all is said and done, we analyse where, when and the quantity of times a ball has landed in the back of a net, past and present, or failed to, and somehow deduce why it was destined to be so. That’s the unenviable task of our resident expert Professor Statto, who brings us the benefit of his incisive intellect allied to half a century of football scholarship. And not least, his wry sense of humour.  He leaves the predictions to others, but he’ll provide you with the ammunition to sustain your challenge through your Score Five campaign. He’ll keep you up-to-date with what’s happening in the competition. He’ll lead you along byways exploring weird and wonderful facets of the game past and present, but always in his own inimitable style. Some comedian once suggested that “98% of all statistics are made up”, but the Prof. cordially invites you all to verify any information he presents – if only because he does most of the calculations in his head. Professor Statto and his amazing statistics. ====================================== Visit the Prof's 2008/09 season archives. Previous analysis Coupon-busters, and Our Man in the Antarctic Hello again pals, and welcome back With international games making this a blank weekend for the Premier League, I'm doing my best to fill the void by adding a few bonus items to this week's column. After missing out on most of the football news for 10 days (except for what was happening in Germany), I've spent two days catching up, and in doing so, I found a few things I hope you'll enjoy. You'll find them below. If you got an unpleasant surprise when you saw your league position this week, I wouldn't worry about it. If you're a regular player, I guarantee you'll soon be rocketing up the table. At present, the ScoreFive Global Ladder has a very clear split: players with 65 pts and above (ranked 1-245=) and those with 64 pts and below (ranked 3195-3500). This may seem strange, but there's a simple reason for it. At the start of the season, Dr. Richard and the elves who run the ScoreFive machinery have no idea how many of the registered players will return, so they are all given a place on the ladder. For the first few weeks, anyone who's on holiday or otherwise unable to make their predictions gets a Magic Mike life, and that's why, at this moment there are 2950 players on 65 pts sharing 245th place with Mike. With three weeks gone, the inactive horde has only two more weeks of piggybacking on Mike before their weekly score becomes 0, and at that point, all regular players quickly begin to outdistance them. In due course, the ScoreFive Supremo will arrange for those who have retired or taken up stamp collecting, knitting etc to be removed from the table. (It's all very fair, as they do get a reminder mail saying “Are you still with us?”) In Week 6, I'll be looking out for the players who have made the biggest leap in the table. Someone is going to rise the best part of 3000 places as they hurdle the Inactives. If you're a point or two behind Mike, watch this space. Weekly highlights After Week 2's goal blitz, you can be sure several defences got the managerial hairdryer treatment. The backlines were certainly more careful last weekend, as demonstrated by the goal tally reducing from 38 to 22. Aston Villa, and Wigan, for whom 6 was a very unlucky number seven days before, even managed to keep clean sheets! The essential details first. Basic points averaged 19.94, and with Banker 24.05. Correct results were a reasonable 53.7%, Perfects 5s a healthy 13.2%, and Bankers were 82.4% correct. Here's the breakdown of your predictions:
Everyone who backed the old Big Four was rewarded with eight result points, with Arsenal and Man. Utd delivering a high percentage of Perfectos: their actual scorelines were also the #1 prediction of each game. All three drawn games were well supported with the Wolves-Newcastle result also the #1 prediction. So far so good, and it was looking like some big points hauls were on the cards. The 38% of players who sided with Aston Villa picked up result points, perhaps a little fortuitously, as they survived an Everton bombardment for much of the game. If we did a count at that point, I'm sure we'd have a list of players with eight correct results. Alas, we now come to the coupon-busters.... Last season's record score was Spurs 9-1 Wigan. After the 'Latics began this season by shipping 10 in their first two games, the general consensus was that they would get another tonking in the repeat fixture. The average prediction was for a Spurs win 2.7 – 0.3, with 70% of you expecting Wigan not to score. From the first minute, the ball fizzed around the Wigan goal, but in keeping with tradition, their stand-in goalie was playing a blinder. As the game wore on and the home side did everything except score, the locals were growing desperate. Would a goal never come? Finally, one did, but at the other end! As the 60 (that's all, 60) away fans danced incredulously at the final whistle, I bet Climbaboy and Klepto Cleaner were inclined to join them. They were the only players to predict the 0-1. Kaytee6, Purpledog10 and Pigskin also went for a Wigan win - kudos to them too. Just as Spurs learned on Saturday that Champions League qualification is no guarantee of even a point at home against modest opponents, Man. City found out on Sunday that a star-studded team costing several hundred million pounds can still finish second best to a bunch of better-motivated workmen. They almost survived Sunderland's onslaught, but not quite, so the 2.5% of players who tipped the home win pocketed the result points, among them Reggie Knows Best (he did on this one!) Skywalker, Deivid, Bradnine and JuvlivYugoslavia who all forecast the 1-0. I think it's a first mention in dispatches for all of them, and the 'Wigan 5' above....nice one, guys! Among the Bankers, there was one that deserves a mention: Scotty71 took the difficult route to his five bonus points....Bolton and Birmingham to draw! Aye Caramba! Scotty, see the item Unwise Investments below. You were lucky this time! Top players of Round 3 You needed a score of 33 pts to be sure of a place in the Top 10 this week. Following the six who achieved that, there were 11 with 32 pts and a further 41 who scored 30-31. JonW's 38 pts was built on five Perfectos. He's now up to #3 spot in the Global rankings. JohnnyGlory's 36 pts included eight results: he's at #7.
Last week's leader TheoBosma has dropped down to =#5 with Chuks070 and AdrianUrpani grabbing the top two slots. Ancojo and LadyInRed make up the rest of the Top 5. All the Top 30 are with 10 pts of Chuks. Unwise investments A couple of weeks back, I mentioned that some players looked on the weekly Banker not as an easy opportunity to grab an extra five points, but as a challenge to their risk-taking instincts. While perusing the lowest reaches of the Global ladder today, I found a player who hasn't been right yet. In Week 1, when Chelsea and Man. Utd were odds-on for comfortable home wins, this player (name withheld to prevent embarrassment) decided a Blackburn-Everton stalemate was a better bet. In week 2, while everyone else was waiting for Arsenal to pulverise Blackpool, our man was expecting Birmingham and Blackburn to draw. Last week, he relied on Bolton to beat Birmingham, having passed up Chelsea and Man Utd at home again. I remember some similar illogical choices from him last season, and to be fair, he did occasionally profit from them, but if he does have the financial connections his name suggests, I think we may have a prime cause of the credit crunch and the world financial meltdown within our ranks! Week 2 update Sorry I wasn't around to provide a full resumé of Week 2's events, but for those of you who are interested, here are the week's essentials: basic avge pts, 15.13, and with Banker 19.24. Correct results were a low 41.7%, Perfects 5s (also low, and no wonder with those 6-0s) were 6.7%. Bankers were 82.3% correct. The total goals, at 38, were the highest for a regular 10-game week for many a year. Congratulations to top scorers Adrenalin (32 pts) and Photoartcreations (31), likewise top tippers Go Behind Seagulls and Southern Hunter who nailed Arsenal's 6-0 and Bolton's 1-3 respectively. Among the Bankers, there were three entrepreneurs who earned unlikely dividends. Joanna Slinky, The Great Danes and Mukoni bet their bonus 5's on Newcastle to win, Liverpool to lose and Fulham to hold Man. Utd. Daring stuff, so well done, all! ScoreFivers are everywhere One of the great things about ScoreFive is that it brings together football fans from every corner of the world. Yes, yes, I know, a sphere doesn't have corners, but you get my drift I'm sure. We have players from over 100 countries, including places so remote, they officially don't have any inhabitants! Take for example the Heard and MacDonald Islands, off the coast of Antarctica. They have a resident ScoreFiver, though Wikipedia assures us the population is zero. Whether our man is a polar research scientist, bank robber hiding out after a big heist or he simply enjoys the quiet, I don't know, but in case he and any others of you have missed some of the more interesting titbits doing the rounds of the football media in the last week, here are a few I thought were of particular interest. What he said vs. what he did The Observer newspaper in the UK has an excellent column every Sunday by David Hills called Said & Done, which details what various football personalities say, in contrast to what they do. There's no shortage of hypocrisy. The pronouncements of the French player Loic Remy in recent months are a good example: 24 March: "Arsenal are the club I want to join. I won't deny it. I love to watch them play. It is the ideal place for me. I've been an Arsenal fan since I was little." There are more like this, plus a very rapid change of opinion from Harry Redknapp in last week's Said & Done here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/aug/22/said-and-done-greg-clarke FIFA latest You remember that FIFA promised a “full investigation” of reported mistreatment of the players and coach of North Korea after the World Cup? This consisted of asking the North Korean ruling regime if they abused their players and staff. Surprisingly they said “No”. That was good enough for FIFA, who decided the matter was thus adequately resolved. What a bunch of xxxxxxxs. Perhaps they were more concerned with money matters, and it often seems that to FIFA, only money matters. They have revealed that expenses paid to their staff were up last year by 20%. There's only 361 of them, and they have an average salary of $173000. That's a total of over $40m. Still, it's a drop in the ocean when you consider that their estimated profits from WC2010 were $2.5bn! Advice from Sir Alex The UK news this week is full of ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has just published his memoirs. His 'difficult relationship' (OK, it was barely concealed war) with Chancellor Gordon Brown led the PM on one occasion to consult the Man. Utd boss, asking what he would do with a troublesome star player. After being advised to 'dump him' Tony replied that this wasn't possible, as 'he would still be in the dressing room'. Even Alex didn't have a solution for that. Maybe Tony should have taken a tip from a couple of Craig Bellamy's previous managers, and sent GB out on loan. Cardiff, Celtic maybe? 80 years of hurt You probably saw the reports this week about the death of Francisco Varallo, the last surviving player from the first World Cup final. What most impressed me about the 100-year old Argentinian was that the result of that game still pained him. “How I cried that day. Even now when I look back it still makes me angry”, he said, when interviewed on his 100th birthday. Clearly that game mattered more than anything else in his life. Varallo's side were defeated 4-2 by hosts Uruguay in the 1930 final. Somehow, I can't imagine players of modern times grieving over a loss until their dying day. If I'm still around in 2080, I don't expect to read that Nicolas Anelka expired after regretting “Sacré Bleu, I was rubbish at World Cup 2010 and that's why France got dumped out early”. Fuelled by disappointment, Senór Palermo went on to become a legend at his club, Boca Juniors: his 194 goals remained the club record for more than 60 years until it was broken earlier this year by Martin Palermo. Mention of French players, the World Cup (and even death) reminds me of something I saw a couple of months back. It's a hoot! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxprvrFQpiE The dangers of punditry A couple of weeks ago, Robbie Savage, (now of Derby County) was hit smack in the face by a wayward clearance at Villa Park. Nothing unusual about that, you may think, but at the time, he was sitting in the stands doing his part-time job as a BBC radio pundit. This caused much hilarity among his press-box colleagues, but sadly it wasn't caught on film. In Germany, they're more efficient, and when it comes to giving their media-folk a whack, they get the camera into a prime position in advance. While I was there last week, a miskick by Khalid Boulahrouz (ex Chelsea, now of Stuttgart) in the pregame warmup at Mainz was getting more attention than any of the goals scored in the first week of the Bundesliga. I'm including a Youtube link to it, but as several others relating to the same incident have been removed, you might need to do a bit of searching. Try entering kopfball / Jessica, that should do the trick. It's worth the effort! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfGCSYZr_yA I can't finish without adding a few words about Germany. Mrs. S. and I had a great time there: we wholeheartedly recommend the Black Forest and Bavaria in particular. The food (and beer!) was first class, and surprisingly economical: the people were helpful, friendly, and their English was better than my German. Our thanks go to #127 Herr Glubb for his tourist info! Until next time pals, keep well. Prof. Statto
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