football – Page 5 – Pertinent Observations

Analyzing Premier League Performance so far

After yet another round of matches this weekend, Liverpool were unable to beat a 10-man Newcastle, and have slipped to third spot, with Chelsea going ahead of them on goal difference. Arsenal thumped Norwich to go clear at the top of the table. Manchester United continued to flounder, drawing at home to Southampton, who are the most improved team this season, compared to the last.

Now, the problem is that each team has a different fixture list. Some teams (such as Manchester United) have had an insanely tough set of fixtures so far this season. Others such as Arsenal have had it quite easy (the eight games Arsenal have played this season have all been fixtures that they won last year!). How do we account for this relative ease in fixtures to see how well teams have been performing?

In chess, one of the popular tie breaker methods used for “Swiss League” tournaments is called the “Solkoff method”. According to this method, the tie breaker score for each player is the sum of points scored by all his opponents. In a swiss league, each player plays against a different set of players, so a higher Solkoff score means a player has played his games against tougher opponents, and has hence done better than someone else with the same points tally but who has played weaker opponents. The question is if we can use these principles to evaluate football teams at this point in the season.

I propose what I call the “Modified Solkoff” score. Here, we not only take into account the total points of each opponent of a team, but also the result of the game against the particular opponent. This is then normalized by the total points scored by all your opponents. Take Arsenal for example. Their opponents so far this season have a total of 69 points as of today. Of the eight games they’ve played, Arsenal have lost to Aston Villa and drawn at West Brom. So the numerator of Arsenal’s Modified Solkoff score becomes 0 * Aston Villa’s points (10) + 1 * West Brom’s points (10) + 3 * total points of all their other opponents, which amounts to 157. This is then normalized by the total points tally of their opponents so far (69) and we get Arsenal’s normalized Modified Solkoff score of 2.28. You can see that the maximum possible Solkoff score is 3 (if a team has won all its games) and the minimum is 0 (losing all games). The higher the Solkoff score the better (better performance against better opponents).

This is what the Modified Solkoff table looks like as of today (21st October 2013). Arsenal may not have played the toughest opponents but the fact that they have won so many of their games means that they are on top. They are interestingly followed by Manchester City and then Southampton. Manchester United is buried somewhere in the bottom half of the table:

It is also interesting to note that Sunderland is ahead of Crystal Palace at the bottom of their table. This is due to the fact that Palace’s only points so far have come against Sunderland, while Sunderland earned their point from a draw with high-flying Southampton.

This also shows that Liverpool’s early season highs have come on the back of wins against relatively weaker teams (it doesn’t help their cause that Manchester United is classified as a “weak team” thanks to their performance so far), and thus their early season table topping is unlikely to sustain.

Let me know in the comments what you think of this method of computing a normalized score based on a team’s opponents so far.

PS: This table will be regularly updated (after each “matchday”), so if you are reading this after October, some of the notes may not match what is there in the table.

Has Manchester United Really Been a Disaster This Season?

The talk of this English Premier League season so far has been the poor performance of defending champions Manchester United. After six rounds of matches, the Red Devils lie twelfth, with only seven points from six games. While we are barely one sixth our way into the season (where each team plays 38 games), people are talking about the loss of the United “magic” following the departure of its long-standing coach Sir Alex Ferguson last season break. Other analysts, however, are quick to point out that United started off with a rather tough fixture list this year, having visited Liverpool and Manchester City and hosted Chelsea already.

A snapshot of the Premier League Table, thus, does not paint a particularly accurate picture. It is possible that at a particular interval in the season you can go through a series of tough games, or easy games. The fixture schedule each year is different and thus early league positions can be deceptive.

On this page, we will try to adjust for that. This post is going to be updated every week, and what we will do is to compare this season to the earlier one and see how teams are performing relative to the same set of fixtures last year. Thus far this season, Manchester United have played Chelsea, West Bromwich and Crystal Palace, all at home and have traveled to Swansea, Liverpool and Manchester City. What we do is to compare the performance of Manchester United in these six games to the corresponding six fixtures last season.

To adjust for relegation and promotion, the teams that placed 18th to 20th last season are respectively replaced by the three qualifiers (in order) from the Championship. Thus, we will assume that Cardiff City will replicate Wigan’s performance, Hull City Reading’s and Crystal Palace has taken QPR’s place.

Thus, we get table 1 – the “points change graph”, which shows how many additional points each team has got so far relative to the corresponding fixtures last year.

This table confirms that irrespective of the fixture list, Manchester United’s performance so far this season is significantly inferior to that of last year. At the other end, Southampton and Tottenham Hotspur have vastly improved from last season.

Next, we will assume that the rest of the season would go as it did last season, and see how the table has changed taking into account this season’s performance.

Again, it is early in the season yet, but if the rest of this season were to go as it did last year, Manchester United is likely to still win the title, but only just. Interestingly, Tottenham will be second if the rest of the season goes as per last season’s performances.

Arranged Scissors 12 – Rejection Sharing Agreements

This is similar to the Klose-Podolski corollary to the Goalkeeper Theory. To refresh your memory, or to fresh it in case I haven’t mentioned this earlier, the Klose-Podolski corollary refers to a case of two close friends who decide to hit on the same person. The implicit understanding is that they don’t regard each other as rivals but blade together, and first get rid of all the other suitors before they engage in one last showdown so that the bladee picks one of them.

We came up with this corollary to the Goalkeeper Theory shortly after the 2006 Football World Cup, during which Klose and Podolki formed a cracking strike partnership for Germany. Later on, they were to play together for Bayerrn Munchen, but like most Klose-Podolski arrangements, they too ended up in bitterness with Poodolski (who scored the lesser number of goals among the two) publicly voicing his bitterness and finally transferring to his “native” Koln.

Now that the crazy digression is out of the way, let me get to the point. Today is the first day of Navaratri, and with the inauspicious “Mahalaya Paksha” having gotten out of the way, arranged scissors is back in full earnest. This also means that I re-enter the market, though I’m still yet to list myself (don’t plan to for a while at least. OTC is said to give superior valuations). And some casual conversation and some not-so-casual phone calls this morning, I have been thinking of the arranged marriage equivalent of the Klose-Podolski arrangement.

So basically, as part of this arrangements, two parties who are looking to hit the same side of the deal strike a deal to share “rejection information” with each other. “Rejection information” can be of the following two types:

Today I found out about this girl. She seems to be really good in most respects – good looking, rich, good family background, virgin and all that. But for some (usually random) reason, my son doesn’t want to marry her. Why don’t you try her for your son?
Today I found out about this girl. Talked to her, her parents, etc. Doesn’t seem like a good prospect at all. She is either ugly or too “forward” or her family background is bad. I think the chances of her getting along with your son is quite low. Don’t waste your time with her.

Note that both of this is extremely useful information, especially in an illiquid market. What is important here is the nature of people with whom you strike such agreements. The basic thing is that your correlation with them should neither be too low nor too high. Ideally, they should belong to the same/similar caste, should have a fairly similar family background, etc. but the boys shouldn’t be too similar. Yeah, I think that is a fair criterion – they should be as similar as possible in terms of “arranged criteria” but as different as possible in terms of “louvvu criteria”.

Basically if the correlation is too low, then you can’t really trust their judgment on counterparties. On the other hand, if the correlation is too high, then it is extremely likely that they turn out to be “rivals” and that if one party rejects a girl, it’s unlikely that the other party will like the girl. I supppose you get what I’m talking about.

One downside to such agreements that I can think of – it might cause bitterness later on in life, long after the goal has been scored. The feeling that “this guy married a girl that I rejected” or the other way round might come back to haunt you later on in life.

Why is Ten Sports sitting on so many rights?

I wanted to stay up last night. I wanted to stay up and watch the WI-Eng match till the very end. Waking up this morning and checking the scorecard, it seems like it was a really good match. And Fidel Edwards seems to have become a last-day-shutdown specialist. This is the second time this series he’s hung on. And he’d done so once before against India at ARG.

There was another reason I wanted to stay up last night. I wanted to watch Liverpool play Real Madrid. I woke up this morning and saw that it was an amazing game, too. Looking through the Guardian Football site (btw, Advani seems to be advertising heavily on that site; it’s a pity he never advertises here on my site) I noticed that Chelski-Juve was also a strong game, despite the result. Another reason I would’ve wanted to stay up last night. For the record, I slept at 12:10. Tea-time in the Test match, and before either of the football games had started.

Ten Sports seems to have bitten off more than it can chew. It seems to own the rights to telecast too many different things. I think I have raised this point once earlier, but it pzzles me as to what Ten Sports is trying to achieve by getting rights to telecast so many things, most of which are happening at the same time. For example, over the last couple of weeks I’ve been unable to watch the first hour of WI-Eng even if I’d wanted to, because it was overlapping with the last hour of SA-Aus, which was being telecast at the same time.

The reason I slept off early last night was because I didn’t have the option to watch what I wanted. All the three games that I’d’ve been reasonably interested in were supposed to be on Ten Sports (Zee Sports doesn’t count since Tata Sky doesn’t offer that), and I realized that I’d be forced to watch what the guys at the Taj Entertainment Network would want me to watch. Denied the option to choose what I wanted to watch, I went to bed.

It puzzles me that Ten Sports isn’t subletting its contracts. Devoid of anything decent to show, I suppose that ESPN or NEO would’ve only been too happy to acquire the rights to telecast last night’s Liv-Real game by paying a fee to Ten Sports. And it would’ve unlocked value at the hands of the remote-holder. Ten Sports need not let go of the rights to show all the games. All they need to do is to sell the “out of money options” – the rights to the game which they won’t be able to telecast anyway.

Now, the problem will be if accounting for all costs, no options are out of money. For example, you know you won’t be able to show Liv-Real. But you think that the loss of brand equity of your channel would exceed the money you’d gain by selling this option to another willing channel. The viewers are the only losers at this game, but I don’t know what can be done. After all, viewers are way too dispersed in order for them to take any kind of action.

Extending this question, what can a sports body do to prevent a bidder from acquiring rights to telecast and then mess up the telecast (or not telecast it at all) ? After all, the sports body is out there to make as much money as possible from the TV rights, and they need to ensure significant investment into broadcasting by the broadcasters, so the “i’ll give rights to only those channels that are in the interest of the people” model won’t work.

One option would be to sell the rights to two channels in each market. But given that broadcast is a natural monopoly, the sports body will not be able to make as much by selling to two bidders as it can by selling to one bidder. Is there any other solution that you can think of? If yes, unleash.

Be Right Back

BRB. Be right back. I think this has to be the most abused phrase in the history of Instant Messaging. The problem with the phrase is that it gives no indicator of the amount of time that the BRBer will be away. First of all, different people have different horizons when they say “right back”. It could range from as short as a pee break to as long as a two hour meeting. In certain cases, the person doesn’t reappear at all.

Then there are people who are plain insincere. When they don’t know how to wriggle out of a conversation and they have someone else to do, they just “brb”. And thus end up keeping the other person waiting endlessly. Just think about it – it’s so much easier to get out of a conversation with just these 3 letters rather than wasting 2-3 sentences in explaining to the other person why you’ve to go away. Here, there are no formal goodbyes. No greetings. Just a BRB.

In the last couple of months, I’ve been trying hard to make an attempt to minimize use of this phrase, or at least minimize the misuse. If I know the length of time for which I’ll be away, I’ll give the counterparty an idea about that. If I don’t have a good idea of the amount of time my distraction will take, I usually tell the counterparty what my distraction is. I sometimes instinctively say “brb” and then follow it up with the time or the activity. Examples – “brb phone” (the counterparty knows this can take from a minute to a few hours) or “brb leak” (here the counterparty knows i won’t be gone for more than a couple of minutes) or “brb dinner”.

In the larger interest of humanity, I request you people also to suitably modify your usage of this term. “Be right back” is meaningless today. Do something like what I do. Qualify your absences. It’s going to go a long way in reducing the total amount of time wasted by the world in waiting for the counterparty to be returning to the conversation. At this moment, if i were taking an interview for a consulting job, I’d ask the candidate to estimate this amount of time.

So what did Sven-Goran Eriksson tell captain David Beckham in the group match against Trinidad and Tobago when the injured Jamie Carragher was replaced by Aaron Lennon?

Be Right Back.

On Being a Geek

I’ve always been a “topper types”. I started topping class when I was in first standard (and no, they didn’t announce ranks before that), and as if that wasn’t enough, my parents made sure that all relatives, and all teachers in school knew about my superhuman arithmetic skills. And as if even this wasn’t enough, I became the first guy in my class to wear spectacles. In a few years’ time, I went on to represent my school in supposedly intellectual pursuits such as quizzing and chess. I had been consigned to living life as a geek.

There were several occasions when I wasn’t really the topper; wasn’t even close to being a topper. However, something or the other ensured that I managed to maintain that geeky aura. In school, and at IIMB, I was supposed to be really good at math, and that made me geeky. Things were differnet at IIT – since a number of my classmates who trumped me in acads were also better than me at other geeky things. However, I think the fact that I was studying CompSci made me feel geeky, and I never lost any opportunity to show off my geekiness.

In this context, the last two years were quire awkward, as I was in a couple of non-geeky jobs. For the first time in almost twenty years, I had to go out of my way to demonstrate my geekiness, and given that those jobs didn’t need me to be a geek, things didn’t go quite well. I used to try and shove in lines into my conversation such as “we used to play chess in the classroom at IIT. since we couldn’t carry in chessboards, we used to imagine a board and play on that”.

It was very awkward. Thinking back, maybe that was one of the major contributing reasons to my not being too happy in the jobs. I wasn’t able to play my natural game. I had to invent a new me that would go to work daily. And it wasn’t just about the geekiness factor, but this was one of the important reasons, I believe.

Now, working as a strategy guy in a quant hedge fund, I feel I have every right to be geeky, and am well and truly back in form. I lose no opportunity to crack geeky jokes. I try to bring in analogies from various geeky fields I’ve been acquainted with – math, computer science, finance, and even physics. And I don’t mind making things complicated just so that I can slip in that geeky analogy that I think is “beautiful” and “elegant”.

Two days back, i was talking to Baada on the phone, and I smelt an opportunity to crack a geeky joke. We were discussing football while watching Liverpool play Chelski. And then suddenly I asked him if he knew the concept of inversion in geometry. When he replied in the negative, I spetn the next ten minutes explaining the concept to him, all so that I could slip in that one little geeky joke.

Beware of me, I would say.