Are Bayern Munich at Home in the UCL Final?

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Seems a silly question, right? The final will be at Bayern’s home stadium. But it won’t be full of Bayern’s fans, as it is when they usually play. So are they really going to enjoy the full effects of home advantage?

Home European Cup Finals

There are previous instances of European club finals being played at one of the teams’ home grounds: Madrid won the European Cup “at home” in 56/57, Inter won in 64/65 and Roma lost in 83/84. In the UEFA Cup, Feyenoord won in 01/02, Sporting Lisbon lost in 04/05 and finally in the European Cup Winners Cup Barcelona won in 81/82. Thanks Wikipedia!

So four wins and two losses, that’s exactly what you’d expect with full home advantage in effect and two teams of equal ability. But most of these matches are far in the past: maybe the home teams were strong favourites and maybe the stadia all those years ago really were full of home fans. Is there anything else that can help us?

Home Domestic European Cup Finals

I was surprised to find (thanks again, Wikipedia) that French, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish have been played at club grounds, and there have been many instances of cup finals “at home”.

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Some Graphic Illustration of This Season’s Premier League

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This season’s Premier League has not let us down. With most teams having just four league games left, there is still all to play for at top of the table for the Manchester teams. At the other end of the table four teams are battling it out to stay in the top division and of course, there is also race for the fourth Champions League spot. I was interested in seeing how each team has featured in those battles. Drawing charts is usually the best way… Continue reading →

How To Increase Arsenal’s Title Chance

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After the weekend’s Premier League matches, I am pleased to find Arsenal sitting 3rd in the table. In fact they have won seven Premier League matches in a row and are now three points above Tottenham. A friend pointed out (probably sarcastically) that Arsenal might be late title challenger. I stared at the table for as long as I could but the gap of 15 points between them and the top didn’t reduce. I then looked at our predictions published on Castrol.com, they actually have a 0.01% chance to win the title as I found after digging very deep into the decimal places. But I wasn’t going to give up.

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Europa League Prediction

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After what happened in the Champions League to Chelsea last night and to Arsenal last week, I think it’s safe to say that for most English fans it’s time to focus on the less prestigious Europa League, for the first time in many years. I spoke to a colleague (a Man Utd fan) after the Arsenal vs. Milan game; I couldn’t hide my envy that her team is still in a European tournament. It’s the same old February for Arsenal: a period that they exit all competitions. Nevertheless, life has to go on (for me) and I decided to look at English teams’ chances of winning the Europa League. Continue reading →

Masters of Unpredictability

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When I was watching BBC’s Match of the Day 2 on Sunday evening, the programme host mentioned how unpredictable Aston Villa’s league form has been lately. He pointed out that their last 7 league game results (before last Sunday) were: loss-draw-win-loss-draw- win-draw. It seems indeed a little random in a sense that the team hasn’t achieved back to back wins or draws or losses. After last Sunday’s game, a 2:1 loss to Newcastle, adding to the sequence, the hypothesis still holds.

But are they really being unpredictable? Continue reading →

Africa Cup of Nations: Predictions Ahead of the Final Group Games

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A further update of my previous pieces previewing the Africa Cup of Nations and looking at the impact of the first matches.

Group A

Senegal are definitely out and Co-Host Equatorial Guinea are through. This leaves Zambia and Libya, although Libya need to beat Senegal and hope Zambia lose with a net movement in goal difference of at least three in their favour. We make the chance of that happening just 2.8%! If Zambia win they will win the group, which given the Ivory Coast will probably meet the runners up of this group, will be a prize worth fighting for.

Group B

Ivory Coast qualify for the second round comfortably and have eliminated Burkina Faso. Sudan must beat Burkina Faso and hope the Ivory Coast defeat Angola (again a net movement in goal difference of three is also required), identical to the situation in Group A. The chance in this instance is 8%. If Angola beat the Ivory Coast they will win the group.

Group C

Qualification is decided in this group with Gabon and Tunisia through, although they will battle to win the group. Morocco and Niger are playing for the wooden spoon of the group.

Group D

Still everything to play for in this group, unless you’re Botswana who are eliminated. Ghana are almost certain qualify (99.9%) but haven’t secured the group win. Guinea and Mali both have three points, but are seperated by large gap in goal difference (+4 to -1 respectively). However Mali are favourites to qualify as they take on Botswana while Guinea have to play the strongest team in the group. Guinea will be hoping Ghana rest players.

Knockout

In terms of the overall competition, we now see the following chances of progression for the teams who can still make it to the knockout phase. As you’d expect the Ivory Coast continue to look strong favourites for the title

Latest Africa Cup of Nations Knockout Percentages

 

Update: Africa Cup of Nations 2012

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In the last post I previewed the Africa Cup of Nations. Now That all teams have played their first game, here is an update on the chances of each team to qualify from their group and progress through the competition. Continue reading →

Preview: Africa Cup of Nations 2012

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Most fans of Premier League clubs will be aware of the upcoming 28th edition of the Africa Cup of Nations primarily due to the star players who will be leaving their clubs for up to five games. The Fink Tank (£) on Saturday focused on the impact of these players leaving, but in this piece we’ll look at who is likely to win the competition.

Although players left for training camps a couple of weeks ago, the tournament kicks off on Saturday. Co-hosted by Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, the competition is missing many of the strongest teams in Africa. Cameroon (ranked 3rd in Africa by Dectech), Egypt  (6th and defending champions), Nigeria (4th), and South Africa (7th) all failed to qualify. Sadly South Africa’s players ended the qualifying tournament under the misapprehension that they had qualified after their coach failed to properly understand the rules in the case of a three-way tie-break. At least they qualify as hosts for the 2013 edition. Continue reading →

What’s up with Chelsea’s Defence?

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Chelsea haven’t really lived up to expectations this season. Some have pointed out that their poor defensive performance is to blame. But which part exactly? I got curious and wanted to find out.

I started by looking at some of Chelsea’s raw stats. This season, by the end of 2011, Chelsea had conceded 24 league goals from a total of 19 matches. That comes to 1.26 goals per match. How does that compare to previous seasons? The chart below illustrates:

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El Clasico Leverage

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Despite conceeding the fastest goal in an El Clasico, Barcelona still triumphed 3-1 on Saturday. This drew them level with Real Madrid on points and ahead on the head-to-head rule.

But how important was this single match in terms of the chance of being top at the end of the season? To investigate I used the DecTech team strength model to simulate four scenarios: the chances each team had of winning the league before a ball was kicked on Saturday, plus the probabilities of taking the title after the Barca win, if the match had been a draw, and if Madrid had won instead.

This “six pointer” of a match is particularly interesting because Barcelona and Real Madrid dominate the league so thoroughly. At the end of August our model predicted one of these clubs would win the league with a chance of 99.5%. After this weekend’s games that figure is now in excess of 99.9%. The match’s importance is enhanced by the head-to-head rule which ranks teams on their record against each other if there is a tie on points, unlike the Premier League, which uses goal difference against all other clubs in the league. Continue reading →