Five gameweeks of Champions League matches have now been concluded and Arsenal have secured their place in the knock-out stages as group winner. Relief, no Barcelona game again so soon! [Ed - Jin is an Arsenal fan] However, the journey to the knock-out stage is less smooth for the other three English clubs. Man City, in contrast to their superior position in the Premier League have looked rather nervous in their first season in the Champions League. After losing to Napoli, they surrendered a good chance to qualify and now, as Mancini put it: “we have a 30 percent chance”.
As statistical analysts, we’d naturally like to examine his quote. Our European full-time score model covers over 20 European football leagues and any team who has played a substantial number of matches in our covered competitions will be evaluated and assigned a team strength according to their performance. By using those team strengths we are able to make simulations of the Champions League and make predictions for the competition.
It means we can also predict City’s chance of qualifying to each stage of the competition. Below is what I found (click for a larger version):
City currently only have a 21% chance of qualifying to the knockout stage. It’s making even Mancini’s prediction look optimistic. We also predict City have a 3% chance of reaching the final and 1% chance of winning the competition. The chart below shows the latest probability for each team to win this year’s competition (click for a larger version):
Our simulations show that if City do manage to survive the group stage, they would have a 6% chance to win the competition. Still, that chance is dwarfed by Barcelona and Real Madrid!
you mention that your model covers 20 european leagues but I only see about 10 leagues covered in the predictor (http://www.dectech.org/football_sites/football_dectech/gamesim.php) . Is there another site where you publish the data for the other leagues or do you plan to include any of them in the weekly predictor in the future?
Hi Dominic, thanks for your comment. Sorry I didn’t make it more clear. We currently cover all 4 divisions for the English and Scottish football. In other big 5 leagues, we cover their top 2 divisions. The rest 7 countries we cover their top league division. This is able to give us any match predictions from over 20 leagues (or divisions?). This predictor site is currently our only site publishing predictions until recently. Now, we have set partnership with Castrol and they publish predictions for English Premier League. You can find them here: http://www.castrolfootball.com/?page=eplpredictor
Thanks Jin. I can only see the top divisions of the major leagues. You mention that you cover the top 2 divisions . Is it possible to add the match predictions for these divisions to the site? Thanks
Hi Dominic, unfortunately we do not publish results for their 2nd divisions at the moment. Will keep you posted though! Cheers, Jin
Thats a shame. I think your numbers for the major leagues are great and hopefully one day you will publish the other leagues that you are working on. I will keep an eye on the site. Thanks.