FoG

The Ballon D'Or has been presented since 1956, there have been numerous changes in the voting process in that time.  So much so that much of the old data is irrelevant.  We will look mostly at recent years - namely the last 10 awards (2013-2023). Even in that time there are changes in the voting process.  2013: It was Media, Captains and Coaches voted for the best player in the world (and it had been this way since 2010). 2016: it reverted to Media (journalists) only, one representing every country in the world. 2022: it was further restricted to journalist one representing the top 100 FIFA ranked nations. Also in 2022 there was changes in the criteria.  Before 2022 the players overall career was also a consideration, in 2022 it was explicitly just based on current season. How have these changes effected results. Media opinion vs Captains/Coaches. We have the breakdown of votes for the period for when both Media (Journos) and Captain/Coaches voted. Ballon D'Or Vote breakdowns b

With England, there is always alot of discussion about Gareth Southgate. But how much do managers really matter anyway.  According to this article the answer is "not much" and even goes as far as to present a theory that managers are mere scapegoats for the board and owners.  Protects them from any real criticism when they can just sack/blame the manager. I also think that a managers influence is becoming smaller and smaller over the years as modern football clubs have directors of football, data analytics departments and other teams of people that they lean on for support.  Its not all the managers decision as much as the Alex Ferguson days. Furthermore for an International manager, he doesn't have a say in player development (he sees them 3 or 4 times per year only on international break).  He can't transfer players, he has to accept the players that he has.  So in both those aspects he has alot less control, a lot less influence. That is not to say that the FA sho

For the  Sophisticated Predictions Contest for Euro 2024  I have had an attempt to build a prediction. There is information in bookie odds and often the most accurate probability of a match result between two teams is in the Closing Match odds at time of kick off.  At least if you know a better prediction you will be rich.  But for the rest of us non-professional bettors and even most professional bettors the closing line will be the best prediction for the probability of a football match that you can get. Given the probability we can easily deconstruct the relative ratings of the teams.  On a basic level the favourite is better team than the underdog - and the shorter their odds the bigger the gap in the ratings. So I have a basic ELO-like system, but it is based on the closing match odds rather than the result.  Using odds over result I think the ratings converge on something more realistic and do it much quicker.   For example England played Germany in the Nations League.  My rating

So I need to post this. To get it all out of my head and move on with my life. Been thinking/obsessing over this too long. (Sorry its about the Grand National or more generally horse fatalities). The only TWO things that matter are 1) What is the risk? 2) What is acceptable? The first part should be straight forward to obtain from stats. I expect a wide difference of opinion on the second but have some ideas on how to put it in some context. 1) What is the risk? So here it is from the great work done by horsepwr. https:// horsepwr.co.uk I will talk about Jump Racing because its what every one is talking about re. GN. I want to re-calculate the rate to a rate per horse per annum so that it is comparable to numbers I have found later in the thread. So it is 112 fatalities from 7,722 individual horses in one year. That is 1.45% or 145 in 10,000 per annum. 2) What is acceptable? I am going to pivot to humans for a minute. The HSE has this framework for "Tolerability of R

  Code repository is available here:  https://bitbucket.org/heaneyd/overround-calculator/src/master/ 1. Click Downloads   2. Download Repository 3. Assume you know how to save the zip file and and extract it.  Just remember where you saved it. 4. In Chrome beside the address bar, click the jigsaw piece to manage extensions. 5. Make sure "Developer Mode" is turned on, and then click the "Load unpacked" button.  Just navigate to where you unzipped the file and "Select Folder".  You can then make sure that version 1.1 is toggled on and you can toggle off the chrome store version 1.0.

Click on penalty above to show video below (please view this page on desktop!) If embedded video not working try this link: link . The facebook video's don't want to embed nicely for me. And there is one giant video on youtube "First Division goals 1991-1992" that is over 9 hours long, sending the time markings of Le Tissier's goals seems to only work now and then. For these you might have better luck clicking the link. Matt Le Tissier, the Penalty Taker. In this blog A shot map of 33 of Le Tissier's penalties available on youtube. A rating of the placement quality of these 33 penalties based on PenaltyKickStat's data analysis of thousands of penalty kicks. A quick summary of barcanumbers blog, which is one of the best mathematical analysis of his bare record. A full list of the penalties that I could find with some notes. A description of his tehcnique mostly in his own words. Its