FoG

The short list for the Ballon D'Or is to be announced on Dec 1.  The 23 nominees will be whittled down to 3.  It looks like it will be Ronaldo and Messi and then one of Muller, Neymar and Rodriguez on the short list.   Perhaps Rodriguez is being considered because he was snubbed for the WC2014 player of the tournament award where he scored in every match, was awarded the goal of the tournament and the Golden Boot for top scorer.  Apart from the World Cup though, he wasn't really a stand out player when the full year is taken into account and in my opinion probably shouldn't be in the reckoning here. Take a look at the official criteria here . The award is for  achievements during the period 30 November 2013 to 21 November 2014 inclusive and takes into account on and off the pitch activity (Art 2 & 3).  I suspect that the jury (voted on by players, coaches and media) won't be pulling out the calendars and checking who scored what and when.  Recent headlines w

FIFA need to stick to football and stay away from maths. The latest blunder relates to the points awarded to Netherlands and Brazil.  See the screenshot from their website this afternoon below. 3 * 2.5 * 101 * 0.99 = 749.925.  Now I have no problem with FIFA rounding this down .  But... 3 * 1 * 171 * 0.995 = 510.435.  And normally I would have no problem with FIFA rounding this up . But is there one rule for Brazil and another for Netherlands? Round up or Round down? I wouldn't even mention this because 1 single point averaged out over a couple dozen games makes a negligible difference.  However it seems to highlight the fact that FIFA don't pay much attention to the detail.   This comes in recent months where I also noticed a slight misrepresentation of the calculations #fifa #fifarankings well done FIFA. Back to primary school and brush up on your Maths. 1 * 1 * 88 * 1 is not 81! pic.twitter.com/XyVcCbGspz — FoG (@FoG_BLoG) July 18, 2014 And what I

For people that are playing the Dunkest   NBA Fantasy Basketball League, here are some tips. Sunday night was a good night for Lebron James and all those who invested their precious credits on the star of the NBA.  To this point he has been shooting a little hot and a little cold as he adjusts to life back in Cleveland and while the rest of the team adjust around him.  But in his last match, James scored 29 points and assisted on 11 baskets which earned him a nice fantasy basketball score.   Here is why his good performance in this game in particular wasn't so unexpected. The opposition in question was Orlando Magic.  Magic only have a 37.5% win rate and are unfancied by the bookies at 250/1 to win outright.  A shrewd fantasy league manager will have noticed the potential for James in this match and bought him in before hand.  However for each trade there is a penalty - so better would be to spot a small run of games against weak opposition and get more bang for your buck.  

Ireland recorded an emphatic 4-1 home win against USA.  This USA squad has come in for some praise in recent times.  The result for Ireland may prove to be significant in terms of FIFA ranking points and in terms of seeding for the World Cup 2018 qualifiers. The seedings for those qualifiers will probably be decided based on the July 2015 FIFA rankings.  This is not confirmed yet but would be consistent with recent tournaments.  In that case the results of the four years leading up to July 2015 will contribute to the rankings. The results of the 3 years from July 2012 to July 2014 would need to be calculated and averaged and weighted but I figure the total for those 3 years is 214 ranking points.  The average points for July 2014 to July 2015 will then be added.  See below: Based on the current ranking an 843.32 points tally would enough to put Ireland into Pot 2. In the case where Ireland win one of Scotland and Poland then the least points we would have is a 3288

Ireland's qualification for WC2018 has already begun in my eyes.  It is likely that the qualifying groups will be seeded according to July 2015 Fifa Rankings ( see here ).  Every match between now and then will count rankings points towards these seedings.  Ireland are likely to be in one of the Pots 3 to 5 based on current rankings.  This would mean that as well as a top seed like Germany, Spain and Belgium that Ireland will also have to contend with a Pot 2 team like England (current rankings place them only 12th in Europe), Netherlands (who are on a drastic slide) and France (who will find it hard to maintain a high place in the FIFA rankings while only playing friendlies from here to 2016). Much better for Ireland would be to be in Pot 2 themselves and avoid these big names.  There are no teams provisionally in Pots 3-5 that will be a worry. The teams ranked 1st to 9th within Europe will likely make up Pot 1, with teams placed 10th to 18th in Pot 2, depending on where Russ

In a previous article I calculated the probabilities of a match based on the  Poisson  distribution and average goals.  The Poisson distribution is a mathematical model to describe the probability of the number of events occurring in a set period of time.  It is often applied to things like the number of cars arriving at a red light (in traffic management) or the number of claims per week (in insurance industry).  It is surprisingly accurate.  We applied it to goals per match. The Binomial Distribution describes another kind of random variable.  It is a little more complicated than the Poisson but can also be applied to goals/football.  It describes the number of positive outcomes in n trials given the probability of success  p  in each individual trial.  In our case we will think of a shot as a trial, and the outcome is successful if the shot results in a goal.  So to apply this we need to estimate the number of shots for a team per game (this will be n), and we will also need to