FoG

So I had an idea to complete the Premier League season in fewer matches. There is a fixture list of remaining fixtures, but not all fixtures are created equally. For example Liverpool vs Aston Villa would put a bit more shape to both the title race and the relegation battle, or Man Utd vs Sheff Utd would add significant information to the race for Champions League spots. One process to consider would be to rank the remaining fixtures by relevance based on title/relegation/Champions/Europa League "battle", based on which "battle" is most open and which teams are most involved in those battles. 1. Rank the remaining fixtures. 2. Play the most relevant next. 3. Check the table if all "battles" are mathematically decided then stop, else repeat from 1. It may even increase the fairness as the most relevant matches are prioritised.  It is more likely that you get a fair run in where Villa and Brighton both play Liverpool full strength and less lik...

I was mostly motivated to write this article because of the Coronavirus and how it has affected the european league schedules. How do we complete the season in the fairest way? I have no answer to that, but it got me thinking along the track on the fairest, and most efficient way to identify the best team in the League. It will also brings to light some other interesting bits related to some common cliches like "The table never lies", "luck evens itself out over the course of a full season". So we run competitions to find who the BEST team is. The competition can have several different formats, for example cup knockout type or round robin league type or combinations of both (Champions League, MLS).  Whatever format though the intention is to find out the best team. Clearly some formats are better at doing this than others. For example the Cup format, one bad result will eliminate the best team - indeed even if a team is so strong that it wins 80% of its matches ...