Easiest premier league start ever?? (For Tottenham)

[sudoku]

The good news, is we only play teams that are below us for the rest of the season now.

Easy!

 

[stevee]

So the narrative has changed from...
"We're only doing well because other teams are playing badly"
To
"We're only doing well because we've had easy fixtures "

The desperation of some "fans" on here to paint us in a bad light is off the charts.

We're top of the league FFS, it might (probably) not last but enjoy it while you can.

 

[BernardMatthews]

So the narrative has changed from...
"We're only doing well because other teams are playing badly"
To
"We're only doing well because we've had easy fixtures "

The desperation of some "fans" on here to paint us in a bad light is off the charts.

We're top of the league FFS, it might (probably) not last but enjoy it while you can.

No narrative. Just facts.

 

[BernardMatthews]

My position remains the same as last season.
Call me Nostradamus.

These twats.

Coming up to 9 games you can look at the league and start saying things like title aspirations.

Half way mark of 19 games it’s fair to say someone are title contenders when near the top. (Within 3-4 points for sure).

After 28 games if you are top and then drop off by a couple of places then it’s fair to say you have “bottled it”.

The way some in the media are talking it’s like woolwich are at game 35 and looking like the title is almost theirs. Laughable.

Personally I’m waiting till MW 19 to see where the league really sits this season. Top and bottom. Until this have to try to block out all this noise. Media blackout required.

 

[mummy]

There is no easy games in the Premier

You've been listening to Andy Townsend again. Go on, admit it.

 

[mummy]

My position remains the same as last season.
Call me Nostradamus.

These twats.

Coming up to 9 games you can look at the league and start saying things like title aspirations.

Half way mark of 19 games it’s fair to say someone are title contenders when near the top. (Within 3-4 points for sure).

After 28 games if you are top and then drop off by a couple of places then it’s fair to say you have “bottled it”.

The way some in the media are talking it’s like woolwich are at game 35 and looking like the title is almost theirs. Laughable.

Personally I’m waiting till MW 19 to see where the league really sits this season. Top and bottom. Until this have to try to block out all this noise. Media blackout required.

I always though Bernard was your first name? You Dutch?

 

[BernardMatthews]

There is no easy games in the Premier

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/66835401

 

[BernardMatthews]

I always though Bernard was your first name? You Dutch?

My spiritual guide is a native of the South American continent channelling the aura of the great turkey slayer and renowned inventor of the twizzler.

 

[stevee]

No narrative. Just facts.

Not facts. Just opinion

 

[BernardMatthews]

Not facts. Just opinion

I think you will find we did play the bottom 4 in our first 8 games and playing 9 men is easier than playing 11.

Both are facts!!

 

[stevee]

I think you will find we did play the bottom 4 in our first 8 games and playing 9 men is easier than playing 11.

Both are facts!!

It hasn't been that easy a start as people like to suggest.

Away vs 9th place
Home vs 3rd
Away vs 15th
Away vs newly promoted
Home vs newly promoted
Away vs 2nd
Home vs 5th

Call the newly promoted sides 19th and 20th, that's an average of 10.4, very close to the average you can expect after 38 games.

Don't let other people convince you United was beating a bottom half club. They finished 3rd on merit and will likely climb up the table, though people will always attempt to play down and devalue our wins.

City lost to Wolves, Woolwich drew with Fulham at home, Liverpool drew with Chelsea.. 17 points from 7 games is a great return even if we played the 14th-20th best teams in the league consecutively, but we didn't and got some good results with some hard fixtures out of the way.

(I would expect the narrative around Liverpool drawing away at Chelsea is somehow more credible than our draw at Brentford like they didn't finish 15 points behind them last season and are only a mere 1 point behind them so far this season)

I wouldn't say it's an easy start. About average. We've played 3 teams that will probably finish top 6, and 2 of those expected to be top 3. Brentford are a top half team and after Luton we will have played 5 away games and only 3 at home.

How is playing United , Liverpool and the gooners away anything like an easy start?
Anyway as Woolwich know , you don’t get fuck all for starting well, it’s how you finish that counts!

It's also a joke to dismiss the Liverpool match as a "just a game against 9 men."

The way we play now, with the ball, taking chances and creating opportunities... that leads to the opposition fouling us more than before. Putting the pressure on the opposition forces them into mistakes.

Our play reduced them to desperation, and as a result 9.

That's good play.

Not luck.

We've played three of the teams that finished in the top five last season. We opened the season away at a team that only lost to Newcastle and Woolwich at home last season.

We've definitely had easier. I'd even argue last seasons was easier.

Not buying this at all.....

Brentford
Man U
Arse
Liverpool
........Not one of those games did we go into expecting them to be easy; nor were they easy.

Sheff U were a fucking pain in the arse too.

Getting good results doesn't mean the games were easy.

Is this some sort of attempted joke?

We haven’t even had the easiest start in the league this season, let alone ever. Check Chelsea’s fixtures so far. Or man city.

Use some actual data.

Bunch of away games plus Arse, Liverpool and United (I guess United are a bit crap to be fair).

That’s not an easy start at all, could be worse but doesn’t strike me as an easy start.

The side is good and can beat anyone. It’s depth or lack of that could hurt us.

We've played three of the so called "big six" and come through unbeaten.

Not an easy start, although to be fair we've also had two of the probable relegation candidates too so it's evened out.

Easy start?

Ok let us analyse:

Brentford away - a team we have NEVER beaten away since they were promoted, and who’s home record has been very impressive generally. A 2-2 draw there is a decent result.

Manchester United at home - A fixture that has caused us all sorts of problems over the years, regardless of how good or poor United or ourselves have been at the time of any given game. A mentality issue, as much as anything. Ange’s second game and we come away with a 2-0 win. Great result.

Bournemouth away - A game I would expect us to win most of the time but nevertheless a place where good teams can go to die, as has been proven many times over the years. A nice 2-0 win, they had a wee spell in the game but never really in doubt.

Burnley away - Always a tricky game and a place we’ve invariably struggled over the years. A place where teams like Spurs should go and win but not always the case. A very comfortable 5-2 win, great result.

Sheffield United at home - maybe the only absolute gimme game we’ve had this year but as is very often the case it didn’t pan out like many would have expected. In the end though, a 2-1 win. Anything less would have been a massive disappointment.

Woolwich away - a place we normally can’t buy a result. We went there, and arguably might have deserved to win the game. A 2-2 draw was maybe just about right, but if anyone deserved the full three it was probably us.

Liverpool at home - Much like Manchester United, a fixture that we always struggle in. Rarely get a slice of luck either. The in game circumstances were out of the ordinary but I feel we deserved the points in the end. I’m convinced that we would have failed to take advantage over the last few years.

Taking recent history into account there would be no real surprise if we were were perhaps sitting on maybe 9 or 10 points just now.

To me, that doesn’t constitute an easy start.

Also facts.

 

[Shadydan]

I think you will find we did play the bottom 4 in our first 8 games and playing 9 men is easier than playing 11.

Both are facts!!

The only reason they're the bottom 4 is because one of the teams they've played against is us...

Liverpool had 9 men because their bunch of thugs couldn't deal with our players so they had to resort to fouling to stop us.

How about that

 

[bunburyist]

The only reason they're the bottom 4 is because one of the teams they've played against is us...

Liverpool had 9 men because their bunch of thugs couldn't deal with our players so they had to resort to fouling to stop us.

How about that

Haha - you're bottom 4 because we put you there, bitch

 

[nicoclaesen]

The only reason they're the bottom 4 is because one of the teams they've played against is us...

Liverpool had 9 men because their bunch of thugs couldn't deal with our players so they had to resort to fouling to stop us.

How about that

Sounds about right

 

[bonaspur23]

BernardMatthews , here's a new addition to matters...

or the reddit post


View: https://old.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/173x3oz/optaanalyst_how_difficult_are_each_premier/

So, by the measure of remaining game difficulty our first 10 games have been the easiest...and by some distance as no other team's spread is >/=7 pts from the previous club (Arse to Villa 2nd at 5.8).

Interesting way to measure as it takes out the variability of preseason expectations and utilizes actual season performance to gauge.

So I did some basic math and this metric thinks
that playing PSV and anderlect is equally as hard as playing Mainz and Woolwich. Anderlect (#100) and Mainz (#120) are very close in opta rating (0.9 apart), but separated by 20 places. PSV (#25) and Woolwich (#5) are also separated by 20 places (but 5.8 apart in opta rating).

Similarly, palace is 37 spots below city. So per this metric, playing man city and rangers is the same as palace and Bournemouth.

It’s not. This is taking average world ranking instead of the actual metric. So using this flawed stat will penalize teams that played the bottom and top of the table like we did and benefit teams that played more mid table.

A person that knows stats would take average opta rating instead of average world ranking and it wouldn’t be skewed like this.

Spoiler

This graph is a bit of a shitshow. You can see the metric says “using the opta power rankings of REMAINING opponents.” It looks like they are taking the last 28 games and measuring who has the hardest fixtures and then inverting it. This metric also doesn’t take home/away into account.

Last point is that this is an average of opponents numerical world ranking. As you get near the bottom of the league, the rankings get spread out more. For example the difference between anderlect and Mainz is 20 places and just 0.9 in rating so they are just about the same level. But 20 places away from Woolwich is PSV and the difference is 5.8 in rating, so Woolwich are way better.

 

[paddy spur]

So I did some basic math and this metric thinks
that playing PSV and anderlect is equally as hard as playing Mainz and Woolwich. Anderlect (#100) and Mainz (#120) are very close in opta rating (0.9 apart), but separated by 20 places. PSV (#25) and Woolwich (#5) are also separated by 20 places (but 5.8 apart in opta rating).

Similarly, palace is 37 spots below city. So per this metric, playing man city and rangers is the same as palace and Bournemouth.

It’s not. This is taking average world ranking instead of the actual metric. So using this flawed stat will penalize teams that played the bottom and top of the table like we did and benefit teams that played more mid table.

A person that knows stats would take average opta rating instead of average world ranking and it wouldn’t be skewed like this.

Spoiler

This graph is a bit of a shitshow. You can see the metric says “using the opta power rankings of REMAINING opponents.” It looks like they are taking the last 28 games and measuring who has the hardest fixtures and then inverting it. This metric also doesn’t take home/away into account.

Last point is that this is an average of opponents numerical world ranking. As you get near the bottom of the league, the rankings get spread out more. For example the difference between anderlect and Mainz is 20 places and just 0.9 in rating so they are just about the same level. But 20 places away from Woolwich is PSV and the difference is 5.8 in rating, so Woolwich are way better.

Are we really that committed that we have to Marshall opta power ratings stats and erm world rankings.

Honestly people, who gives a flying fuck. We have a good start. Enjoy it for what it is.

 

[bonaspur23]

Are we really that committed that we have to Marshall opta power ratings stats and erm world rankings.

Honestly people, who gives a flying fuck. We have a good start. Enjoy it for what it is.

Just trying to prevent the spread of misinformation.

There are always people posting charts that don’t understand them.

 

[Herclueless]

My position remains the same as last season.
Call me Nostradamus.

These twats.

Coming up to 9 games you can look at the league and start saying things like title aspirations.

Half way mark of 19 games it’s fair to say someone are title contenders when near the top. (Within 3-4 points for sure).

After 28 games if you are top and then drop off by a couple of places then it’s fair to say you have “bottled it”.

The way some in the media are talking it’s like woolwich are at game 35 and looking like the title is almost theirs. Laughable.

Personally I’m waiting till MW 19 to see where the league really sits this season. Top and bottom. Until this have to try to block out all this noise. Media blackout required.

You can wait until GW37 and there'll still be some dipshit claiming we've had the easier start...

 

[bonaspur23]

I only did the top 10 teams (per this rating system) but here is the toughest to easiest fixtures after 8 games. Also, remember this metric doesn’t take away/home into account. This is based on average OPTA rating which is much more accurate than the shit graph from earlier which is using OPTA rating and then taking the world ranking (basically manipulating the stat).

1) Newcastle - 89.6
2) west Ham - 88.79
3) Liverpool - 88.74
4) Brighton - 88.3
5) Villa - 88.1
6) Woolwich - 88.05
7) United - 87.66
8) City - 86.99
9) Spurs - 86.78
10) Chelsea - 86.4

So of the 10 teams I calculated, spurs are 2nd easiest. Chelsea have had easier. Taking a quick look through the other 10 teams, Fulham, Everton, brentford and palace have only played 3 or less top 10 teams. I’m going to assume anyone that has played more has had a tougher fixture list than spurs.

Here are their numbers.

Fulham - 87.93
Everton - 85.95
Brentford - 87.16
Palace - 87.39

So without checking the last 6 teams, Everton have played the easiest fixtures, followed by Chelsea, then tottenham. It’s only 3rd easiest THIS season… can you see why saying it’s the easiest ever is just trolling to those of us that know stats?

This is actual data BernardMatthews .

 

[BernardMatthews]

Also facts.

TLDR