Ah, the kiss of death that is the AM Blog Cup – every year it stops me in its tracks as I habitually manage an awful score. 2014 was no exception, -6 for Pantillimon, negative scores for perennial scorers Cresswell and Kelly, Walker and Di Maria didn’t start….Woe….is….me. On the plus side, I can now “concentrate on the league” as many managers say, which is a lot more than Warnock and Irvine can say.
As many of you will no doubt expect, the statistical modelling of my predictions can take quite some time so I apologise for not squeezing a post in before the matches on the 28th – it just wasn’t feasible. This week we’re back though with our normal three sections and I’m also starting to put together some more statistics based approaches for the second half of the season.
Goalkeepers
Could the stars be aligning? Ordinarily there are quite a few goalkeeping options where players are both likely of success and cost effective but this week is significantly different. To start with, there are only three keepers who have good enough chances of success (>32%); Hart, Mignolet and Alnwick. Secondly, the ever growing collection of really cheap keepers is making is harder for any player that costs more than about £8m to be cost effective. The graph looks like this:
You should see that Hart just about manages the required levels, Mignolet is far more convincing and Alnwick is offering far too much value for money to ignore – I’d normally avoid a keeper that’s this cheap but I just can’t get away from him – if you’re not sure then I suggest you at least bring him into your subs.
Predictor
The predictor has continued to perform well, far more reliable in fact than the Poisson, although that excels at highlighting how “goal happy” games will be. The predictor gives strong recommendations for City, Liverpool, West Ham and…Aston Villa? I’ve tried to avoid Villa for the whole season but I’m more than a little bit tempted by Benteke this week.
I’m also glad that the predictor puts the Spurs / Chelsea match as an almost a dead heat – I know that Nik thinks that it’s almost a dead cert but I still live in hope.
Poisson
The Poisson distribution agrees with my goalkeeper predictions giving Hart a 51% clean sheet chance, Mignolet a 61% chance and Alnwick a 46% chance. It also suggests that both the Chelsea / Spurs and the Arsenal / Southampton game should have plenty of goals so you’d be well within your rights to pick some of their forwards.
