Friday 28 March 2008

Football Research

While I am waiting for the last few minutes of the Doncaster Rovers / Nottingham Forest game to tick away, I thought I would share some observations on the Premier League so far this season. 

I have data from 433 games and the theory that I was trying to prove was that in the first few minutes after half-time, the probability of a goal being scored is lower than during the rest of the game. I suspect that at half-time, teams get to rest and recover, and make strategic changes to counter what the other team is doing. 

Dividing the game up into 5 minute periods, what I actually found is that the period with the lowest probability of a goal is actually between 36 and 40 minutes, but very closely followed by the 46 to 50 minute period. I sometimes back the under at half-time and wait a few minutes before laying off, and I have had some success with this, and the statistics so far do seem to back this idea up.

I did also find it interesting that there have been 86 goals in the 90th minute so far this season - much higher than I intuitively would have suspected, but stats don't lie do they?

Full-time result is in and Doncaster Rovers have won 1-0. Maybe I should just back the opposition of my lay selections to win 1-0?

Onward and upward.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I think this is great and would like to make my own staticstic. But how do you make it? Do you do it manually or is it possible to find the information some where so it is easily adopted to a spreadsheet?