Adjusting The Scale

I have been tweaking the Elo ratings spreadsheet, reducing the scale from 0.25 of a goal to 0.1 goal. I was finding too many games where there was a superiority of 0.5 of a goal, a best-fit which was including anything in the range 0.38 to 0.62.

This will slightly impact my 'strong draw' statistics as they will now include anything that was previously 0.13 or 0.14, but this shouldn't be significant.

So I will now have a 0.0 strong draw, a 0.1 fairly strong draw, a 0.2 middling draw, a 0.3 soft draw and a 0.4 slushy draw! It's a good thing I enjoy numbers.

I've also enhanced the sheet so that I now just have to enter each team's code, and the rating and current form figures automatically populate and spit out the projected final margin.

I had a slight surprise when Schalke '04 came out forecast as big winners at Eintracht Frankfurt, but closer inspection showed that the code of EF was shared by the not quite so strong East Fife.

Just five strong draws from the 49 top games this weekend, and they are Hamburg v Bayern Munich, Nuremberg v Wolfsburg, Wigan Athletic v Bolton Wanderers, Parma v AS Roma and Udinese v Palermo are the picks.

Weaker draw predictions are Borussia Moenchengladbach v Werder Bremen, Sunderland v Aston Villa, West Ham United v Newcastle United, Lens v Nice and Nancy v Lorient.

Also worthy of mention are Sochaux v Toulouse, Bologna v Juventus, Genoa v Catania, Almeria v Hercules, Osasuna v Malaga, Manchester City v Arsenal and Napoli v AC Milan.

A couple of intra-group matches listed above - the games at West Ham and Manchester City, plus the Tottenham Hotspur v Everton game.