305 – Thank You Jon Macken – Post 47

After 3 minutes of the game at Hartlepool on Saturday, Jon Macken scored a penalty for Walsall to put them one nil up and, in tucking away – indeed in that instance, in taking – the spot kick, do something that no Walsall player had done for 681 days. That left Huddersfield Town, 329 days after Gary Roberts put the seal on the 4-2 victory against Yeovil Town that sent them top of the league, as the team who have the longest penalty drought in the country.

Firstly, I wanted to know about the penalties Town had scored, but I wanted a little more than that. Hopefully this will enlighten me about the 12-yard phenomenon that I dreaded as a taker, but loved as a goalkeeper. The first thing I learnt was that the next time a Town player scores a penalty, it will be the 306^th penalty Town have scored in the Football League, which is 5.49% of the total tally (which is about right to me – one out of every 20 goals has been a spot-kick).

The current run, though, is nothing like as long as previous long runs without penalties; I knew we’d had at least one entire season without before, I remember the fuss when Paul Dalton broke the duck, but it turns out that this is the 16^th longest run (today is 334 days since Town went top against Yeovil, exactly 1 month shy of a year) without scoring a penalty. The longest ran for 735 days (that’s over 2 years, by a few days) and ended in a 2-2 draw at Portsmouth on 8^th Nov 1930; we’d have to go another 13 months without a spot-kick being converted to match that – 22^nd September 2012; which is a Saturday, so it could happen – I’d assume the dynamic runs of McDermott, Ward Hunt and Roberts would probably garner one by then, though.

The run that the 2-5 win at Crewe (Paul Dalton, as above) ended was the 3^rd longest run – see the first table here (the top 10 – end dates on the left, and take note of the game venues, of which more later) – and there’s been no shortage of occasions where Town have been whole seasons without penalties, something that the 2010/11 vintage have not yet accrued.

There was a few other things I wondered about when I was working through the statistics for this. One thing that I’d just always assumed, but never really known, was that there are more penalties now than there used to be. The game is quicker than it was, and players are far more likely to go to ground (lazy point, I know, but true) as well as referees far more likely to award spot-kicks. So yes, although the 2000s weren’t a golden era for Town converting penalties, there’s enough of a trend (black line) to suggest that there’s been a slow but gradual increase in the number of penalties awarded (well, certainly in the amount scored – I haven’t got figures for penalties missed outside the last few seasons), which looks set to continue for a while.

The other divides that are immediately apparent from the table I constructed were the disparity between penalties at home and away from home and, more strikingly, the results of the matches that penalties are scored in.

Town’s record in matches in which they’ve score a penalty is as follows. Played 298, Won 181, Drawn 69, Lost 48. That would be good for 612 points, at an average of 2.05 points per game. It pays, then, to get penalties awarded to you. (This much is obvious, though. This is a list of games in which Town have scored at least one goal – it makes sense they’ll have lost fewer) – that said, the most common of those penalty containing results are 2-1 victories (29) and 1-2 defeats (28), there’s only been 15 penalties that have been the only goals in Town victories, most recently Valentine’s Day 2006, when Chris Brandon scored at Blackpool. At Blackpool.

At Blackpool, then, being one of 97 penalties awarded away from home, compared to the 201 at Leeds Road/the McAlpine – just about double the amount. I thought it might be more than that, but certainly that confirms what you might think of penalties. A baying away end is far less likely to be rewarded than a baying three stands.

There’s a couple other curios I’d like to draw to attention. Penalties, if we were doing a Family Fortunes (Family Feud, for my US Readers) of what they mean, sometimes crop up as a nice way of completing a hat-trick for those players who have already netted twice. Unfortunately, I have no way of knowing the order of goals, but there’s been five occasions when Town players have netted hat-tricks containing penalties, so honourable mentions to Jack Malam (8-0 v Liverpool, 10^th Nov 1934), Peter Butler (4-1 v Scunthorpe Utd, 31^st Dec 1977), Joey Jones (4-0 v Cardiff City, 28^th April 1984), Dale Tempest (4-3 v Millwall, 17^th August 1985) and Phil Starbuck (4-5 @ Cambridge Utd, 26^th April 1994). Notably, and happily, all those games were won.

Secondly, there was a spell from 26^th November 1955 to 17^th December 1955 when Town scored three penalties in four games – the best such run in the club’s history. Vic Metcalfe got them all.

 Finally, I think you’ll like this, I certainly do. It’s a graph – big one – of the differences in days between when Town scored each penalty. Click on it for full-size appearance. So many thanks for Sam Parkin for breaking Walsall’s 681 day duck, and hopefully Huddersfield’s will be the next one to go. I’d plump for Lee Novak, I think.

1 1 1 – The End Of The Beginning – Post 44

Saturday was the first day of the season and, however you spin it, a 1-1 draw at home is disappointing. I wasn’t going into the game expecting Bury to be brushed aside, I was thinking they’d put up some stubborn resistance but Town would probably have a bit too much in the end; (a Draw/Home scenario, possibly 2-1 or 3-1). Of course, that’s not how it panned out, and it made the season open with a bit of a damp squib.

But is it the end of the world. How likely is an opening day draw to curtail promotion hopes, or result in disappointment? Well, we don’t know. We won’t do until May. In the meantime, I’ve collated tables of the opening day results from the last five years for all teams promoted within the Football League (10 each season). I remember some of them – Southampton’s defeat at home to Plymouth, who ended up relegated, for example – Norwich’s 1-7 defeat was the stuff of legend, but they also lost 3-2 at Watford on Sky on the first day of last season. I don’t think it matters a bean, to be honest. A 1-7 defeat would instigate a bit of worry, and I’d expect changes, but a slowish start shouldn’t matter at all.

So here we go.

My prediction, for once, was correct. Hurrah!

It doesn’t matter a bean what you do in your first game, then. Promotion, if it is to be yours, will be yours.

Other than that Norwich 1-7 Colchester, which is a curio in and of itself, 50%, or five, as its also known, of the promoted teams in 2009/10 drew 1-1 in their first matches – Newcastle Utd and West Bromwich Albion against one another.

2.33 – Pre-Season Odyssey Part Two – Post 40b

We’ve already seen, according to figures from 2008/09, that pre-season games don’t have an over-strong bearing on the rest of the season to come – I was going to collate the 2009/10 and 2010/11 figures, but I don’t think, given what we saw, that it would be worth anybody’s while, but the 2011/12 pre-season might be worth casting an eye over. Not that it’ll give us any pointers, but its always¹ interesting to see what other teams have been doing.

So that’s what I’ve done. Looking at first team fixtures only (and so discounting any of the games that I’ve actually seen, and my apologies to Alfreton Town, whose 14-0 victory will go uncredited), I’ve tried to rank League One pre-seasons against one another as objectively as I can. There’s only so much balancing you can do with this, so I’ve tried to rank it so that games against ‘higher’ teams are worth more than those against ‘lower’ teams, but not so much that figures get impossibly skewed.

Knowing what I know, I ought to warn you that these figure will, more likely than not, bear absolutely no relation to what you will see when the season actually kicks off on August 6th, but with the pre-season Town have had, I’m hoping it will carry through (though heaven help the development squad).

Right, then, on with the chart.

Here we go. Doesn’t that make interesting reading. Top of the Pre-Season pops are the mighty Cherries, bouncing back from playoff disappointment by walloping teams they might have got to face in the league had they won. They’re followed closely by Brentford, whose new Bee-style away shirt has been particularly successful so far and are one of two teams (along with Rochdale) to defeat Premiership opposition, in the form of last season’s FA Cup Finalists Stoke City.

Meanwhile, both Charlton and Yeovil Town have defeated Bristol City, which, while you can’t guarantee such things, suggests they might be worth considering for a cup upset this season; all eyes on their Carling Cup tie against Swindon in the first midweek game of the season.

Its also worth noting the difference in the number of games played between 4 and 8 – will be interesting to note how much match fitness that will bring Notts County, as to whether their mammoth pre-season will leave them in better stead than the results suggest, or if Bournemouth’s briefer one will result in them being a little off the pace early doors. Again, only time will tell; as with all pre-season things, we’re working on supposition. One thing that I would expect to see continuing is the goal tallies; not as extreme (the top two both won 0-10, which I suspect we won’t see in season) as this, but Oldham and Sheffield Wednesday would be teams – Gary Megson, anyone – whose games I would anticipate not being packed full of net-bulging action.

So there you have it. The best pre-seasons might not make the best seasons, but at least the fans have enjoyed them in the sunshine. The worst ones might not necessarily bring disaster, but I bet the fans of those teams who’ve only won one game aren’t particularly confident for the year ahead.

My prediction? I’d be very surprised to see the top six like that at the end of the year, but the bottom four aren’t a million miles away from what I expect it to be.

Incidentally, there are three games still to go, as I make it; Charlton play Carshalton, Yeovil host Southampton and another game that I don’t have to hand takes place.

¹Perhaps this ‘always’ is being generous, but go with me, it’ll make the rest of the post work.

6.515 – Another Point About Substitutes – Post 42

It struck me, while discussing the number of substitutes in League One yesterday, that I might be missing something quite obvious; its about those time-wasting substitutions at the end of games, and how they might skew the figures. I know, for example, that Paul Tisdale played about a minute for Exeter at the end of their season, and his one appearance (which was about 90 seconds long) counted in the figures. So I needed to try something that would balance it out a bit more; I was drawn, as often in these circumstances, to percentages.

Basically, what percentage of a teams’ playing time was taken up by substitutes? There’d be a maximum of somewhere around 27% (3 players coming on for 90 minutes a time) but I didn’t expect we’d trouble double figures, to be honest. What I didn’t expect to find is that Huddersfield Town topped the table for time played by substitutes, with 6.515% of the total league game time being taken up by replacements – this figure being in no small part due to Jordan Rhodes’ seeming inability to fulfil his 90 minutes whenever he played and the willingness of Lee Clark to remove Benik Afobe from the fray.

My thinking was, then, that the more successful teams would use their substitutes later, just to waste time, and the worse teams would use them sooner, so as to try to change things. I was, as yesterday, misguided.

Look at the percentage line (in red) dipping massively from almost six to just over 4.5, despite the wild inconsistencies (Sheffield Wednesday, with their huge squad, showing up there) from individual team to team. I took into account, for this, the total minutes played (11 x 90 for each game, less the minutes lost for sendings off) and balanced that into percentages with the total time played by the substitutes. Those of you who read yesterday’s post won’t be surprised to see MK Dons featuring so highly; the top three being Town 6.515, Sheffield W 6.432, and MK Dons on 6.430. It’s a fair bit, that, really; its about 65 minutes of game time every match being played by a substitute. Because this table is a bit more compact, I’ve put it in at the bottom. Enjoy reading it, and well done to Oldham and Dagenham, who had the most faith in their starting XIs last season, or the least faith in their substitutes, depending on how you sway. The three columns, if you’re interested, are total minutes (including playoffs), total substitute minutes, and % of Total Minutes that were played by Substitutes.

2.63 – Substitute For Another Point – Post 41

There are eleven players on a football team, aren’t there? Yes and no. Football, even at League One level, is increasingly a squad game. We saw it in action at Huddersfield last season, when the home formation and the away formation were both entirely different. This leads to the knock-on effect of squad players, and by virtue of that, substitutes being more valuable.

This summer sees the reduction of substitutes from seven back down to five, something I’m in favour of. I don’t think that teams need to have squads of 18 for league games, and it’ll balance things more in the favour of the smaller teams; no disrespect to them, but it seemed there was always someone being shown up last season for not having a squad big enough to field the full complement.

That said, this post is about use of substitutes, and my hypothesis would be that the better teams would use fewer substitutes because the games would already be going their way, and they wouldn’t need to change things as often during the games – though there is the gap-

narrowing ‘time-wasting’ substitution towards the end of the game.

The reality however, was the exact opposite. The better the team, the more players were replaced. There is a point here that the better teams aren’t just better XIs; they’re better throughout the squads, so a Southampton substitute would be more likely to effect a game positively than a Bristol Rovers substitute. This led to the top six averaging 2.68 substitutions per game (top mark to MK Dons, who made 2.83 – that works out as MK Dons only leaving eight substitutions unused throughout the season – a staggering figure). The bottom four (points-gaining teams; Plymouth don’t feature by virtue of having 10 deducted) averaged only 2.21 substitutes per game.

If I was losing games, I’d like to think I’d try to change it rather than keeping faith with something that isn’t working, which is what seems to have happened last season; Swindon, as you can see from the graph, made an attempt to do so, but they can’t change a pretty defined line of best fit (red line) taking the amount of used substitutes downwards in conjunction with the league table.

All that said, there is another side of this coin is that there is a completely different looking line of best fit (green line) in the table of how many players each team used last season – again, I thought the better teams would use more players, as there’d be more availability to bring in younger players, and test them in a successful outfit. Not so. The desperation for points must spread into the pre-game bath. The line is very definitely slanted upwards in terms of players used by the worse-performing teams (look at the dip to Rochdale, by the way – their 24, and Exeter’s 25, players used is an incredible feat given the positions they both finished in). Squad sizes, then, are getting bigger, in League One, and its not always to the benefit of the teams who have them – better to spend money on quality than quantity, says the numbers, and its hard to disagree.

The new development regarding numbers of subs available will give these graphs an extra dimension next season – it might well be worth shadowing in the lines of best fit to see if we’re averaging more or less now there’s a smaller pool to play with. I think – not that MK Dons can do much about it – we’ll see even more substitutes this coming season, and even more players like Novak and Tehoue who make more than 20 appearances off the bench.

78.922 – An Opus To Pre-Season In Three Parts: Part I 2008/09 – Post 40a

I like pre-season games. Those of you reading who’ve seen me at games this year as far afield as Guiseley, Bedfont and Dronsfield would attest to that. I love the unknown footballers playing under very little pressure. I find it entertaining and you get to see some wonderful goals (Bradford Park Avenue’s first against City was wonderful) by players you least expect to score them.

At the end of the day, the games don’t really mean anything. No Arsenal fan is appeased by winning the Emirates Cup and no Brentford fan, happy though they may have been to beat Stoke City, would trade a pre-season victory against a top-flight team for even one victory in the league when the business really start.

But.

But.

But the games must mean something, right, or else they wouldn’t be played. They do. They’re there for building up fitness for players, and trying out trialists. My question here, though, is borne from the relative successes of Huddersfield (5 games won in a row for the first team) and Brentford (who beats someone 0-10?!?). Do positive results carry through into the season, or is it just a case of ‘Well done lads, now let’s do something different when it matters’.

Here I attempt to find out.

I have, over the course of this 3-post epic, taken League One Pre-Seasons from 2008-09 to the present day; which in hindsight, was probably a mistake. It was very, very difficult to find results from friendlies from July 2008, but I think I got them all in the end. Allow a game or two either way for that one, I think. What I did, then, was table the games up (all pre-season games, be they first team or development squad or reserves or whatever, because at that stage, there’s all sorts of inter-squad chicanery and, I also reasoned, the teams are playing teams balanced for their levels. Stockport Reserves aren’t playing Barcelona, they’re playing an equivalent team to the first team, who should be of slightly lower ability) and balance the games in a points per game system, which was compared to the actual results in the league the subsequent campaign.

I expected that the pre-season figures would probably be more positive than the league because I know the trend is for teams to play against weaker opposition, which makes sense; big teams bring in the money, little teams bring in the confidence; this is borne out by a 29% increase in ppg in pre-season to regular season, which is a far from

inconsequential amount (over the course of the season, if that were played out all round, teams would have around 13 points more on the board). The number of games, however, is worth bearing in mind, as it ranged from 3 (MK Dons) to 14 (Stockport – though their reserves and development squads played a good number of those).

I want to mention a specific game, too – Stockport’s first pre-season game at Cammell Laird. County won the game 2-3, with the first goal scored by a certain Anthony Pilkington, which highlights how long ago this was. The Lairds then netted twice before Stockport pulled level, the equaliser by then trialist Lee Novak.

For 2008/09, we were in a League One with a dominant Leicester City and a not quite fit for purpose Hereford Utd. In 46 games, the two teams averaged 2.087 and 0.739 ppg respectively. Over their pre-seasons, the figures were pretty well on, as well, Leicester’s being 2.000, and Hereford’s at 0.875. These figures would suggest that their fans might well have known what was coming for them as early as July. However, scratching below that lovely coincidence, we see Cheltenham Town, in 23rd place (RS), and with an average of 0.848ppg. Their pre-season was something of a triumph, winning 5, drawing 4 and losing 1 of their 10 games – a 1.9ppg – double what they would go onto attain. By the same token, Peterborough (boo) in 2nd spot, lost 3 of their 5 pre-season games, leaving a 1.200ppg, which they would surpass by .735ppg in the regular season for a 1.935ppg. These stories, I’m sorry to say, are the more common theme. Northampton, in 20th, were the closest two figures, ranging between 1.000ppg in pre-season and 1.065ppg in the regular season.

We are, of course, here for Huddersfield Town, sitting relatively pretty in 9th spot in the regular season figures, averaging just over 1.478ppg, which is average indeed, what with 1.500 being exactly half of the points offer. This pre-season was an inauspicious one, though, with the Hartlepool Centenary Tournament accounting for two of the three defeats, and Emley (8-0) accounting for half of the wins. It meant that Town’s ppgd (points per game differential) was 78.922% – good for fourth worst in the league – the best being Cheltenham’s.

What 2008/09 suggests is that although pre-season can be a decent indicator of what’s to come, it isn’t necessarily so. You’re just as likely to have a good pre-season and fail as a bad one and succeed, so we can’t judge too much from it. It also points out that the teams themselves don’t really care about it, or else they’d keep better records of them somewhere.

Next up, 2009/10, and what trends emerge from that, or continue from this.

2.03 – Kevin Kilbane And AMMP – Post 34

I saw Kevin Kilbane play a few times last season, and although there was a couple of amazingly good passes in the game against Sheffield Wednesday, his other performances were pretty forgettable – I thought he was awful in the playoff final; so much went astray, and he never seemed to be anywhere he needed to be.

One of the things I’ve been working with lately (which I posted some information from a wee while ago) is the minutes each player features for Town. Using that data set, now complete for the 46 league games, I can see how many points each player won; in terms of minutes on the field. Peter Clarke, having played all 90 minutes of all 46 league games, can claim 87 points, as can the two goalkeepers between them.

The formula I’ve used to work this ratio out is one I’ve called AMMP. It might sound complicated, but it only stands for Appearance Made / Minutes / Points, which is basically how I worked it all out. There is a maximum AMMP of 3 (because there’s three points for a win) and a minimum, as you’d expect, of 0. Given that most teams average about 1.5 points per game, I’d expect an average AMMP for a first team player to be about 1.40; allowing for substitutions throughout the season – Damien Johnson was the closest Town player to that mark, with an AMMP of 1.44.

That’s useful in a few ways, but most of all it can be used as a direct comparison. Ian Bennett registered 47 points, and Alex Smithies 40 – which means Bennett’s appearances counted for an average of 1.96 points, and Smithies for 1.82. These numbers for the goalkeepers are helped by each one only playing full matches, but I don’t think its too controversial to say that it suggests what people already knew – that Bennett had been a little better than Smithies when he got into the team.

So far, so obvious. There was never any great discussion about who should be playing in goal, though, that decision was pretty much made for Lee Clark. The more controversial positions were elsewhere; up front, at centre back (Kay or McCombe?) or in midfield. This is where we should be able to draw some differences with AMMP.

Looking at the second graph here (players arranged by squad number)

of the strikers AMMP; there’s a definite points advantage to Rhodes and Afobe both playing (though note how low the figures on the left are there – nothing higher than 1.2 for Jordan Rhodes. There’s a relatively straightforward reason for the lower scores in that Lee Clark loves to change his forward line relatively early in the second half – there’s lot of 76, 65 and 45 minute appearances made. After Afobe and Rhodes, though, the other four – Novak (31 apps), Lee (28), Garner (16) and Cadamarteri (11) – are much of a muchness, ranging from 0.82 to 0.94 AMMP – the highest being Lee Novak.

I can’t help but think that the fact that there is no striker even close to 1.5 may well be one of the reasons we seemed to struggle up front. Rhodes scored a lot of goals, but was regularly substituted. Afobe played a lot of (successful) games, but scored – relatively – few goals. Alan Lee and Lee Novak would be regarded as having disappointing seasons, yet they were equally effective as Garner and Cadamarteri, one of whom was shipped out in January.

Moving onto centre backs, then. Peter Clarke is a representation of the team, as I mentioned, as he played all 46 games. Kay played 27 and McCombe played 34, so we’re not looking at small sample sizes there, and there’s a very noticeable difference. Town were more successful when John McCombe played. I quite like Antony Kay as a player, and accept how gangly and ungamely Jamie McCombe looks, but the numbers don’t lie; Antony Kay’s 1.57 AMMP is a long way lower than Boom Boom’s 1.81 – both are a little below Peter Clarke’s 1.89, but it certainly seems that McCombe and Clarke would’ve been the better centre-back pairing over the course of the season – not sure how they would’ve been different given those three goals against Peterborough. I only used Clarke, Kay and McCombe because there wasn’t really evidence that any other players were anywhere close to first choice in this position throughout the season.

This, then, leads us onto the midfield, which is, I’d say, the positions that have caused the most debate. I’ve included,

because of their playing time/importance, eight midfielders. Four I’d class as wide (Roberts, Ward, Pilkington, Carey) and four central (Gudjonsson, Johnson, Arfield, Kilbane). There’s a happy mirroring with this, too. With an AMMP of 2.03, Kevin Kilbane stands alone as the midfielder who’s performances have earned the most points this season, followed by Danny Ward, Gary Roberts and an incredibly close call between Joey Gudjonsson and Scott Arfield (1.60 v. 1.59). Those four (you’d have to take Joey, I guess, being that 0.01 higher) would make a pretty impressive midfield four, particularly if Gary Roberts was in his early season form rather than later. It is worth noting that for all his goals, Anthony Pilkington didn’t get to play in too many winning Town teams, and Graham Carey was the least successful of all the midfield. There’s mitigating circumstances, mind you, in that Gary Roberts was, for a while, the only player who COULD play on the left flank, so he was the only chance.

For the record, I’ve include an AMMP graph for the whole squad here at the bottom. Chris Atkinson gets a rough ride, in my opinion, but there’s big performers in the defence – Naysmith, Clarke, Peltier… it was a good season.

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25 – Can Not Getting Beat Be Beat? – Post 31

As I await word from the Football League as to whether playoff games count as part of Huddersfield’s current unbeaten run, it stands open at either 25 or 26. Only 11 (its 26, or 12 if 25) teams have had longer runs, and they tally either 16 (or 19) runs between them; the longest being Arsenal’s at 49 games, which succeeded Nottingham Forest’s 42 game run from the late 1970s¹.
 
Of the 92 league clubs (2010/11 vintage), the shortest longest unbeaten run (the team’s longest unbeaten run that contains the fewest games) tallies only 12, which was Chesterfield in 1994/95, while Ipswich and Macclesfield both reached 13 (though Macclesfield’s was not within the Football League – all stats came from Statto.com, which covers a couple of tiers under the league system – which I thought about ignoring, but figured that there’s no reason a team whose history is in the lower echelons should be hampered by that in this tally – none of them had runs long enough for me to take any further anyway –  Aldershot’s 20 game run was the longest). The average longest unbeaten run is 20.8 games; Town would need to go 38 games unbeaten to take that average figure up to 21 – some 12/13 games away.
 
Preston’s longest unbeaten run, as with so many things they’ve done, was the first run they ever had in the Football League (23 games – 1888/89 into 89/90), but other than that, the longest ago run was Sheffield United’s 22 in 1899/1900. 17 teams have had (or matched) their longest run in the 2000s – Town of course don’t feature on that list.
 
I digress, impressed by the wonderful invincible outfits in everyone’s past – how good must the Doncaster team of 1968/69 have been to usurp the 1946/47 vintage? (the latter had a 33/6/3 record, and the former 21/17/8 – both were divisional champions – two of five in Rovers’ history, all in the (contemporary) bottom tier – the same amount as their teams who have finished bottom of their respective leagues).
 
The short answer to the title question, is ‘yes, because Southampton and Brighton both did better during Town’s unbeaten run than Town did, by winning games that Town drew, and losing games that they drew, too.’ That’s not really what I’m looking at though. I want to know what comes next. When you’re unbeaten for a long time, how do you react to the bubble being burst which, inevitably, it will be at some point. It feels, to me, that the run recently beaten teams go on is bad – I’d reckon on losing at least 3 games of the next few games being average. I want to find out for sure, though. So I’m going to look – compare the unbeaten runs with the ten games that follow them – every team will have at least one defeat, then. I am more than willing to accept runs that run across seasons, too, so the Arsenal run will count as 49; these things only become a going concern when they get large enough to be around half a season, so they’re as likely as not to overlap two. My lowest run figure will be 26, on the assumption that Town either are 26, or will be 26 should they win/draw the first game of next season.

Straight off the bat the thing that strikes me is how average Town’s run is in this genre. The 2 points for a win ratio is only 0.081 behind the average figure, and the 3ppg ratio isn’t much further away (0.161 points away), adhering to the average Win 3 Draw 2 metric which seems to guide these things unless you’re the Forest team of 1977/78. The other thing, which I have to admit was something of a surprise having experienced Town’s run, is how successful the teams who have gone 25 games unbeaten were. All but 3 have topped the league in one or other season of their run, and the two who didn’t (so far) were promoted anyway.
 
That’s the runs themselves, though. Going more than 50% of a season unbeaten will only ever end in success; I’m sure the same table in reverse would feature mainly teams who finished bottom of the league. The purpose of this post is the 10 games AFTER the run, and there’s far more of a variety than I thought. There’s been every number of wins except eight, and every number of defeats except eight and nine. That in itself isn’t entirely surprising; particularly when taking into account that a lot of the teams have gone up a division as a result of their unbeaten runs – the games the next season will always be more difficult in that.
 
That variety renders the average figures relatively irrelevant – at 1.521 points – because it is the just a mid-way point between numbers that have no correlation. Which means, I think, that what we can expect of Town when they lose a game is, basically, anything. They will more than likely lose another game with the next 9 fixtures (all but one did) and more than likely conceded more than 10 goals in the 10 games, but the rest is entirely… not random, because it obviously will follow according to the fixture list, but unpredictable. What won’t happen is that Town will likely go on a bad run, or another good run – both reasonable thoughts as to how a team would react – they’ll just do, ultimately, whatever they do. The 4/3/3 record that the average brings out looks a decent bet.

One thing that struck me working out these averages is that there was a discrepancy – or seemingly, a discrepancy – in the home and away records between the unbeaten teams. While they were unbeaten, away games seemed to be more productive than home, but after the initial defeat, the away games seemed to become a lot harder. Not one to allow a theory to go unchecked, I’ve worked out another table for that and, whereas teams are (as one would expect) generally stronger at home, the difference is far less pronounced within the run than outside it – notably, the Liverpool team of 1893/94, who lost four away games in a row, and the West Ham team of the early 80s, who drew three and lost four of their seven away games – both won home points; but the step up in the division took its toll on their away form pretty promptly; that theory held, then.
 
So, what can we expect when Town’s 25 game run comes to an end? Only that their away form will probably nose-dive more than their home form. We will wait and see. Hopefully not for a long time yet.

¹Initial research dictates that Town’s run is 25 games – Liverpool went undefeated in 31 games between 1893 and 1894, but one of those was a one-game playoff against Manchester Utd; the official Football League site lists their run as 30 games, so it seems reasonable to assert the same would be true of Town. Indeed, an e-mail from the Football League arrived during this article confirming that.

66 – Huddersfield Town v. The Ghost of Huddersfield Towns – Post 29

Huddersfield Town’s 46 game season, contextualised, in terms of the 89 seasons that have come before.

The Good.

66. Town finished 3rd in the 3rd tier; the 66th (joint) ranked position in their history, and highest since 2000/01. The two other 66th seasons were 1991/92 (when the playoffs ended, of course, in painful failure against Peterborough) and 1982/83 (which ended in promotion).

7. Town gained 1.891 points per game (some .109 ppg – or 5 points – short of 2.000 game). This was the 7th highest in their history, and the best since 1979/80. It would be the 8th best season if there were only 2 points for a win – the two seasons, in that respect, would garner 62 and 87 points over a 46 game season, and 51 and 72 over a 38 game season.

17. Town scored 1.674 goals per game – this was the 17th highest in their history; last season was better in this respect – the figure was 1.783, which was good enough for 13th. That figure represents 77 goals – last season was 82.

12. Town conceded 1.043 goals per game – this was the 12th best in their history – the best since (surprisingly, for me) 2001/02. That figure represents 48 goals.

8. Town won 54.348% of their games this season; the 8th highest in their history and the best since 1979/80.

9= Town lost only 19.565% of their games; the joint 9th lowest figure in their history – with 1994/95 and the best before that since 1979/80.

14. Town added 0.63 goals onto their goal difference per game; their 14th best ever, and best since 1994/95.

2. Town won 56.522% of their away games this season; the 2nd highest in their history, behind the 1919/20 team that finished 2nd in the 2nd division.

13. On which note, 13 is the most games Town have ever won away from home in a season; the previous best was 12. Nobody in the football league won as many away games this season.

2. Town’s Away v. Home Record (points per game) was the 2nd best in their history; gaining 0.043 points per game fewer away from home than at home – it was joint with 1975/76, and behind only 1924/25 when the two figures would have been level.

The Bad.

3. Town drew 8 home games in 2010/11. Only thrice have they drawn more (9) and two of those seasons ended in relegation. This is one of 13 8-drawn-home-game seasons including four of the last five seasons. 15.33 Town lost thrice at home in 2010/11; those three teams’ average league position was 15.33 – Bristol R got relegated (22), Hartlepool pulled away from the drop (16) and Exeter C were one point outside the playoffs (8) – they average 6.33 away wins between them.

Personally, I think the best way of ranking a season is using the points average per game – appropriate to the time the season was played; currently, we’re using 3 points for a win, so, as far as I’m concerned, Town had their 7th best season in history – better, indeed, than the middle of the three Championship seasons. It was very, very good, and the only bone of contention was the amount of games Town failed to win at home; something that we didn’t really need statistics to tell us.

2.385 – Half A Season Of Insanity (Pt 1) – Post 28

Apologies for the delay in getting the post out, but I needed a couple of things to happen first; Town’s game at Brighton, and my completion of a spreadsheet with every Football League season (team-by-team, year-by-year – 8448 individual club seasons).

But now both are completed, and I can look back at the numbers.

I’ve divided the season into two parts, and (happily) will be focusing mainly on the second half, as that’s where most of the ‘insanity’ of the title has occurred. Town started 2011 in third position, remember, with Southampton having passed them by virtue of that 4-1 victory at St Mary’s. It is well documented that since then, 24 games, Town are unbeaten.

As it happens, Town’s performance since then has been nothing short of remarkable. There is, however, a problem. Southampton’s performance has been more remarkable.

Note the amount of first place finishers in the above table (I just pulled one team either side of the three for illustrative purposes); indeed, only once has a team with as high a projected figure of points finished 3rd, and that was some 106 years ago when Liverpool and Bolton pipped Manchester United in the 2nd Division (1904/05 – over a 34 game season) – the next 3rd place team is from the Premiership, for two years on the bounce, in the forms of Arsenal 2007/08 and Chelsea 2008/09 – both on 100 projected points.

This is all fine, and this is all dandy, but it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to note that Town’s away record stacks up with the best of them. Well, funny I should mention that, because it does. Check out this table. Firstly, forget your surprise about the Doncaster team of 1946/47 – they were one hell of a team. The final column is a Points Per Away Game (3 for a win – though the positions remain pretty similar for 2 – MK Dons drop a couple of places) and Town’s 2011 run puts them clear sixth overall – between the first Liverpool team to win promotion and the great Invincible Preston team of 1888-89 (nobody has EVER had a better season than theirs – its been downhill all the way).

This post is the first of a number I intend to produce towards the end of the season, but however I look at it, the runs of Brighton, Southampton and Huddersfield are truly, truly astounding this calendar year.