Run in difficulty - the top 6

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programmechap said:
The average position of the opponents in the next 4 are;
Burnley 12th
Leeds 16th
United 19th

Burnley have 3 of their games against teams with play off ambitions. Also Leeds and Burley play only 1 of the 4 at home, whilst we play 2. You'd expect the gap between United and the other 2 to widen

I reckon, the points tallies will be:
Leeds 7
United 13 (I think Oxford might get a point)
Burnley 7

If that is right we'd have an 8 point gap going into the Burnley game and a draw would see us up!
Click to expand...
Doh! Sorry we'd have 10 points and the gap would be 5, so we'd need to win at Burnley to clinch promotion.
 

programmechap said:
The average position of the opponents in the next 4 are;
Burnley 12th
Leeds 16th
United 19th

Burnley have 3 of their games against teams with play off ambitions. Also Leeds and Burley play only 1 of the 4 at home, whilst we play 2. You'd expect the gap between United and the other 2 to widen

I reckon, the points tallies will be:
Leeds 7
United 13 (I think Oxford might get a point)
Burnley 7

If that is right we'd have an 8 point gap going into the Burnley game and a draw would see us up!
Click to expand...
While true, we did lose 3-0 home to Hull, so let's not count any chickens yet!
 
programmechap said:
The average position of the opponents in the next 4 are;
Burnley 12th
Leeds 16th
United 19th

Burnley have 3 of their games against teams with play off ambitions. Also Leeds and Burley play only 1 of the 4 at home, whilst we play 2. You'd expect the gap between United and the other 2 to widen

I reckon, the points tallies will be:
Leeds 7
United 13 (I think Oxford might get a point)
Burnley 7

If that is right we'd have an 8 point gap going into the Burnley game and a draw would see us up!
Click to expand...
Burnley seem to be able to roll over most teams 1 nil with a rather tedious regularity. Not sure they'll drop a point sadly, even against us
 
B.Lade said:
While true, we did lose 3-0 home to Hull, so let's not count any chickens yet!
Click to expand...
We were out on our arse against Hull. That was the game where the chickens game home to roost from have a thin squad thanks to transfer policy of the summer and the previous two years
 
McGrath said:
Burnley seem to be able to roll over most teams 1 nil with a rather tedious regularity. Not sure they'll drop a point sadly, even against us
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They've won 9 and drawn 6 for 33 points this calendar year , whilst we have won 11 drawn 1 and lost 3, for 34 points.

Draws could be their chillest heel...
 
4 of those draws were before Edwards came into the team. It's been pretty good since then because he is the one player with the guile to break down a packed defence.

You can't judge degree of difficulty at this stage of the season. You had Coventry and we had Bristol City at weekend and we both won comfortably. Leeds had Swansea, a team going neither up nor down, and failed. (Long may it continue!)
 
I don't really care who has what run in. It's irrelevant. Everyone plays the same teams twice over the course of the season. No one can predict where everyone is going to finish or what form they're in when you play them. It's all fair. Win your own games and decide your own fate.

If you have a "difficult" run in towards the end that could see you drop points and other teams with "easier" runs could overtake you, then that just means you dropped points earlier in the season that you probably shouldn't have.
 
Flatulent_Bob said:
Can you share a few of them, it would help me with my seemingly baseless negativity as I'm thinking we won't, but all the data I see suggests we will?
Click to expand...
I suspect this may be down to our current "overperformance" based on xG stats.

1743608482547.webp
This suggests we are 25 points better off than our xG would expect us to be.

With 7 games left though it would imply that we are actually better than the xG model indicates - and also long term trends are far less impactful over the short term - its entirely possible for us to continue to buck the xG model above and go up.

Of course Leeds appear to be bang on what the model predicts - Burnley could also start shipping goals left right and centre in a reversion to the mean - I don`t believe that's likely just as I don`t believe our results will suddenly get worse.
 
Tony_Kaufman said:
I don't really care who has what run in. It's irrelevant. Everyone plays the same teams twice over the course of the season. No one can predict where everyone is going to finish or what form they're in when you play them. It's all fair. Win your own games and decide your own fate.

If you have a "difficult" run in towards the end that could see you drop points and other teams with "easier" runs could overtake you, then that just means you dropped points earlier in the season that you probably shouldn't have.
Click to expand...
And conversely - if you have an "easier" run in, that means you've already played the harder fixtures - that's a real problem if you are operating from behind (as you are relying on others to slip up as well as winning your games) - but its the absolute best position to be in if you are leading from the front (because if we W6D1 of the last 7 we go up).
 
Selly said:
I suspect this may be down to our current "overperformance" based on xG stats.

View attachment 207878
This suggests we are 25 points better off than our xG would expect us to be.

With 7 games left though it would imply that we are actually better than the xG model indicates - and also long term trends are far less impactful over the short term - its entirely possible for us to continue to buck the xG model above and go up.

Of course Leeds appear to be bang on what the model predicts - Burnley could also start shipping goals left right and centre in a reversion to the mean - I don`t believe that's likely just as I don`t believe our results will suddenly get worse.
Click to expand...
Exactly if that is what he’s using I’d say 39 games shows the model isn’t accurate for us.
 

Selly said:
I suspect this may be down to our current "overperformance" based on xG stats.

View attachment 207878
This suggests we are 25 points better off than our xG would expect us to be.

With 7 games left though it would imply that we are actually better than the xG model indicates - and also long term trends are far less impactful over the short term - its entirely possible for us to continue to buck the xG model above and go up.

Of course Leeds appear to be bang on what the model predicts - Burnley could also start shipping goals left right and centre in a reversion to the mean - I don`t believe that's likely just as I don`t believe our results will suddenly get worse.
Click to expand...
Or that the ‘xG model’ is flawed.

For example we’ve conceded fewer than xG suggests we should have - well yeah we’ve got a much better than average keeper…
 
Never felt more confident and I'm an eternal pessimist. Our record against anyone below 4th is exceptional
 
I am afraid I get rather sick of reading all this stuff with AI and computer and pundit predictions and I don’t understand XG XA and all that stuff. And Graphmans charts based on historical points totals looked great for us to get autos based on points gained by teams in past seasons. However it has become increasingly clear that the whole thing of promotion and relegation between the Championship and EPL has been distorted by Parachute payments and the increasing gap between the two divisions. It now looks perfectly possible that this season 3 teams will get over 100 points and one of those will have to make do with the playoffs. I fear it may be us who will be denied autos by our 2 point penalty. I think it would be a first in League history? Sincerely hope I’m wrong. UTB
 
Yewsman said:
It now looks perfectly possible that this season 3 teams will get over 100 points and one of those will have to make do with the playoffs.
Click to expand...
All three will not get over 100 points. Burnley and Leeds would have to win all 7 games to get to 102, and that is extremely unlikely to happen.

I and Sue that the second tier 3rd place points record will be broken though.
 
Flatulent_Bob said:
Exactly if that is what he’s using I’d say 39 games shows the model isn’t accurate for us.
Click to expand...

Yet most of these same xG vs xGa tables have Coventry 2nd or 3rd and yet we swept them away comfortably.

Imho xG and xGa is a good guide for how good your strikers and defence/keeper is but not relative to really relative to actual table position.
 
programmechap said:
The average position of the opponents in the next 4 are;
Burnley 12th
Leeds 16th
United 19th

Burnley have 3 of their games against teams with play off ambitions. Also Leeds and Burley play only 1 of the 4 at home, whilst we play 2. You'd expect the gap between United and the other 2 to widen

I reckon, the points tallies will be:
Leeds 7
United 13 (I think Oxford might get a point)
Burnley 7

If that is right we'd have an 8 point gap going into the Burnley game and a draw would see us up!
Click to expand...
Oxford in the last 10 games have won 1 drawn 3 and lost 6. We tore through them like a hot knife through butter at the lane. We HAVE to beat Oxford… and for me all signs point to a flourishing Blades win!
That’s not to say a surprise can’t be sprung… but I’m hopeful of 12pts in the next 4 games! 👊⚔️
 
Silky Sabella said:
You couldn't ask for 4 easier team's to play against, plus can you really see any of them having the goal threat to beat Cooper?
Click to expand...

programmechap said:
The average position of the opponents in the next 4 are;
Burnley 12th
Leeds 16th
United 19th

Burnley have 3 of their games against teams with play off ambitions. Also Leeds and Burley play only 1 of the 4 at home, whilst we play 2. You'd expect the gap between United and the other 2 to widen

I reckon, the points tallies will be:
Leeds 7
United 13 (I think Oxford might get a point)
Burnley 7

If that is right we'd have an 8 point gap going into the Burnley game and a draw would see us up!
Click to expand...
Arguably that makes ours the hardest against teams with more to lose with the threat of relegation.
 
Selly said:
All three will not get over 100 points. Burnley and Leeds would have to win all 7 games to get to 102, and that is extremely unlikely to happen.

I and Sue that the second tier 3rd place points record will be broken though.
Click to expand...

That record is going to get smashed.

One of the top three would have to get less than 9 points from their remaining 7 games for it not to be broken.

For context, Leeds have picked up 12 in their last 7 which included a wobbly patch.

I think all three teams will get 95+.
Probably enough to win the title most years.
 
I saw a stat that said Xg for us Vs Cov was 1.77 and for them it was 1.33. Watching with my eyes i would suggest that we should have got a min of 4 goals and Cov were very lucky to get 1. We had only 42% possession too, stats mean little as does the position of the teams we are playing.

Burnley are great at not losing, Leeds are great at looking great and we are good at winning. All points to us being champions I think!!
 
Selly said:
I mentioned in a graphs thread elsewhere that I had some graphs that demonstrated the relative difficulty of each teams run in -here are those graphs:

This first graph looks at the remaining opponents that each team faces both home and away - and the season so far performance of those teams in home/away fixtures.

"Faded" data points are where the position were on 13th feb (i.e. before last weekend, and this midweeks matches were played).
View attachment 204789
As you can see Leeds remaining home fixtures got easier this week - by virtue of them having played Sunderland last week - we can expect the same for their away fixtures post our game with them. Similarly Sunderlands Away difficulty significantly decreased because they played Leeds

Blackburns home difficulty did the opposite - because they played Plymouth and that was the easiest of their remaining home fixtures.

The next graph does the same, but by league position:

View attachment 204792

I don`t particularly like this representation as it:
  • completely ignores whether a team is being played home/away - and therefore good home teams and poor home teams will be positioned similarly
  • Doesn`t account for differing number of games remaining - Middlesboro for example are a game behind everyone else - and if they win that they could move from 11th to 6th - which would impact the number.
What can we take from this?

  • Our away run in is easier than Leeds - but thats at least in part because they have to come to the Lane
  • Our home run in is very very marginally easier than Burnleys - but that will ease significantly after Monday night.
  • But in reality - its all much of a muchness.
Click to expand...

It's a mistake to think we've got a easier run in. We don't, it's harder!

We're playing mostly against teams in the bottom 7 fighting for their lives. It'd be better if most teams we played were lower mid table and had nothing left to play for
 
McGrath said:
It's a mistake to think we've got a easier run in. We don't, it's harder!

We're playing mostly against teams in the bottom 7 fighting for their lives. It'd be better if most teams we played were lower mid table and had nothing left to play for
Click to expand...
I take that point, but they don't have the quality in their squads.

Fight is important, but we have too many match winners. If our decision making in the final third is good we routinely beat these teams.
 

Blade56 said:
Arguably that makes ours the hardest against teams with more to lose with the threat of relegation.
Click to expand...
Yes but teams have ‘the threat of relegation’ because they’ve not been very good.

I don’t think any premier league teams last year were looking at us thinking we’d be a difficult game because we had the looming threat of relegation to spurs us on…
 
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