At the start of the season some 7,696 votes had been cast in our relegation poll. As you can see below, the clear favourites to go down were AFC Bournemouth, Watford and Sunderland, with Norwich then Leicester following behind. Aston Villa and NUFC were also given as possibilities; Villa weren’t far behind Leicester but fewer people went for NUFC and even fewer opted for a club outside the chosen seven.
Strange, isn’t it? I spend Monday evening idly browsing the MLS (aka Major League Soccer) website trying to work out how it (the league, not the website) operates and then along comes David Millward with a piece about a football convention in the USA. I wonder if the fans he mixed with can get their heads around relegation and promotion better than I can handle the subtleties of the MLS.
My guesswork is uncomplimentary to Sunderland and our chances of avoiding relegation. Why not carry out the same exercise yourselves and see how you place us and our relegation co-strugglers. I hope – the hope we cannot stand – to be proved alarmist and plain wrong. Here are extracts from my preview of SAFC vs Saints at ESPN (see full article at http://www.espnfc.com/club/sunderland/366/blog/post/2426131/sunderland-premier-league-options-running-out …
Before the season started I used some dodgy stats and history to predict this season’s relegated candidates, including a couple of wildcards. From 20th place upwards they were:
QPR – Purely because a promoted team is almost certain to go down and most often it has been the playoff winner. I had to go with this, whatever the bookies said about Burnley.
Hull, on the basis that second season syndrome’s due and as two London teams have never been relegated in the same season QPR’s demise must mean Palace are safe.
Villa, on the grounds of their being the only club to have been in the bottom three for each of the last three seasons without being relegated. That’s scary stuff for a fan.
Southampton were the first wildcard, chosen because of the personnel changes and turbulence the club has experienced this year.
West Brom, because of last season’s iffy form and the way they appointed their manager, were the second.
You can read the whole post here: https://safc.blog/2014/08/good-news-for-burnley-and-leicester-our-stats-man-has-qpr-hull-city-and-aston-villa/
This is the latest of John McCormick‘s occasional delve into statistics and logic to weigh up relegation prospects – one day he’ll feel, as Sunderland fan, it’s worth a look at the other end of the table. It has already had an airing and attracted comment from SAFC fans. But what do supporters of the clubs he fears may be doomed think? Is his choice of Hull and Villa harsh, QPR’s inclusion at odds with ‘Arry’s famed powers of survival when given a full season, Sunderland’s exclusion over-optimistic? Have your say …
You may remember the first chart below. I posted it at the the mid-point of this season. It uses the improvement or deterioration of last season’s best and worst post-Christmas performers in the bottom half of the table, (i.e. Reading and Stoke) to predict the points that this season’s bottom teams will end up with if they perform at the same levels as those clubs. There’s also a middle range figure, generated from the average change in performance of all the bottom teams.
M Salut writes: I find it slightly worrying that John McCormick has not yet produced one of his statistical projections showing how Sunderland will stay up. Silence speaks volumes? Ordinary Jon, aka Jon Adamson**, has been conducting an exercise of his own and finds reasons for hope as well as concern – concern that would rocket in the event of a bad outcome of Norwich vs SAFC on Saturday …
On Boxing Day 2004 West Brom’s 19th game of the season saw them at home to Liverpool. They lost 0-5, …
This is the final piece of a series I started around Christmas. It wasn’t intended as a series, it just turned out that way. Idle speculation about the importance of goal difference in the relegation dogfight led to the first post, in which I wrote “I’m going to stick my neck out and say that the five (from SAFC, the Mags, Villa, Wigan, Southampton and Fulham) whose goal differences show the greatest improvement in the second half of the season will avoid relegation, irrespective of their points on Boxing Day, and a consistent decline will point to the doomed team”.
Jeremy Robson is not built in the mould of the docile, acquiescent sort of supporter who takes whatever muck is thrown at him and just rolls over to be tickled now and again. Years spent standing in the Clock Stand Paddock illustrated his passion but made him a critical fan. Here, he kicks off our traditional series of season end assessments …