Look at it another way...

[Cantley 0]

Like most of us I had the feeling that our poorish start to the season was due in no small part to the relative difficulty of our fixtures, compared to those of our competitors. But how true is that really, after ten games?

Well I did a little test, and the results are quite interesting. Current league position is the most reliable indicator of teams'' overall form so far. So if you weight City''s opponents according to where they are in the table this week (Arsenal 1 point, Everton 3 points, etc), then adding together the points for all the teams we have played so far gives a score which accurately reflects the overall difficulty of the fixtures.

City''s fixtures so far score as follows:

Palace 15, Man U 5, Newcastle 7, Arsenal 1, Spurs 10, Villa 9, Liverpool 6, Portsmouth 11, WBA 16, Everton 3.

...giving a total of 83.

Applying the same calculation to all City''s immediate ''rivals'', scores are as follows:

WBA             110
Fulham          107
Palace           102
Southampton  101
Birmingham      90
Blackburn        89

Of course the higher the score the easier the fixtures have been, so it''s easy to see that the four teams immediately above us have had a significantly less difficult set of fixtures than us. Of course the effect this has had on the real league table is a moot point, but I''m sure it''s the difference between us being in the bottom three or not.

It has to be a little bit encouraging anyway!

[Gentleman Jim 0]

Hi  F.o.t.H  !

You may not have noticed it but I did the same excercise three weeks ago. I also weighted the degree of difficulty whether home or away.

Two or three matches have been played since then so our findings differ, but my conclusion at the time was Blackburn, Portsmouth and Fulham to be the bottom three come Xmas.

Blackburn and Fulham seem to have endorsed that view failing to win in any of their subsequent games.

Godd post fool, it always helps to have an alternate view.

 

 

[Cantley 0]

[quote]Hi F.o.t.H ! You may not have noticed it but I did the same excercise three weeks ago. I also weighted the degree of difficulty whether home or away. Two or three matches have been played since th...[/quote]

Oops, sorry I missed your earlier post Jim. I''m convinced that as the bend begins to unwind we''ll rise above the relegation zone.

But we''d rise a damned slight faster if we could find someone to hit the net regularly