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ricardo

Poor second half of season?????

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The team with the worst record over the second half of the season is actually Stoke with only 13 points.Followed by QPR with 15 and then us with 16, Sunderland 17.All that matters though is that we have 41 points over 37 games, more than 8 other teams currently.

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[quote user="lincoln canary"]We flurted very close to relegation this year. Don''t let stats hide that. If we had have lost to west brom we''d probably be going down, which kind of makes the stats irrelevant.[/quote]

We flirted very close to relegation last year too, we just didn''t feel it so much.  If we hadn''t been able (lucky?) to take 18 points off just 3 other sides, we would in all likelihood have gone down, how many clean sheets was it?

 Given that we are effectively challenging to finish at the most 8th, after Manchester x2, Liverpool x2 and London x3, staying up and going down will almost always be the difference of about 10 points, in the range 40 to 50.  WBA now 8th 7 points ahead of us.  A couple more wins, we''re 8th, a couple fewer and its relegation.  In effect the results of just 4 games in a 38 match season could be this difference. 

Realistically we will forever face this situation, it just might be that some years it will be down to the last couple of games, and other years , as last year, we might have a few more games to spare.  That is likely to have much to do with how the fixture list comes out.  See this article by Mick Dennis if you missed it.  It is pretty much spot on.

http://norwichcity.myfootballwriter.com/2013/02/04/time-for-a-few-home-and-away-truths-about-the-club-we-love-so-dearly-we-will-forever-have-to-fight-for-our-premier-league-lives/

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[quote user="norfolkbroadslim"]

Ricardo I must say that I have to agree with the sentiments of a couple of others on here.  Whilst yes, the stats don''t lie, what is incorrect here is your interpretation of them.

 

After the New Years Day games we were 7 points better than the 3rd from bottom team Wigan.  If the second half of our season matched that we would finish the season 13 or 14 points ahead of the bottom 3.  The bottom 3 have in fact gained ground on us!

 

I am not sure why you picked after the New Years Day games either as this is more than half way into the season?[:^)]

 

After 19 games -

 

11th - Norwich - Points - 25

18th - Wigan - Points - 15

 

After 37 games -

 

12th - Norwich - Points - 41

18th - Wigan - Points - 35

 

That is a significantly poorer second half of the season in anyone''s  book.  Not forgetting the fact that with 1 game to go, if we lose and Wigan win, we will finish only 3 points above them.

 

25 points from 19 games = 1.32 points per game

16 points from 18 games = 0.88 points per game

 

If we lose to Man City -

 

16 points from 19 games = 0.84 points per game

 

[/quote]Any point you pick is an arbitrary point. 19 games may be the halfway point of the season but half the teams have played 10 at home and only 9 away so there is not an equal balance with the other half. Taking your example of Wigan being 10 pts behind after 19 games for example. After 20 games it was back to 7 points.I am not denying that our first half of the season yielded more points. It merely put us in an almost unassailable position viz a viz the bottom five. This was the whole point of my argument and it proved to be correct.

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Thankyou Ricardo for this analysis, I thoroughly enjoy your match reports and your predictions have been very accurate.

Well done!

This season has been most unusual in that there has been such a narrow margin between teams in the lower half of the table, people have been too willing to criticise our team and our manager without appreciating what has been going on in the league around them. In any league your fortunes are dictated by your own results plus those of your competitors, hopefully a few of our fellow posters will begin, albeit reluctantly, to accept this.

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[quote user="thefutureisyellow"]Thankyou Ricardo for this analysis, I thoroughly enjoy your match reports and your predictions have been very accurate.

Well done!

This season has been most unusual in that there has been such a narrow margin between teams in the lower half of the table, people have been too willing to criticise our team and our manager without appreciating what has been going on in the league around them. In any league your fortunes are dictated by your own results plus those of your competitors, hopefully a few of our fellow posters will begin, albeit reluctantly, to accept this.[/quote]Despite all the panic at various stages throughout the season it''s interesting to note that we have never been in the bottom 5 since 28th Oct.There were minor worries after the Villa defeat but our overall average points per game never went under 1.00 at any time thereafter.

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This season would have felt totally different had we actually found an affective and positive approach to the away games. At home we''ve actually picked up more points than we did under Lambert last season. If nearly all the away games are going to border on hopeless then it''s always going to feel a slog of a season.

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Your putting a lot of work into this Ricardo, it''s very usefull to see our league position expressed graphically. Here we have a team that was in Division 3 three years ago, we have been operating on a limited budget, how can anyone argue that our season has been anything other than a success, in this light where is there a single shred of evidence to support sacking a manager? It''s a show stopper surely?

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Ricardo,
Done a bit of research to answer my own question as to whether the bottom  3 at the new year (which is usually close to being the half way point of the season) become the relegated three.
Going back over the Premier League years after it had been reduced to 20 teams, it has happened on 3 other occasions 95/96, 01/02 ans 02/03. So this year makes it the 4th time. There have also been 4 occasions where 2 of the bottom 3 at New Year have escaped. The rest of the time 2 of the bottom 3 have gone down.
So in percentage terms - all 3 going down 22%, 2 going down 56%, only 1 going down 22%.
So it is reasonably improbable that all three teams will be relegated - albeit not as improbable as I thought. But it would seem that the end December bottom three does provide a good indicator of which at least 2 of the 3 relegated teams will be.
OTBC

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[quote user="ricardo"][quote user="thefutureisyellow"]Thankyou Ricardo for this analysis, I thoroughly enjoy your match reports and your predictions have been very accurate. Well done! This season has been most unusual in that there has been such a narrow margin between teams in the lower half of the table, people have been too willing to criticise our team and our manager without appreciating what has been going on in the league around them. In any league your fortunes are dictated by your own results plus those of your competitors, hopefully a few of our fellow posters will begin, albeit reluctantly, to accept this.[/quote]

Despite all the panic at various stages throughout the season it''s interesting to note that we have never been in the bottom 5 since 28th Oct.

There were minor worries after the Villa defeat but our overall average points per game never went under 1.00 at any time thereafter.
[/quote]

 

Yes we have!  We were in the bottom 5 prior to the West Brom home game.

 

Other teams did pick up points on us and not just Villa & Southampton.

 

I was always confident that we''d stay up.  I did have a few worries after the Villa defeat and after Wigan won at West Brom mind you.

 

Since the Premier League''s inception the bottom 3 at Christmas don''t get relegated as often as has been claimed.

 

Our first half of the season points haul did put us in a great position to stay up (was the foundation of my confidence), but was no guarantee of survival even coupled with the belief that the bottom 3 at Christmas would most likely go down.  Our second half of the season points haul was significantly poorer than the first and yes we were by no means the only team to suffer this.  It''s a fact, and despite which we have still survived thanks to the good points haul in the first half of the season.

 

Of course what matters is the performance over the whole season.  That is what we are judged on and we have achieved safety with a game to spare.

 

The likes of Highland and Lincoln really aren''t worth the effort.

 

The great thing is that with 1 game to go we sit above 8 other teams in the Premier League.  Hopefully we will put on another ''West Brom Esque'' performance at the Etihad and finish as high as possible.  Newcastle, Sunderland & Fulham all have tough games, Southampton play Stoke and hopefully Wigan will beat Villa.[Y]

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Ricardo, thanks for the reply.

My first post was my interpretation of the statistics you provided.  Your second post reveals your point, relating to the statistics you provided in the first post.  I haven''t taken the time, that some posters have on here, to compare our form in the second half of the season with other teams, but I accept your interpretation that one or two teams perceived good run is equivalent to our bad run.

If we look behind the statistics, I think most people think that survival was either the minimum /  main / only requirement for the season.  That has been achieved, I think next season''s requirements will extend to a more than survival, personally I think 47-50 points is a reasonable target. 

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It seems to be the general pattern over the past few seasons that there is a cluster of teams just above the relegation zone, while the top seven are really widely spread out. Points-wise, Liverpool in 7th are closer to relegated Wigan than they are to champions Man Utd, while the entire bottom half are within six points of the relegation places.

The obvious conclusion is that it doesn''t take much of a dip in form to drag you into the relegation battle, but as Sussexyellow points out, it is often a battle to avoid just the one final relegation place, as it was this season.

Another interesting statistic (if you like that sort of thing) is that only the top seven have won more games than they lost, and they all have large positive goal differences. Then there is a ten point gap, and the remaining thirteen teams have all lost more than they won, and all have negative goal differences. I have also noticed this in previous seasons - maybe evidence that the PL is effectively splitting into two separate leagues?

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