Rankings

Trophy Winners #1 – England Men’s Club Football 1889 to 2022

May 28, 2022 By Nigel

The 2021/22 football season is now over and it now 53 seasons since my team Newcastle Utd last won a trophy. For supporters of other teams, your life will have been more fortunate but if you can’t remember the last time your team won a trophy then why not download my spreadsheet listing all trophy winners since 1889 to find out.

Sporting GOATs #1 – English football clubs

September 9, 2017 By Nigel

My team Newcastle United are also known as the Magpies but how much of a GOAT are they? In recent years, this acronym has become popular as a shorthand for Greatest Of All Time. Given that the Magpies have not won a trophy in the 40+ years that I have supported them, I know they are not the number 1 GOAT in English football but where would they sit in a GOAT table?

Ranking tables are extremely common in sport and sport analytics as they are easily understood by fans. If I want to compile a ranking of all English football clubs, there are two decisions I have to make:

Over what time period will the data come from? (ERA)
On what measure will I rank the clubs? (METRIC)

In this post I will use 3 eras and 3 metrics to creating 9 GOAT tables in all. Read on to find out which club is #1 GOAT! [Read more…] about Sporting GOATs #1 – English football clubs

6 Nations #3 – Who will win in 2017? – week 3

February 18, 2017 By Nigel

So the 6 Nations is underway again and the traditional rivalries are reheated. Who will win is once again on all the sports pages and there are no shortages of pundits willing to give their opinions. If you want a different way to predict what will happen, why not use the World Rugby Rankings?

Ranking tables play a big part in a number of sports but they are not widely understood among sports fans. At bottom though, rankings are intended to be used as a predictive tool for what will happen in a match. A good ranking system will be more accurate in predicting outcomes than a bad ranking system. However, a perfect ranking system is something we don’t want otherwise sport becomes boring as we will always know the outcome in advance. So as a forecasting tool, a ranking system is a curious beast. We want it to be good but not great.