Scorecast Stats Bulletin - issue #3

Roberto Di Statteo
Sep 30, 2023
8 min read

We’re on a roll! (sort of)

INFO/DISCLAIMER - I use decimal odds because fractional odds are ridiculously convoluted when there’s an accumulator involved. If you’re more comfortable with fractional, it’s easy to convert… just subtract 1 from the decimal odds, and it’s that number to one in fractional. eg. if something has odds of 3.0, it’s 2/1. If something has odds of 8.44, it’s 7.44/1 etc. Much easier than working out the simplest version of the fraction, which would be 211/25 and would look ridiculous. And don’t get me started on bookies who write 100/30 instead of 10/3. All odds listed here are from Bet365 and are subject to change. Remember, this is just for fun and Toontalk do not accept any responsibility for gambling losses or addictive betting. When the fun stops, stop.

The Top 10

First of all, the important question… who are the current top 10? I didn’t think to include this in previous bulletins but seeing as I’m in it, and I like to stroke my own ego, here it is:

Tony Bosworth, who is actually our reigning Tablecast champion, has joined the elite Scorecasters, as have Mal Peary and Jonathan Ireland who shared Round 4’s second-highest score of 15 (Sean Rafferty was top-scorer with 16 - he didn’t have a great start to the season and has risen from 82nd to 36th, but he might be on his way up here soon!) We say goodbye to Kjetil Rykkje and Jon Gretar Levi Jonsson though I’m sure they’ll both be back in the mix at some point if they can find form again!

Now, onto the bulletin proper… and it didn’t take too long to get a winner, thankfully - you may have seen my update last week. Week 2 was a winner for my standard bet which I’ll be running every round. If you want to see a full explanation of how a 6-fold from 8 bet works, see ISSUE 1. For the sake of consistency of data, that’s the one I’m going to keep running as, so far, I’ve been no more than 1 result away from a win every time!

My bet is based on the top-10 stats table, and this week that means it’s a 6-fold from the following 8 picks: Everton to beat Luton, Newcastle to beat Burnley, West Ham to beat Sheffield United, Spurs and Liverpool to draw, Man Utd to beat Galatasaray, Arsenal to beat Lens, Newcastle and PSG to draw, and Man City to beat Leipzig. There are 28 combinations of 6 teams possible when choosing from 8 (8C6 = 28) so the highest I can put on and still keep my bet under a fiver is 17p (28 * £0.17 = £4.76). If all 8 teams were to win, I’d come away with £247.29. By comparison, if I was just to put £5 on the 8-way accumulator, I’d stand to win around £813, however I’d get no return if any one of my picks is unsuccessful… hence, the 6-fold instead, for the safety net. This means that, even though the max possible prize is only about 30% of the acca prize, I’ll still win somewhere between £30 and £80 if 7 out of 8 come in, and I’ll still win between £1.92 and £14.50 if only 6 come in. Where my prize falls in that bracket depends, of course, on which of the results fail. Almost always, the draws are the ones with the longest odds and this bet is no different, with Spurs v Liverpool being 4.0 for the draw, and Newcastle v PSG at 3.6. All of the other results are under 2.0, or odds-on.

So, that’s my bet, but what about yours? Well… here are some notable stats based on just the top 10. None of the top 10 think that Luton, Burnley, Sheffield United, Lens or Leipzig will win… in fact, none of them have Burnley or Sheffield United to draw either, but with all of the struggling newly-promoted teams featuring in the Scorecast this week, it seems a few fancy Luton to pick up a point at Goodison Park. Interestingly, only 7 out of 10 think we’ll keep a 5th clean sheet in a row against Burnley, though nobody has the visitors scoring more than one goal. Conversely, 7 of 10 think Leipzig will score at least 1 against City. That said, City have the most goals awarded by the top 10, with a 2.9 average just ahead of Newcastle’s projection of 2.7.

Speaking of Newcastle, while the outcome is a draw, the top 10 have predicted 0.4 goals more for Newcastle than for PSG, and only one person from the current top 10 (David Threadgill) has PSG to win. A few people have said we might suffer from complacency against Burnley, particularly after the magnitude of the Sheffield United win, but only one of the top 10 (me, incidentally) has Newcastle scoring more than three goals. That said, while City’s goal projection is higher than ours, it’s the Newcastle v Burnley game that has the highest goal difference projected, with an average of +2.4; by comparison, City v Leipzig and West Ham v Sheffield United are at 1.8. The closest game seems to be Liverpool v Spurs; 3 wins apiece, 4 draws, and an average scoreline of 1.5-1.6 in Liverpool’s favour. At 3.0 odds, that’s quite a tasty bet on its own.

The Scores

For those who’d like to see what our top 10 have gone for and draw their own conclusions, here they are:

Only 3 clean sheets for Everton and Man City, 5 for West Ham. Looks like both teams to score in the Spurs v Liverpool game. 5 people say Newcastle will score exactly 3 goals against Burnley. Everton v Luton and Newcastle v PSG are the equally lowest-scoring fixtures according to the top 10, with only 24 goals. Leipzig v Man City will apparently be the most goal-filled tie, with 40 goals.

Everybody else

But… what about the opinions of the entire consensus? (Table below). Well, the only scoreline that comes out different is, funnily enough, Spurs v Liverpool. The stats say 1-2 but, really, the exact averages are 1.4-1.6, which still puts them closer together than anyone else bar Newcastle and PSG at 1.4-1.2. On total goals, the latter game is closer, though, with the consensus awarding 14 more goals to Newcastle than to PSG (110-96); Liverpool, by comparison, are 16 ahead of Spurs (117-133). As for the comparison of averages, the top 10 agree almost entirely with the rest of you.

Luton, Newcastle (in both of their selected matches), Burnley, West Ham, Sheffield United, Liverpool, Man Utd, and Arsenal all have the exact same average number of predicted goals across the top 10 as they do across the 81 who have submitted scores at the time of writing this. The others variate slightly, but not by much - compared to the entire cohort, the top 10 think Everton, Spurs and Man City will do better by 0.1 goals each, Galatasaray and Lens will do worse by 0.1 goals each, PSG will do worse by 0.2 goals, and Leipzig will do better by 0.3 goals. The cohort have given Man City a total of 224 goals against Leipzig and Newcastle 218 against Burnley - City’s total is 2.75% higher than ours, as opposed to 7.4% when looking at just the top 10. That said, Newcastle v Burnley is the only fixture in which every single entrant has opted for the same result - a Newcastle win. The goal difference is 2.4 from the cohort, as with the top 10, and West Ham v Sheffield United remains at 1.8 as well - City’s goal difference in the cohort is a little higher than the top 10’s estimate, at 2.0.

In the Spurs v Liverpool game, even though the cohort has a narrow win for Liverpool, the majority (48 out of 81, or 59.3%) have that game down as a draw, reinforcing the tasty bet at 3.0 odds. Looks like a score draw as well, with only 7 predictions (8.6%) suggesting that either Spurs or Liverpool (or both) will fail to score. Geoffrey Selkirk is the only player who’s gone for 0-0, so far.

In the Newcastle v Burnley game, 71 of 81 have Newcastle to score no more than 3 goals - 9 (including myself) think we’ll get 4, and there’s one (PK Currie) who thinks we’ll get 5. That said, 48 (59%) of us think that Newcastle will score at least 3 against Burnley, a total only bettered by Man City with 52 (64%). Nobody has them to score 5 though; the only team other than Newcastle (v Burnley) to have a 5-goal prediction is Arsenal, who Christopher Nager thinks will put 5 past Lens. Unsurprisingly (due to form and rose-tinted specs) Burnley have the fewest predicted goals with an average across the cohort of 0.3; 74% of players think we’ll win to nil, with 20 predicting a goal for Burnley and only one (Colin Wesbroom) projecting two goals for Burnley in a 3-2 Newcastle win. This outlier means that, quite amazingly, 9% of all of the goals predicted for Burnley, are Colin’s.

Newcastle v PSG has 34 Newcastle wins, 21 PSG wins, and 26 draws, with only 9 predictions (11%) suggesting that either side will score more than 2 goals. Graeme Gilhespy, Christopher Nager, Rory Shoemaker, Stevie Spowart, and Kay Waters all have that game finishing 3-2, one way or the other.

Top Threes

That’ll do for the details… here’s a quick summary of the top 3 of a few categories, that might inform your bets this weekend:

MOST WINS:

(most defeats not included as it’s obviously just the opposite of this)

NEWCASTLE v Burnley - 81 (100%)
Leipzig v MAN CITY - 75 (93%)
WEST HAM v Sheffield United - 74 (91%)

MOST DRAWS:

Spurs v Liverpool - 48 (59%)
Newcastle v PSG - 26 (32%)
Everton v Luton - 23 (28%)

MOST GOALS AWARDED:

Leipzig v MAN CITY - 224
NEWCASTLE v Burnley - 218
WEST HAM v Sheffield United - 191

FEWEST GOALS AWARDED:

Newcastle v BURNLEY - 22
West Ham v SHEFFIELD UNITED - 50
RC LENS v Arsenal - 53

MOST CLEAN SHEETS:

NEWCASTLE v Burnley - 60 (74%)
WEST HAM v Sheffield United - 38 (47%)
RC LENS v Arsenal and EVERTON v Luton Town - 32 (40%)

MOST PREDICTIONS WITH MAX 2 GOALS:

Everton v LUTON TOWN - 81 (100%)
Newcastle v BURNLEY - 81 (100%)
West Ham v SHEFFIELD UNITED - 81 (100%)

MOST PREDICTIONS WITH 3 OR MORE GOALS:

Leipzig v MAN CITY - 52 (64%)
NEWCASTLE v Burnley - 48 (59%)
WEST HAM v Sheffield United - 29 (36%)

HIGHEST SCORING FIXTURE:

Leipzig v Man City - 293 (Ø = 3.53)
Spurs v Liverpool - 258 (Ø = 3.11)
West Ham v Sheffield United - 247 (Ø = 2.98)

LOWEST SCORING FIXTURE:

Everton v Luton Town - 188 (Ø = 2.27)
Newcastle v PSG - 212 (Ø = 2.55)
Man United v Galatasaray and RC Lens v Arsenal - 221 (Ø = 2.66)

MOST GOALS PREDICTED:

Christopher Nagel - 35
Stevie Spowart - 33
John Christian - 32

FEWEST GOALS PREDICTED:

Gary Raine and Henk Postma - 11

3. David Waters - 15

BIGGEST HOME WIN PREDICTED:

Newcastle 5-0 Burnley (PK Currie)
West Ham 4-0 Sheffield United (Simon Coles, Wayne Dance, Colin French, Tony Kendall) and Man Utd 4-0 Galatasaray (Ron Patterson)

BIGGEST AWAY WIN PREDICTED:

RC Lens 0-5 Arsenal (Christopher Nager)
RB Leipzig 0-4 Man City (Tony Slater, John Strafford, Chris Turner, Darren Wilkinson, Callum Wink)
Spurs 0-3 Liverpool (Anj Luzanycia-Hird)

That’s all for this issue of the bulletin - good luck to everyone who’s playing apart from Burnley and PSG. This bulletin will be public (after the Round 5 deadline has passed) so feel free to leave comments on the blog (at https://www.toontalk.uk/blog/categories/scorecast) letting us know how you got on with your bets, if you made any 😀

There were 77 entrants when I started this, 81 when I got to the team stats bit, and 84 when I got to the individual stats bit, in case anyone is interested.

TTFN,

Rob