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"In Form Bristol City"


JEP

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TL;DR: I've taken a look at our form in the 79 league games since LJ took charge, from 3 games to 46, to see how often our current form has been repeated. It hasn't been repeated, and we are currently achieving the best patch of results since he took over, which is fantastic. You can also see how bad our run of results last Christmas was, and how it's affected our long-term points average, it's something that we've only just started to recover from - statistically speaking.

__________________________________________________________

When driving home last week, I was listening to 5 Live, and at a break between the Roma v Chelsea game the commentator said something along the lines of, “And there’s been another goal at Craven Cottage, which way has it gone?” It then cuts across to the reporter who then says, “it’s another goal for in form Bristol City, 2 nil!”

After the celebratory tap of the steering wheel, I kept thinking, “In form? But in our last three league games, we’ve only won once and that was away at Sunderland; and we were awful against Leeds!”

That has inspired this post. What do we mean by “in form Bristol City?” Is it how we perform over three games? Six games? Ten games? Or even twenty?

To do this, I’ve taken a moving average of the points per game (PPG) of every result since Lee Johnson took charge of City, scaled to the number of points we would get at the end of the season. This is to see at when we have performed best and worst (10 points if you can tell me when that was!) over a given period of time. I’ve taken this moving average from 3 to 46 games, to get a really good spread of “form”.

I’ve made graphs for all of these, that also include:

  • Promotion points over the last couple of seasons

  • Playoff points over the last couple of seasons

  • Relegation points over the last couple of seasons

  • Markers for the maximum and minimum numbers of projected points we’ve achieved

Rather than post each individual graph to here and have an overly long thread, I’ve made this gif that cycles through all the graphs, so you can see what happens as you add more games to the moving average.

sxmyzD4.gif

Along the x-axis is the number of league games we’ve played since LJ took charge. The y-axis shows the projected number of points we’d obtain over the season, if we maintained the points per game from the group of games selected.

  • For example: The MA6 graph is a moving average of 6 games. If you get WWWWWW, you average 3 points per game and would get 138 points throughout the season. If you get LLLLLL, you would average 0 and get 0 throughout the season.

  • After losing 6 games, you may win, so your form would be LLLLLW, giving you 3 points from 6 games. An average of 0.5 points per game. Having this over the season would mean you would get 23 points - still you would get certain relegation!

  • To read these off the graph, find a game number on the x axis. This is the middle game in the set of games if the group is an odd number:

    • Reading game 35 on the MA3 graph gives the average for games 34, 35 and 36

    • Reading game 35 on the MA6 graph gives the average for games 32, 33, 34, 35, 36 and 37.

    • You can scale this up to 46 and this is why the graph shrinks as the MA goes up towards 46. When this season finishes, the MA46 graph would move up to halfway through this season.

All of the graphs are in this album linked below, so you can have a proper look if you want, but the gif I’ve posted shows all of them in increasing order of games. I’ve also stuck all the results onto the end of the album.

https://imgur.com/a/2uuH8

So what should you be looking out for? Some of the key points to notice when looking through them:

  • The most obvious thing is that there’s a 20 game period, between 30 and 50 games, that not only includes “the run” but many games either side of it where we weren’t picking up many points, or how long it took for us to get out of the slump.

  • After the MA6 graph, the maximum value hugs the right hand side and rarely changes from there, this implies that our best form is most recent.

  • You can’t tell form from 3 games, as I tried to when listening to the radio. It changes so much that you can’t build a proper picture from it.

  • I like the Gary/Lee Johnson method of look at 10 game blocks. That’s enough time to get a good feel for what’s happening and you can see from the graph that it’s just starting to smooth out - that’s getting rid of the variability that you get from the 3 game moving average.

So to summarise:

Without trying to open a can of worms, the run last season was that bad. However, given LJ has now been in charge for 79 games, a 20 game period of really bad form has in part, overshadowed all the good work either side of it, pretty much until now.

City are now achieving their best results since LJ took charge - that is obvious. Not only over the last 5 or 6 games, but the last 20, 30 and 40 games. Our form in the last 12 games would see us as champions over the last two season and our form in the last 20 games would be enough to get us into the playoff for the last two seasons.

The purpose of this was to take a quick look at our ever changing fortunes since LJ took charge. Hopefully you might look at the blocks of form, the 3-6, game periods that change massively over the course of the season (unless you're at the very top or bottom of the league) and think that it's only when you get towards 10-15 games that you get a real picture of how we're doing. Coincidentally, we're 16 games into the season and looking very, very good. Whilst this doesn't tell us anything new, it reaffirms what we've been thinking about how we're doing this season. I think that "In Form Bristol City" could quite possibly be here to stay for the whole season.

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2 minutes ago, 1bristolcity said:

Yes you seem to find even the most easy to understand posts difficult to grasp...certainly this would challenge you ;)

Do I really..? 

I don’t find it hard to grasp, or understand, that you come across as an obnoxious, self righteous****. 

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You say city were awful against Leeds. Ok we were caught cold, but if you look at our defence that day hegeler was there. He is just not a centre back. The only other time we lost this season v Brum who was at centre back? think we were worse against burton going forward but we had our usual defence so we didn't concede. 

I think this shows that regarding league form goals away is more important than goals for. A stingy defence results in promotion form more than free scoring. Look at our poor run, we were scoring plenty of goals, we were just conceding too many. 

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1 hour ago, JEP said:

TL;DR: I've taken a look at our form in the 79 league games since LJ took charge, from 3 games to 46, to see how often our current form has been repeated. It hasn't been repeated, and we are currently achieving the best patch of results since he took over, which is fantastic. You can also see how bad our run of results last Christmas was, and how it's affected our long-term points average, it's something that we've only just started to recover from - statistically speaking.

__________________________________________________________

When driving home last week, I was listening to 5 Live, and at a break between the Roma v Chelsea game the commentator said something along the lines of, “And there’s been another goal at Craven Cottage, which way has it gone?” It then cuts across to the reporter who then says, “it’s another goal for in form Bristol City, 2 nil!”

 

After the celebratory tap of the steering wheel, I kept thinking, “In form? But in our last three league games, we’ve only won once and that was away at Sunderland; and we were awful against Leeds!”

That has inspired this post. What do we mean by “in form Bristol City?” Is it how we perform over three games? Six games? Ten games? Or even twenty?

To do this, I’ve taken a moving average of the points per game (PPG) of every result since Lee Johnson took charge of City, scaled to the number of points we would get at the end of the season. This is to see at when we have performed best and worst (10 points if you can tell me when that was!) over a given period of time. I’ve taken this moving average from 3 to 46 games, to get a really good spread of “form”.

I’ve made graphs for all of these, that also include:

  • Promotion points over the last couple of seasons

  • Playoff points over the last couple of seasons

  • Relegation points over the last couple of seasons

  • Markers for the maximum and minimum numbers of projected points we’ve achieved

Rather than post each individual graph to here and have an overly long thread, I’ve made this gif that cycles through all the graphs, so you can see what happens as you add more games to the moving average.

sxmyzD4.gif

Along the x-axis is the number of league games we’ve played since LJ took charge. The y-axis shows the projected number of points we’d obtain over the season, if we maintained the points per game from the group of games selected.

  • For example: The MA6 graph is a moving average of 6 games. If you get WWWWWW, you average 3 points per game and would get 138 points throughout the season. If you get LLLLLL, you would average 0 and get 0 throughout the season.

  • After losing 6 games, you may win, so your form would be LLLLLW, giving you 3 points from 6 games. An average of 0.5 points per game. Having this over the season would mean you would get 23 points - still you would get certain relegation!

  • To read these off the graph, find a game number on the x axis. This is the middle game in the set of games if the group is an odd number:

    • Reading game 35 on the MA3 graph gives the average for games 34, 35 and 36

    • Reading game 35 on the MA6 graph gives the average for games 32, 33, 34, 35, 36 and 37.

    • You can scale this up to 46 and this is why the graph shrinks as the MA goes up towards 46. When this season finishes, the MA46 graph would move up to halfway through this season.

All of the graphs are in this album linked below, so you can have a proper look if you want, but the gif I’ve posted shows all of them in increasing order of games. I’ve also stuck all the results onto the end of the album.

https://imgur.com/a/2uuH8

So what should you be looking out for? Some of the key points to notice when looking through them:

  • The most obvious thing is that there’s a 20 game period, between 30 and 50 games, that not only includes “the run” but many games either side of it where we weren’t picking up many points, or how long it took for us to get out of the slump.

  • After the MA6 graph, the maximum value hugs the right hand side and rarely changes from there, this implies that our best form is most recent.

  • You can’t tell form from 3 games, as I tried to when listening to the radio. It changes so much that you can’t build a proper picture from it.

  • I like the Gary/Lee Johnson method of look at 10 game blocks. That’s enough time to get a good feel for what’s happening and you can see from the graph that it’s just starting to smooth out - that’s getting rid of the variability that you get from the 3 game moving average.

So to summarise:

Without trying to open a can of worms, the run last season was that bad. However, given LJ has now been in charge for 79 games, a 20 game period of really bad form has in part, overshadowed all the good work either side of it, pretty much until now.

City are now achieving their best results since LJ took charge - that is obvious. Not only over the last 5 or 6 games, but the last 20, 30 and 40 games. Our form in the last 12 games would see us as champions over the last two season and our form in the last 20 games would be enough to get us into the playoff for the last two seasons.

The purpose of this was to take a quick look at our ever changing fortunes since LJ took charge. Hopefully you might look at the blocks of form, the 3-6, game periods that change massively over the course of the season (unless you're at the very top or bottom of the league) and think that it's only when you get towards 10-15 games that you get a real picture of how we're doing. Coincidentally, we're 16 games into the season and looking very, very good. Whilst this doesn't tell us anything new, it reaffirms what we've been thinking about how we're doing this season. I think that "In Form Bristol City" could quite possibly be here to stay for the whole season.

Great effort, this is the sort of post I thoroughly enjoy reading! 

Keep up the good work!

COYR.

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1 hour ago, JEP said:

TL;DR: I've taken a look at our form in the 79 league games since LJ took charge, from 3 games to 46, to see how often our current form has been repeated. It hasn't been repeated, and we are currently achieving the best patch of results since he took over, which is fantastic. You can also see how bad our run of results last Christmas was, and how it's affected our long-term points average, it's something that we've only just started to recover from - statistically speaking.

__________________________________________________________

When driving home last week, I was listening to 5 Live, and at a break between the Roma v Chelsea game the commentator said something along the lines of, “And there’s been another goal at Craven Cottage, which way has it gone?” It then cuts across to the reporter who then says, “it’s another goal for in form Bristol City, 2 nil!”

 

After the celebratory tap of the steering wheel, I kept thinking, “In form? But in our last three league games, we’ve only won once and that was away at Sunderland; and we were awful against Leeds!”

That has inspired this post. What do we mean by “in form Bristol City?” Is it how we perform over three games? Six games? Ten games? Or even twenty?

To do this, I’ve taken a moving average of the points per game (PPG) of every result since Lee Johnson took charge of City, scaled to the number of points we would get at the end of the season. This is to see at when we have performed best and worst (10 points if you can tell me when that was!) over a given period of time. I’ve taken this moving average from 3 to 46 games, to get a really good spread of “form”.

I’ve made graphs for all of these, that also include:

  • Promotion points over the last couple of seasons

  • Playoff points over the last couple of seasons

  • Relegation points over the last couple of seasons

  • Markers for the maximum and minimum numbers of projected points we’ve achieved

Rather than post each individual graph to here and have an overly long thread, I’ve made this gif that cycles through all the graphs, so you can see what happens as you add more games to the moving average.

sxmyzD4.gif

Along the x-axis is the number of league games we’ve played since LJ took charge. The y-axis shows the projected number of points we’d obtain over the season, if we maintained the points per game from the group of games selected.

  • For example: The MA6 graph is a moving average of 6 games. If you get WWWWWW, you average 3 points per game and would get 138 points throughout the season. If you get LLLLLL, you would average 0 and get 0 throughout the season.

  • After losing 6 games, you may win, so your form would be LLLLLW, giving you 3 points from 6 games. An average of 0.5 points per game. Having this over the season would mean you would get 23 points - still you would get certain relegation!

  • To read these off the graph, find a game number on the x axis. This is the middle game in the set of games if the group is an odd number:

    • Reading game 35 on the MA3 graph gives the average for games 34, 35 and 36

    • Reading game 35 on the MA6 graph gives the average for games 32, 33, 34, 35, 36 and 37.

    • You can scale this up to 46 and this is why the graph shrinks as the MA goes up towards 46. When this season finishes, the MA46 graph would move up to halfway through this season.

All of the graphs are in this album linked below, so you can have a proper look if you want, but the gif I’ve posted shows all of them in increasing order of games. I’ve also stuck all the results onto the end of the album.

https://imgur.com/a/2uuH8

So what should you be looking out for? Some of the key points to notice when looking through them:

  • The most obvious thing is that there’s a 20 game period, between 30 and 50 games, that not only includes “the run” but many games either side of it where we weren’t picking up many points, or how long it took for us to get out of the slump.

  • After the MA6 graph, the maximum value hugs the right hand side and rarely changes from there, this implies that our best form is most recent.

  • You can’t tell form from 3 games, as I tried to when listening to the radio. It changes so much that you can’t build a proper picture from it.

  • I like the Gary/Lee Johnson method of look at 10 game blocks. That’s enough time to get a good feel for what’s happening and you can see from the graph that it’s just starting to smooth out - that’s getting rid of the variability that you get from the 3 game moving average.

So to summarise:

Without trying to open a can of worms, the run last season was that bad. However, given LJ has now been in charge for 79 games, a 20 game period of really bad form has in part, overshadowed all the good work either side of it, pretty much until now.

City are now achieving their best results since LJ took charge - that is obvious. Not only over the last 5 or 6 games, but the last 20, 30 and 40 games. Our form in the last 12 games would see us as champions over the last two season and our form in the last 20 games would be enough to get us into the playoff for the last two seasons.

The purpose of this was to take a quick look at our ever changing fortunes since LJ took charge. Hopefully you might look at the blocks of form, the 3-6, game periods that change massively over the course of the season (unless you're at the very top or bottom of the league) and think that it's only when you get towards 10-15 games that you get a real picture of how we're doing. Coincidentally, we're 16 games into the season and looking very, very good. Whilst this doesn't tell us anything new, it reaffirms what we've been thinking about how we're doing this season. I think that "In Form Bristol City" could quite possibly be here to stay for the whole season.

Mum, Mum I've got too much homework and it's too hard!

 

 

 

Seriously that's a lot of work you've put in but it's great to see what I think many suspected i.e while the poor run was really poor it masked the overall improvement since LJ came in. 

Well done.

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You say LJ's record has taken a new leap up the Richter scale.

Not surprised really

It has take him a year to get the current system of organisation, personnel and a tactical plan to work, which is not surprising.

There is more to managing a successful side than just buying lots of players and telling them to play 442

For a start, the pressing game.

It is an exact science that requires a team of like-minded individuals to syncopate like a Busby Berkley film set. That degree of organisation and self-discipline doesnt happen overnight, and even the best players can prove to be crap at it.  But if you have great players (as in Barcelona) or even good young players (as in Bristol City) that buy into the philosophy and inject their enthusiasm and energy into the project, success is possible at any level.

For those who dont know, pressing has to happen with everybody on the team, because its like trying to plug a leak. If 9 of 10 people press high up the pitch but someone forgets, then the system breaks down. So it requires players to work selflessly, without ego or self-interest (hence Tomlin now starring for Cardiff).

Its taken our manager a year to develop, but now the engine is purring.  Now he has the test of keeping a large squad happy and vibing. And LJ is starting to show us why he was so highly regarded right around the country

LJ.  Dont let that pressure off !

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31 minutes ago, BRIAN WILSON said:

great work by the OP

Now, by applying probability theory can you kindly supply the exact date when Rovers enter administration please

I believe that is a far easier calculation. 

They have zero. Times that by any number you like and it leaves them with zero. 

Deduct annual interest payments of around £600k. Interest on capital that was lent against their only asset in the first place, and it leaves a deficit. 

Add further deficit from wages & running costs not being covered by insufficient supporter numbers and the answer is.... as soon as Wally decides enough is enough, administration looms. 

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Thanks for the comments everyone. I've uploaded this and my other two posts on the forum to here: http://statsandbcfc.blogspot.co.uk/ which I'll post to (as well as here) as and when I come up with my next bit of work.

As a bonus image, here are all the averages stuck on the same graph.

5wS2VT2.png

2 hours ago, reddogkev said:

I have one question - how long did that take to create?  It's almost like the form and vagaries of Bristol City Football Club has become a university subject.

Mark Ashton, is that you?

I've been compiling our results since June for the other couple of posts that I've done, so that part doesn't take too long. The moving averages was just a case of working out the best Excel formula to use to for the whole 43 game blocks - doing it manually for 3 or 4 is fine, but it would have been incredibly time consuming to do that for all of them! Creating the graphs and the gif took a couple of hours. I have access to MATLAB at work, which is what I used to create the graphs. I played around with it after I finished on Friday to try and get all the background information put on in the right place, then you create all the graphs at once, stick them on top of one another and that creates the gif! As being an Analyst is my day job, it's quite nice to put what I do at work to something that I find really interesting; and it's self-feeding loop, in that I taught myself a couple of programming things to make this which will probably come in use down the line at work.

I'll happy deny that I am Mark Ashton, due to the lack of a mention of DNA in my posts!

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In more simpler terms , LJ  Has had 4/5ths of success   feb to may 15 /16  play off ratio of points   , first 1/3 last season  play off ratio points  2/3  record defeat disaster  , 3/3  play off ratio    this 1/3 playoff points ratio   If we are in top 6 at jan 1  after a very tough December fixture list  There is no reason to think we can be in the play offs in May !

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