The Snowball stat thread

[Snowball]

, I haven't bothered replying to you for months, and your first reply is an insult. Just questioning how more than a third of a season was now a 'form table'. I won't bother again.

But you did. You were bleating as far back as Dec 17th on this thread

[cmonurz]

, I haven't bothered replying to you for months, and your first reply is an insult. Just questioning how more than a third of a season was now a 'form table'. I won't bother again.

But you did. You were bleating as far back as Dec 17th on this thread

Statistically that is more than one month.

If you're going to start being literal, maybe you could start to address some of the questions posed.

Don't fancy it? Fair enough, it's your prerogative. This is a public message board though, so get used to people disagreeing with you.

[Snowball]

Form table does mean something. It's quite easy to deduce that this team has got much better as its gelled and moved on from Long. The opening 6 league games will count at the end of the season, but I'm not sure they're the best indicator of how well we will perform in the coming months.

Our form since the end of September or so is a better indicator there; we're top 6 by those standards. Comfortably.

Obviously it's possible that we go on an underwhelming run and underline our credentials as an average, mid table side. I don't think this will happen; McD's teams have been pretty consistent once they get going throughout his time here. We're contenders for the play-offs in my view. Great job again McD.

[Snowball]

, I haven't bothered replying to you for months, and your first reply is an insult. Just questioning how more than a third of a season was now a 'form table'. I won't bother again.

But you did. You were bleating as far back as Dec 17th on this thread

Statistically that is more than one month.

If you're going to start being literal, maybe you could start to address some of the questions posed.

Don't fancy it? Fair enough, it's your prerogative. This is a public message board though, so get used to people disagreeing with you.

Where exactly does it say that the quote above was from Dec 17? little One?

Dec 17th you said:

So 16 games is now the form table.

Dec 18th you said:

So 16 games is now the form table.

Do you HAVE to be a permanent pain in the ass?

There is a VERY obvious reason. THIS IS THE RUN.

It was after we sorted things out, after the horrible run of five defeats.

Is that too difficult for you to understand?

It happens to be 16 games.

Next it will be 17 games.

And then it will be 18 games.

I realise counting is difficult for you, but TRY.

What a bizarre response, I haven't bothered replying to you for months, and your first reply is an insult. Just questioning how more than a third of a season was now a 'form table'. I won't bother again.

[cmonurz]

Your vindictiveness is worrying bordering on a little insane. I suggest you back off and take a look at some of your posts. You are embarassing yourself.

You want to talk about form tables, I'll happily debate their worth until the cows come home. But it seems to me you want to make this personal. It is utterly bizarre.

[Snowball]

A genuinely interesting stat for strikers would be a goals / chances ratio.

But it ain't an easy one to trace unless your only other activity in life is sobbing in bed.

It's extremely easy to trace.

On the OS under Club Statistics Shooting


Manset comes out well clear, and Church is second

3 Goals in 08 Chances = 1 in 02.67 MANSET

6 Goals in 24 Chances = 1 in 04.00 CHURCH
1 Goals in 04 Chances = 1 in 04.00 ROBERTS

3 Goals in 16 Chances = 1 in 05.33 PEARCE
6 Goals is 34 Chances = 1 in 05.67 LE FONDRE
4 Goals in 24 Chances = 1 in 06.00 HUNT

3 Goals in 23 Chances = 1 in 07.67 HAL ROBSON KANU
2 Goals in 18 Chances = 1 in 09.00 KEBE
4 Goals in 46 Chances = 1 in 11.50 McANUFF

[Snowball]

Your vindictiveness is worrying bordering on a little insane. I suggest you back off and take a look at some of your posts. You are embarassing yourself.

You want to talk about form tables, I'll happily debate their worth until the cows come home. But it seems to me you want to make this personal. It is utterly bizarre.

What is vindictive about pointing out what you actually said?

Like you said I was wrong about Long. You remember that clown?

[Snowball]

I'd also love to see a stat for the number of times Church has fallen over in front of goal and totally wasted a decent chance before even getting it on or off target.

Apart from Manset he is our best converter of chances (according to the OS)

[Snowball]

Good stuff, Señor Vision.

Though rather than use it to spot the form of a striker, I was more interested in using it to perhaps excuse them. Our strikers aren't scoring regularly, but many suggest this is because they are lacking service - maybe there is a stat out there to back that up?

Still rather tricky, now I think about it. Not getting many chances could equally be down to poor positioning of the striker.

Yeah, I've changed my mind again. Stats are pigshit.

We are (so far) down about 1.5 chances per game.
42 chances less, about 5 goals at our current conversion rate.


279 chances in 28 Games = 10.0 Chances per Game This Season
533 chances in 46 Games = 11.6 Chances per Game Last Season
528 chances in 46 Games = 11.5 Chances per Game Last Season

[Harpers So Solid Crew]

Form table does mean something. It's quite easy to deduce that this team has got much better as its gelled and moved on from Long. The opening 6 league games will count at the end of the season, but I'm not sure they're the best indicator of how well we will perform in the coming months.

Our form since the end of September or so is a better indicator there; we're top 6 by those standards. Comfortably.

Obviously it's possible that we go on an underwhelming run and underline our credentials as an average, mid table side. I don't think this will happen; McD's teams have been pretty consistent once they get going throughout his time here. We're contenders for the play-offs in my view. Great job again McD.

Or so, we were a bit poor 1Oct to 1nov

[Snowball]

Note this,posting stats since the Donny game.

You say any comment other than "I like this table"?

CS = Clean Sheets

I LIKE THIS TABLE (From the Doncaster Game)


01 18 10-5-3 9 CS 26-14 +12 35 1.94 ppg Reading
02 18 09-5-4 5 CS 32-17 +15 32 1.78 ppg Southampton

03 18 08-7-3 7 CS 29-20 +09 31 1.72 ppg Cardiff City
04 18 09-4-5 8 CS 24-16 +08 31 1.72 ppg West Ham United
05 18 08-7-3 9 CS 18-15 +03 31 1.72 ppg Middlesbrough
06 18 09-3-6 6 CS 22-18 +04 30 1.67 ppg Hull City

07 19 10-1-8 5 CS 31-23 +08 31 1.63 ppg Burnley
08 18 08-4-6 5 CS 26-24 +02 28 1.56 ppg Leeds United
09 17 07-5-5 5 CS 22-17 +05 26 1.53 ppg Birmingham City
10 18 08-3-7 3 CS 31-30 +01 27 1.50 ppg Barnsley

[Snowball]

Form table does mean something. It's quite easy to deduce that this team has got much better as its gelled and moved on from Long. The opening 6 league games will count at the end of the season, but I'm not sure they're the best indicator of how well we will perform in the coming months.

Our form since the end of September or so is a better indicator there; we're top 6 by those standards. Comfortably.

Obviously it's possible that we go on an underwhelming run and underline our credentials as an average, mid table side. I don't think this will happen; McD's teams have been pretty consistent once they get going throughout his time here. We're contenders for the play-offs in my view. Great job again McD.

Or so, we were a bit poor 1Oct to 1nov

Just so you know, that was someone else's post, not mine, I just re-posted

You're right though

In this 22-Game run we got 17 points from 11, then 24 from the next 11. We are still improving!!

Same thing happened last year. We seem to plateau, improve, plateau, improve.

It was only that slight "fall-away" last year once the autos became impossible (0-0 at Leeds)

[winchester_royal]

Your vindictiveness is worrying bordering on a little insane. I suggest you back off and take a look at some of your posts. You are embarassing yourself.

You want to talk about form tables, I'll happily debate their worth until the cows come home. But it seems to me you want to make this personal. It is utterly bizarre.

What is vindictive about pointing out what you actually said?

Like you said I was wrong about Long. You remember that clown?

[Ian Royal]

There's definitely a place for form statistics, they can be a very handy guide to help work out a likely outcome of an upcoming match, when you also look at the form and comparative placing of the opossing team although there are plenty of other factor like injuries, suspensions, weather and officials which influence it.

I don't think you can really take such a large number of games and call it form though. Too many variables change by too much over such a length of time and number of games. And as has been said just dropping the first six games applies Reading's need to, and failure at, reorganising after a difficult summer to clubs it doesn't relate to.

Personally I like to think in short term form of 5 games and medium term form of 10. That's basically because we use a base 10 structure for maths and those numbers "feel" right. You could argue that using 6 and 12 would make more sense as they are about as close as you can get to a quarter of the season (and half that), which seems a reasonable period for form really.

When looking at longer periods tbh I'm more inclined to look at a rolling 10 (or 12) game form. And if you look at ours we've been averaging more than 2 points per game over 10 games for about the last 4 or 5 matches. It seems pretty unlikely from the actual performances that we can keep that up much longer without something changing though.

Looking at particularly big samples gives you no idea of which direction a team is going in either, but comparing 5 and 10 game form is much better at that, as is rolling 10. 22 game form is pretty worthless in trying to apply it to how likely we are to do well in the next game IMO.

Basically, picking one method is useless if you want to take a factual and scientific approach to something like this (which is going to be flawed given the nature of the game anyway), you need to be cross referencing several different methods to make sure youget a reliable answer.

[Snowball]

Your vindictiveness is worrying bordering on a little insane. I suggest you back off and take a look at some of your posts. You are embarassing yourself.

You want to talk about form tables, I'll happily debate their worth until the cows come home. But it seems to me you want to make this personal. It is utterly bizarre.

What is vindictive about pointing out what you actually said?

Like you said I was wrong about Long. You remember that clown?

Winchester, that is "You remember that person you thought was a clown"

Had I been calling cmonurz a clown there'd be a comma in there.

like this:

You remember that[,] clown?

[Snowball]

Try scrolling back and look at what was actually said. Does a team have a measure of it's "season's form"? Of course it does. It's called the table. There is a table, whether or not you call it "form", whether or not you call it "courgette" or "Jennifer" for 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-28-19-20-21-22-23 games and so on right up to 46.

This did not begin with me arguing that this is a form table as in 5/6/8/9/12 etc.

It was
The Table since we settled Gorkss in,
The Table since we started playing Alf,
The Table since we turned the corner
The Table since the Doncaster game
The Table removing the terrible Khumalo era
The Table from when we started to get over Wembley

It's The table since Doncaster, just like you, Ian Royal, a couple of seasons ago, agreed, when McDermott took over that it wasn't reasonable to judge the IMMEDIATE results after he took over from Rodgers, becaue (a) it takes a number of games for a manager to stamp his ideas into a side (b) it takes a few games to turn morale around (c) He had then not been made permanent.

And our judgement of McDermott has always been from when he was made permanent, and doesn't include these games:

A 1-1 Bristol
H 1-1 Swansea
A 1-4 Plymouth
A 1-2 Forest
A 0-3 Sheffield Utd

Not just relegation form but the form of the club finishing 24th

(there were three cup games in there too)

McDermott then became permanent manager, and the rest is history. We have been statting him since then from his first game as permanent manager, for the reasons above.



The reason I get pissed in these threads is this is what I was saying, these were the reasons 7-8 WEEKS ago.

Nothing has changed except the Reading run becomes more and more solid
our form becomes more and more reliable, we actually still improve

and I have repeated my reasons and my criteria and said REPEATEDLY
to my detractors, that this stat will continue until the end of the season.

Yet once a week or so, someone (often cumonurz) will pop up and make the same complaints.

Scroll back to December 17th, 7 weeks ago and he was bitching THEN about it being a 16-game table


and so it continues.

Has the bitching changed anything?


Nope. All it does is turn a thread with an interesting stat into a stupid turf war

[Snowball]

A lesson in internet passive-aggressiveness.

Cumonurz says he's always polite (yeah, right) yet he started in on picking at this thread on December 17, 8 weeks and two days ago. I stated my reasons for the table since Doncaster then, yet he continues to come back and back and back doing the same thing. He started with sarcasm. All the words below are his in chronological order. Being polite includes saying "You're sensitive" four times, you're paranoid, you're snide, you are constantly sniping, you have contempt, you're rude, arrogant, aggressive, petulant and paranoid and have zero understanding, you're a pit-bull with its teeth pulled out, your bile-filled rants. You're utterly pathetic, vindictive, bordering on insane, utterly bizarre, and "I think you have had a mental breakdown."

If that is POLITE, what's impolite?

Here are his words, a sort of little prayer.


December 17th

So 16 games is now the form table? What a bizarre response, I haven't bothered replying to you for months, and your first reply is an insult. Just questioning how more than a third of a season was now a 'form table'. I won't bother again.

Don't be so sensitive. You're being very sensitive. Or is it paranoid? I'm not sure. No passive aggression, no insult, just questioning your approach. Again, stop being so sensitive, we're not just here to read your posts and nod in agreement.

How does this compare to last season, which is the point of the thread, no? Neither is realistic or particularly interesting, it's just an extrapolation of numbers over a completely different set of fixtures. Is that another unwarranted outburst? Sorry to disagree with you again, I know you're sensitive.

Someone else losing a bit of perspective here. I simply questioned the validity of extrapolating one run of games so quite why he decided to follow it up with the snide remarks again is beyond me. It wasn't a moan, it was an opinion. Seriously, have the humility to just take my opinion on the chin and move on. Your constant sniping at me is tiring. Bizarre.

I think Snowball just had a mental breakdown.

Still, after polite responses from myself and Winch, I think it's pretty evident now where Snowball sits in the grand scheme of this discussion board, simultaneously illustrating his failure to grasp what such a forum involves (it's not about trying to change your mind pal!) as well as showing the contempt he feels.

What a total asshole.

Marvellous. I'm pretty speechless, you will be pleased to hear. Equally rude, arrogant, aggressive, petulant and paranoid, you have zero understanding of what an internet discussion forum is about. People disagree with you, and you turn on them like a Pit Bull whose teeth fell out. Reading your replies is becoming as pitiful as it is startling. Your bile-filled ranting. Utterly pathetic.

Your vindictiveness is worrying bordering on a little insane. I suggest you back off and take a look at some of your posts. You are embarassing yourself. You want to talk about form tables, I'll happily debate their worth until the cows come home. But it seems to me you want to make this personal. It is utterly bizarre.

[Snowball]

I have no problem whatsoever with disagreement. I'm doing two oxf*rd philosophy degrees ATM fer oxf*rd's sake. That is all about debate.

But this thread, started by me, was comparing last season and this. When I spotted the "Since Doncaster" Stat, I made it clear, that I knew, at the end of the season, all 46 games would count, but that the "Since Doncaster" ppg was a far more representative measure of the team's quality and ppg between then and the end of the season.


NOBODY HAS TO ACCEPT THAT. Nobody has to agree with the statistical analysis I choose to make.

But when it becomes utterly clear that I have pinned my colours to the mast, that I am sticking to this stat until the end of the season (just as I did last season after McDermott lost Gylfi, and McDermott said it would take him at least X games to find a new way of playing) what is the point of coming back and back and back complaining about it?

presumably, after the Coventry game, when it's exactly have a season's worth of games someone will complain AGAIN. What for? Why raise the heat unnecessarily? What is it Stat-Envy? Trying to get the thread locked?

If you're not into these particular stats, fine, but why just moan and moan and moan forever and clutter a thread with stupid arguments?

[Snowball]

This was my explanation

December 17th, EIGHT WEEKS AGO

There is a VERY obvious reason (for a table since Doncaster). THIS IS THE RUN.

It was after we sorted things out, after the horrible run of five defeats.

Is that too difficult for you to understand?

It happens to be 16 games.
Next it will be 17 games.
And then it will be 18 games.


===============================

And now it's 22 Games, soon it will be 23 games

But from now on, as well as "my table" (Since Donny) I'll post a 12-Game current form table.

[Bandini]