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oht

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  1. “Maybe”. I did some digging on post-war upsets a year ago and posted here. Aberdeen is the first top flight team to lose to non-league since 66/67 - my beloved Ayr. Only happened four times and never since creation of Premier Division until now - first screenshot below. The highest “gap” to non-league was Dundee in 58/59 who finished fourth but lost to Fraserburgh. Second screenshot below is of biggest non-league upsets by number of positions between the defeated and non-league. Up to end of last year, the biggest measurable post-war shock was 2013/14 and 2nd place Motherwell losing to fourth bottom Div 2 Albion Rovers, a gap of 37 league spots. Places are where teams finished, not position at time of match.
  2. I’ve been learning some new IT skills ahead of looking for new work, so I mashed together data on cup results and league tables going back to WWII, to look at 'giant-killing' in the Scottish Cup and League Cup. Results below – long post, but hopefully of interest to any stattos out there. League Cup group games are excluded as not really ‘giant-killing’ in terms of knocking a team out. League table data is from SPFL website, results data is from soccerbase, with lots of supplementing of shite/missing data with Wikipedia (still some oddities emerging but think it’s pretty good data at this stage). Award for most 'giant-kills' against top division teams goes to the mighty, mighty Ayr. Interestingly, the data spans over 80 years but half of Ayr’s 20 scalps came in just a six year spell from 1996 to 2002. Top 10 hall of fame: To give the diddiest of diddy teams a shout, the next chart is for knocking out anyone from a higher league, not just the top division. This should bring in some teams that have plied their trade in League 1 and League 2. A lot of overlap with the previous chart, but Raith leap-frogs Ayr to be king of the diddiest diddies and the likes of Queen’s Park, Alloa and Stirling make an appearance. All very good, but it’s not really reflecting how many shots at knocking out higher league opposition that each team has had. The next couple of charts compare how much the actual win count for a team exceeds what would be expected (expected is based on the probability of beating a higher league team – see table at the end). Best ten and worst ten shown – you want your team to be to the left of this chart. Hibs and Rangers doing well from their forays into the lower leagues but Airdrie out-performing expectations the most. Morton carries away the cap-doffing ‘yes m’lud’ trophy for rolling over. Same again in the next chart, but for beating anyone from a higher division. Rangers, again, can do one and credit goes to Raith. ICT and one of its predecessors both doing well. Interestingly, some of the most famed giant-killers don’t fare so well here – Berwick, Stenhousemuir and Albion Rovers didn’t fare well on this scoring. Flipping it all on its head – who in the top division has been dumped the most. Here you go: And getting pumped by anyone from a lower league: That’ll do with the charts for now. Next up – biggest wins in terms of gaps in league position (at the end of season). I’ve split this into league teams and non-league teams as I don’t have league positions for non-league. League first: Competition Season Round Home Score Away LeagueDiff Scottish Cup 2013/14 Fourth Round Albion Rovers 1 - 0 Motherwell 37 League Cup 2006/07 Second Round Queen's Park p 0 - 0 Aberdeen 32 League Cup 2012/13 Third Round Rangers 2 - 0 Motherwell 31 League Cup 1990/91 Third Round Dunfermline 1 - 2 Queen of the South 28 Scottish Cup 2015/16 Fourth Round Annan Athletic 4 - 1 Hamilton 27 Scottish Cup 1974/75 Third Round Ayr United 1 - 2 Queen's Park 27 Albion’s win spanned almost the entire length of the divisions, with Motherwell finishing 2nd and Albion finishing 7th out of 10. Picking off a few surprising omissions from the top 5: Berwick’s win over Rangers was a league difference of 26 places so just below this table cut-off, Stenhousemuir’s win over Aberdeen was only 15 places difference and Clyde had 16 places between them and Celtic. Not too surprisingly, two-leggers don’t feature high up (first is Forfar beating Ayr in 1977 which was way down at joint 25th for 21 league places difference). I originally had Cowdenbeath beating Hearts over two legs in 1983 in the above - the soccerbase and Wiki results both make it look Cowdenbeath won 2-1 on aggregate but I can see references to Hearts winning on penalties and definitely Hearts went to next round – dunno, but googling told me that that was the fixture that got Craig Levein spotted so now you know. Same for non-league (reflects how high the team up that was dumped rather than difference in their actual league positions): Competition Season Round Home Score Away Away_Division LeagueDiff Scottish Cup 1958/59 First Round Fraserburgh 1 - 0 Dundee First Division / Division A (1946-75) 33 Scottish Cup 2020/21 Second Round Brora Rangers 2 - 1 Hearts Championship/Division 1 (1994- ) 29 Scottish Cup 2018/19 Fourth Round Auchinleck 1 - 0 Ayr United Championship/Division 1 (1994- ) 26 Scottish Cup 1989/90 Third Round Replay Inverness Cal p 1 - 1 Airdrie Division 1 (1975-94) 26 Scottish Cup 1953/54 Third Round Berwick Rangers 3 - 0 Dundee First Division / Division A (1946-75) 25 No non-league wins over top division since they restructured the divisions in 1975. Four wins for non-league teams over top division opponents before that, all with the non-league team at home. Two of those are shown above, and the other two were Elgin over Ayr in 1967 and Montrose over QoS in 1948. Some of the team names like Montrose and Berwick don’t look like non-league – I think that the old Division C prior to 1975 was considered non-league so that’s how I’ve treated it, league table data isn’t listed on the SPFL website at least. Hall of fame for wins over the Gruesome Twosome below. 15 wins, just 4 of them over Rangers. It’s a lot to list, but hey, FTOF. Berwick’s win in 1967 was the biggest upset based on league positions, but fair play to Morton for being shortly behind them in more recent times. Competition Season Round Home Score Away LeagueDiff Scottish Cup 2015/16 Semi Finals Rangers p 2 - 2 Celtic 12 League Cup 2013/14 Third Round Celtic 0 - 1 Morton 21 League Cup 2011/12 Third Round Falkirk 3 - 2 Rangers 13 Scottish Cup 2009/10 Semi Finals Celtic 0 - 2 Ross County 15 League Cup 2006/07 Quarter Finals Rangers 0 - 2 St. Johnstone 12 Scottish Cup 2005/06 Third Round Clyde 2 - 1 Celtic 16 Scottish Cup 2002/03 Fifth Round Inverness Caledonian Thistle 1 - 0 Celtic 14 Scottish Cup 1999/00 Third Round Celtic 1 - 3 Inverness Caledonian Thistle 14 Scottish Cup 1996/97 Semi Finals Replay Celtic 0 - 1 Falkirk 13 League Cup 1994/95 Final Raith Rovers p 2 - 2 Celtic 7 Scottish Cup 1977/78 Fourth Round Replay Kilmarnock 1 - 0 Celtic 11 Scottish Cup 1966/67 First Round Berwick Rangers 1 - 0 Rangers 26 League Cup 1952/53 Semi Finals Kilmarnock 1 - 0 Rangers 19 Scottish Cup 1948/49 First Round Dundee United 4 - 3 Celtic 18 Scottish Cup 1946/47 First Round Dundee 2 - 1 Celtic 10 Still here? Here’s a chart to scratch your head over – not even sure if it’ll be legible. It’s got teams mapped by attempts and wins against top division teams, but also with an arrow from their expected number of wins to their actual – upward pointing arrow is good, downward is bad. I chopped off anyone with less than 10 attempts so most of the non-leaguers drop off here. Ayr’s success being above average, Morton’s boot-licking all-apparent. Last up, what are the historic chances of an upset? This table is probably a bit confusing, but it shows the percentage of times a lower league team turfed out a higher league team since the leagues re-structured in 1994 (I can do earlier but the table gets bigger). It’s split by whether the team was home or away. Games that went to replay excluded. Home_Division Premiership/Premier Division Championship/Division 1 League 1/Division 2 League 2/Division 3 Non-league Premiership/Premier Division NA 19% 8% 4% 0% Championship/Division 1 33% NA 23% 13% 4% League 1/Division 2 10% 28% NA 24% 12% League 2/Division 3 15% 21% 34% NA 22% Non-league 0% 15% 18% 31% NA So the way to read this is the division of the home team is on the left, and away on the right e.g. if Championship team was at home against Premiership team, they went through on about 33% of occasions. So everything underneath the NA is lower league team being at home, and above the NA is lower league team being away. If you follow the diagonal from 33% down to 31%, it’s showing that chances of a team beating another from one division up while at home is about 30% i.e. close to 2/1 odds. The diagonal from 19% down to 22% is saying that when that same match has the lower league team away from home, it drops to about 20% i.e. close to 4/1 odds. As you move out one diagonal further from the NA, that’s the results vs two divisions above and so on. It looks pretty sensible, though there’s a strange outcome that League 2 has a higher success rate at home versus Premiership than League 1 does – maybe League 2 teams being underestimated by Premier teams? They have 7 wins in 48 attempts versus 12 wins for League 1 in 115 attempts, so it’s not like it’s just one or two freak results chucking it around. Think that’s as much as I can think of doing with all of this so I’m off to find something more useful to do. Any questions, let me know and I might be able to answer. If anyone wants to play with the tidied data themselves, I’ll upload it.
  3. Eugene, I think as we only have ArabianKnights version of events, he's coming across as more credible in his claims of you committing unspeakable acts to a lady.
  4. Eugene, some accusations being thrown around here by those that claim to know you. Care to comment on the 'haterz'?
  5. The number of shares to likes is telling...
  6. I usually do when telling stories involving her on Scottish football internet forums.
  7. Me: What tennis player has the dirtiest house? Her: What? How do people know? Me: It's a joke honey. Her: Oh. It isn't very funny. Me: I haven't told you the punchline yet. Her: Oh. Teacher...
  8. Read a few over Xmas. Professor of Truth by James Robertson. Good read, based on a fictional version of Lockerbie and Jim Swire. I would rate Robertson's other books higher (particularly 'The Land Lay Still') but good if you like his books. Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes. A book on Australia's convict history with some first hand accounts. Fascinating stuff as I'm living here and recognise the place names; most Aussies who like their books know of this one. Bonfire of Vanities by Tom Woolfe. Set in 80s NY its kind of like for NY what Dickens was to 1800s London. A tale that takes you from the greed and one upmanship of Wall St and the elitist classes to the dregs of the Bronx and the racial tensions within. Really enjoyed it. Fergie's autobiography (Xmas present). I wouldn't have bought it but it's not bad! I mean, it is terribly written with lots of made up quoted conversations he couldn't possibly remember (or maybe that's how they are meant to be written) but surprisingly addictive. Comes across as slightly more likeable in this no less. Focuses on the 2000s after his return to the game so I might read the earlier one as I reckon I'd be more interested in his earlier life and the Man U of the 90s. Bit of everything above. I'd recommend BoV first and then Fergie if you like autobiographies.
  9. Now that the thread is dead, you should post again on it and ask us for an update. You only did that the four times before.
  10. My recollection is he signed Summer of '12 and he'd be eligible just before the World Cup. When I say just before, I mean a week or something.
  11. He's an arse and should have achieved more with the money he had, but you've got to be out of your mind to suggest the only manager to get us to a cup final in our history (and two other semis) could be our worst manager ever.
  12. I don't think the problem is the ball once it's on the wing, it's getting it out there. For the one time in ten that we don't opt for Denton throwing himself against brick walls, the ball out of the ruck/scrum seems to go about 20 yards backwards and you're lucky to get the ball back to the gainline by the time contact is made. I'm assuming it's how the 10s are being told to play but didn't seem particularly fruitful.
  13. Not sure what's more cringey, Brand and his populist "oi mate in the glasses, yeah you're right you are" patter or Boris and his wannabe populist "yur yur Russell has a point". I despair.
  14. Still in it but very messy.
  15. Granted, but as i said, 4 wins out of 4 against our 6N winner that makes up the bulk of the team doesnt strike me as an outside bet.
  16. I'll be supporting the Lions but I have to confess, I've stuck a tenner against them winning the Test series. The odds just seem daft - Lions are odds-on yet the bulk of the squad, including the coach, come from the Welsh set-up who have a 0-4 record against the wallabies in the last 12 months (ok, three of them were close but still) and were whitewashed in the AIs. Unless you think that the additional I/E/S players plug gaping holes or add a huge amount to what Wales have, then I don't get the confidence people seem to have?
  17. I know we're not meant to get tribalistic and we're all one team etc., but.... noticed that all three Scots are to start for the Lions against the Baa Baas (no Jim Hamilton this time) on Saturday. I'm pleased they're all getting capped but not sure what this means for the Test matches. Can't see Hogg displacing Halfpenny but eager to see what he can do when he has some international quality centres to work with. Gray will need to play well to show he's match fit.
  18. Ok, my ex thought Tunisia was a town in Spain but the above is just ridiculous.
  19. ... and Gatland's apparent fondness for the Saracens.
  20. Her failure to give a f**k for those at the bottom is and was completely unforgiveable. However, after being able to draw such vitriolic responses from amoral cuntards like Gorgeous George and Gerry Adams, i'm thinking she must have got at least two things right.
  21. Posted a while back about trying to get half decent at cycling. Achieved my goal today - went from Leith to S Queensferry and back. 23 miles I think and did it in about 2 hrs to 2hrs 15 (mapmyride died on way back) on a 14 speed hybrid. Is that average, mediocre or awful? Looking at sticking some panniers on and subbing my hillwalking weekends for cycling.
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