Sportsound Watch

[Raidernation]

It’s not that the ugly sisters “have got to” win every game, it’s that these “pundits” WANT them to win every game!

[Bairnardo]

It’s not that the ugly sisters “have got to” win every game, it’s that these “pundits” WANT them to win every game!

Wasnt it Neil McCann who recently did a season prediction thing and had each of the cheeks winning every game except the "Old Firm"* games?



*Rangers died

[Junior_Arab]

There seemed to be a checklist of Old Firm players they were contractually obliged to mention on the podcasts over the summer. Several times ex-Celtic players were asked, apropos of nothing, “What was it like to play alongside Paul McStay?” whilst ex-Rangers players were generally asked the same thing about Barry Ferguson / Paul Gascogne. The few players they spoke to who hadn’t played for either cheek were asked what it was like to play against those players. I’m sure one question was simply “So, what made Barry Ferguson SO good?” 

[TheScarf]

57 minutes ago, Bairnardo said:

Wasnt it Neil McCann who recently did a season prediction thing and had each of the cheeks winning every game except the "Old Firm"* games?



*Rangers died

Think of was Billy Dodds. They both won 34 out of 38 and the 4 derbies were draws.

[Szamo's_Ammo]

1 minute ago, TheScarf said:

Think of was Billy Dodds. They both won 34 out of 38 and the 4 derbies were draws.

Just shows he's unbiased where it matters in Scottish football. 

[Shandon Par]

5 hours ago, kingjoey said:

Paul Lambert joined an endless list of Celtic and Rangers old players last night by saying that players sometimes crumble under the pressure of playing for a club that has “got to win every game”. If they’ve “got” to win every game, what happens when they don’t?Does the Earth explode? No problem with them saying that these teams are expected to win most games, or that the players have got to try their best to win every game, but obviously the two of them don’t have to win every game, because they actually don’t.

Had to switch off at that point. Still biter at that cheating diving c**t for robbing us one night in a tight game at East End when playing for Celtic courtesy of one of the worst dives you'll ever see. Boring git too. Why get someone on the radio who has no personality and has nothing to say? Oh yes, because he once played for one of the big Glasgow teams. 

[resk]

There seemed to be a checklist of Old Firm players they were contractually obliged to mention on the podcasts over the summer. Several times ex-Celtic players were asked, apropos of nothing, “What was it like to play alongside Paul McStay?” whilst ex-Rangers players were generally asked the same thing about Barry Ferguson / Paul Gascogne. The few players they spoke to who hadn’t played for either cheek were asked what it was like to play against those players. I’m sure one question was simply “So, what made Barry Ferguson SO good?” 

They were absolutely fuming at John Collins for omitting McStay from his 11 Greatest Teammates. Collins also had to quickly summarise the career of one man he did pick in centre midfield, because they hadn't really heard of him - Enzo Scifo.

[Archie McSquackle]

I remember that as painful listening. He listed a star-studded line-up but they were adamant he should have had a few more Celtic players in there.

[DiegoDiego]

Just shows he's unbiased where it matters in Scottish football. 

I don't see the crime. On a game by game basis I'd probably predict Celtic to win every match and so would the bookies.

Celtic were 1.22 to beat Motherwell last Sunday and rightly so, there's no point in saying "there are problems in the Celtic dressing room and Ferencvaros showed their weaknesses. I think Motherwell will nick a point." You should say "Celtic spend an order of magnitude more on wages, are the best team in the league and therefore I expect them to win."

[Bairnardo]

I don't see the crime. On a game by game basis I'd probably predict Celtic to win every match and so would the bookies.

Celtic were 1.22 to beat Motherwell last Sunday and rightly so, there's no point in saying "there are problems in the Celtic dressing room and Ferencvaros showed their weaknesses. I think Motherwell will nick a point." You should say "Celtic spend an order of magnitude more on wages, are the best team in the league and therefore I expect them to win."

Well it's never been close to happening though has it? What's the closest either cheek has been to maximum points in a season? On a game by game basis you are correct, but everyone in football knows it doesnt work like that over a season so common sense would tell you in your prediction model to pick out 3 or 4 tricky away ties, or look to when fixture loading may be a factor and at least throw in a few draws. Otherwise, your prediction flies in the face of the reality of every season there has ever been

[G51]

41 minutes ago, DiegoDiego said:

I don't see the crime. On a game by game basis I'd probably predict Celtic to win every match and so would the bookies.

Celtic were 1.22 to beat Motherwell last Sunday and rightly so, there's no point in saying "there are problems in the Celtic dressing room and Ferencvaros showed their weaknesses. I think Motherwell will nick a point." You should say "Celtic spend an order of magnitude more on wages, are the best team in the league and therefore I expect them to win."

See if a team was 90% favourites to win every single match, the odds of them actually achieving that over a 38 game season are less than 2%.

Odds of 1.22 of course only imply a winning percentage of 82%. Extrapolated over the course of a season, the chances of that occurring are less than 0.001%.

[Aim Here]

16 minutes ago, Bairnardo said:

48 minutes ago, DiegoDiego said:

I don't see the crime. On a game by game basis I'd probably predict Celtic to win every match and so would the bookies.

Celtic were 1.22 to beat Motherwell last Sunday and rightly so, there's no point in saying "there are problems in the Celtic dressing room and Ferencvaros showed their weaknesses. I think Motherwell will nick a point." You should say "Celtic spend an order of magnitude more on wages, are the best team in the league and therefore I expect them to win."

Well it's never been close to happening though has it? What's the closest either cheek has been to maximum points in a season? On a game by game basis you are correct, but everyone in football knows it doesnt work like that over a season so common sense would tell you in your prediction model to pick out 3 or 4 tricky away ties, or look to when fixture loading may be a factor and at least throw in a few draws. Otherwise, your prediction flies in the face of the reality of every season there has ever been

Celtic hit 106 out of 114 in the 2016-17 season, with 34 wins and 4 draws, and went for over a year without losing a league game. That's pretty much 'expect to win every game' territory. I don't know if there's any more extreme case.

[DiegoDiego]

Well it's never been close to happening though has it? What's the closest either cheek has been to maximum points in a season? On a game by game basis you are correct, but everyone in football knows it doesnt work like that over a season so common sense would tell you in your prediction model to pick out 3 or 4 tricky away ties, or look to when fixture loading may be a factor and at least throw in a few draws. Otherwise, your prediction flies in the face of the reality of every season there has ever been

You're not aiming for 100% accuracy though. Your chances of predicting which games they'll slip up on are pretty slim and you'd probably end up compounding your error.

In a simple prediction game there are no odds so why would you go against the overwhelming favourite? I realise that we're taking about a TV segment designed to entertain and expose pundit idiotry but if you were taking it seriously you'd just go with the bookies on everything.

[Arch Stanton]

20 minutes ago, Bairnardo said:

52 minutes ago, DiegoDiego said:

I don't see the crime. On a game by game basis I'd probably predict Celtic to win every match and so would the bookies.

Celtic were 1.22 to beat Motherwell last Sunday and rightly so, there's no point in saying "there are problems in the Celtic dressing room and Ferencvaros showed their weaknesses. I think Motherwell will nick a point." You should say "Celtic spend an order of magnitude more on wages, are the best team in the league and therefore I expect them to win."

What's the closest either cheek has been to maximum points in a season?

In 1898-99 Rangers (1872) won all 18 league games. There were 10 teams in the league playing each other home and away.

[Bairnardo]

You're not aiming for 100% accuracy though. Your chances of predicting which games they'll slip up on are pretty slim and you'd probably end up compounding your error.

In a simple prediction game there are no odds so why would you go against the overwhelming favourite? I realise that we're taking about a TV segment designed to entertain and expose pundit idiotry but if you were taking it seriously you'd just go with the bookies on everything.

Aye, but they arent stupid enough to think that despite the probability of them winning each game being high, that they will win every game, so in the spirit of trying to pick a realistic points total, just do as I said and pick out a couple of away draws or dare I even say it.... A loss....

We arent talking about staking the mortgage on it here, we are talking about someone asked to have a wee bit of fun on a predictor and it appears genuinely thinking that these two teams will win all of their games except when they meet.

[craigkillie]

22 minutes ago, G51 said:

See if a team was 90% favourites to win every single match, the odds of them actually achieving that over a 38 game season are less than 2%.

Odds of 1.22 of course only imply a winning percentage of 82%. Extrapolated over the course of a season, the chances of that occurring are less than 0.001%.

But you'd still pick the 82% over the 18% on each individual instance.

It would be like if I had a die and challenged you to a game of "Six or not six", where you have to guess whether I am going to roll a six or not. If we played 38 rounds of that game, and your aim was to maximise your number of correct answers, your best strategy would be to pick "Not six" every single time, to obtain roughly a 5/6 success rate. It wouldn't make sense to pick "six" because on any given instance you're likely to get it wrong.

However, if instead you had a slightly different aim of guessing *how many* sixes (or "not sixes") I would roll across the 38 rounds, you would clearly calculate that by doing 38*1/6 and tell me that you expect roughly 6 sixes and 32 not sixes. In the same way, if you asked Dodds or whoever to predict how many points each club would get in total, they'd probably end up picking something in the 90-odd range and being fairly close.

When these guys are predicting results on an individual basis, they're not interested in compiling a final table of their predictions, that's not the point of the thing.

Edited September 3, 2020 by craigkillie

[G51]

4 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

But you'd still pick the 82% over the 18% on each individual instance.

It would be like if I had a die and challenged you to a game of "Six or not six", where you have to guess whether I am going to roll a six or not. If we played 38 rounds of that game, and your aim was to maximise your number of correct answers, your best strategy would be to pick "Not six" every single time, to obtain roughly a 5/6 success rate. It wouldn't make sense to pick "six" because on any given instance you're likely to get it wrong.

However, if instead you had a slightly different aim of guessing *how many* sixes (or "not sixes") I would roll across the 38 rounds, you would clearly calculate that by doing 38*1/6 and tell me that you expect roughly 6 sixes and 32 not sixes. In the same way, if you asked Dodds or whoever to predict how many points each club would get in total, they'd probably end up picking something in the 90-odd range and being fairly close.

When these guys are predicting results on an individual basis, they're not interested in compiling a final table of their predictions, that's not the point of the thing.

Absolutely, I just thought it was interesting to show just how hard an achievement it would be.

[Junior_Arab]

On 02/09/2020 at 10:16, kingjoey said:

Paul Lambert joined an endless list of Celtic and Rangers old players last night by saying that players sometimes crumble under the pressure of playing for a club that has “got to win every game”. If they’ve “got” to win every game, what happens when they don’t?Does the Earth explode? No problem with them saying that these teams are expected to win most games, or that the players have got to try their best to win every game, but obviously the two of them don’t have to win every game, because they actually don’t.

So have we established what happens to this fabled “must win every game” mindset when Old Firm players turn out for Scotland? It’s almost as if this way of thinking doesn’t seem to count for much when you’re playing on something approaching a level playing field. 

Edited September 4, 2020 by Junior_Arab

[paranoid android]

Alarming amounts of Craig Levein on Sportsound these days - what's going on there,. then? 

[No1 Jimmy]

5 hours ago, paranoid android said:

Alarming amounts of Craig Levein on Sportsound these days - what's going on there,. then? 

I find The Levein, a very draining presence. He manages to suck the life out of most things e.g. Scotland, Hearts, and now the producers of Sportsound, are allowing him to bring his dark cloud onto the radio.