Relegation Royal Rumble

[Bairnardo]

You don’t need to worry about that

I hope not, but likely not for the same reasons as you are getting at, you b*****d

[Guest]

56 minutes ago, SpoonTon said:

Despite still having a midweek game, Ayr's schedule is pretty decent for them. 3 home games and a trip to Glasgow. They might want to rest some players for the Tuesday Thistle match, but they will also want to get some momentum going (and that will be important for them going into the playoffs). I expect them to be competitive against Thistle - they might rest a few against Alloa though. 

In fairness, we have a 1st team squad of about 19 players and with the exception of Ross Doohan, Liam Smith &  the Pre injury Lawrence Shankland it's all much of a muchness.

I really don't think we're terribly weakened by playing Nicky Cadden, Calvin Miller, Aaron Muirhead, Ross Docherty and Craig Moore in the starting 11 and some would even argue that they should be starters.

It is really too close to call with a few 6 pointers remaining but as said previously both Morton and Queens have hit a really bad run at the worst possible time and the loss of Dobbie is obviously massive.

From a purely selfish perspective I'd like to see Alloa stay up as they're part time and did us a great favour last year and I'd also like to see Partick stay up as I love my trips to Firhill and they also bring a big support to Ayr, but I suppose anything could happen over the last few games.

What nobody can dispute is that this has been an excellent league this season for excitement, ok, it might not have been great for quality but it's holding everyone's interest right up until the end and that's all you can really ask...............

 

[ayrunitedfw]

57 minutes ago, 19QOS19 said:

Any time I read any of your posts you appear to be foaming at the mouth. Pretty sure you were the Ayr fan saying your season (best in decades) was turning to shit after a couple of draws

FWIW, a lot of fans enjoy a trip to Dumfries as it's a good away day. That may be something you appreciate when you're old enough to drink.

Think it’s clearly you that’s foaming at the mouth with that tear stained reply m9. 

[Gaz FFC]

18 hours ago, NEFarab said:

Love them or loathe them, has to be said the playoffs have added loads more excitement to the league.

Pretty much every club has something to play for with 3/4 games to go. 

Usually you’d have a hand full of clubs with nothing on offer for them. 

Agree with the principle of the post but who are these fans who loathe the play-offs?

 

[Monkey Tennis]

4 hours ago, Back Post Misses said:

One or two of the bottom will implode in the last 3/4 games pickup up either nothing or one draw. For me that means anyone who can win at least one of these games and draw the other will be safe. No one will need to win the lot to survive

Yes, I think that's about right.  

Now Alloa have done so well, I don't think any individual club is needing a blistering finish to get safe.  Any with dismal finishes will however be gone.  I'm finding it hard to believe that such a description won't fit us.

[Fuctifano]

Everything will probably be clearer by this time next week when 2 of the remaining 3 head to heads have been played, but since it's Monday... Bonus snip shows how the amount of times teams were projected to finish bottom has changed since I first started tracking this in February. Not pleasant for QoS fans... 

[Fuctifano]

Also, I ran a version where Dunfermline lost their last 3 games and they ended up in the playoffs 1.6% of the time and never bottom. So while it's still of course mathematically possible, the results needed are so specific. 

[TheScarf]

Some turnaround for QOS there.  Going from 0% likely to go down to 28%.  Same Alloa the other way.

[Distant Doonhamer]

[Distant Doonhamer]

5 minutes ago, TheScarf said:

Some turnaround for QOS there.  Going from 0% likely to go down to 28%.  Same Alloa the other way.

Yep it`s utterly pathetic. 

5 points from the last 36 and 3 of those from a visit to Tannadice. It's just so us. 

[Alert Mongoose]

I originally voted Falkirk for 10th and see no reason to revise that selection. 

Edited April 15, 2019 by Alert Mongoose

[Poet of the Macabre]

What was the scenario that saw a side finish 9th with 42 points?

That would be very unlucky.

[vikingTON]

If all the teams with nothing to play were to pathetically down tools like Dunfermline did at the weekend then it could still require more than 42 points tbh. 

Edited April 15, 2019 by vikingTON

[Fuctifano]

Aye, I’ll put this in spoilers as it might be coma-inducing…
 

Spoiler

 

It’s a spreadsheet based off clubelo.com. Every team has a rating -for the Premiership it was much easier as I could lift the ratings from that site- but for this league I had to assign every team a starting rating and input the results from the start of the season to date, which was the only* real “donkey work” this year as all the formulae are inbuilt now as I’ve been doing this for the last 5 seasons.

So for each game based on the difference in rating of each team there’s a win % generated, easier to give an example. 

For tomorrow I have Morton (rating 1390**) vs ICT (1496) as H 25% D 31% A 44%. Bet 365 have it as H 27% D 29% A 44% when you strip out the bookies over-round so it’s not a million miles out on this particular game, but it can be on others as it doesn’t take into account injuries, morale, motivation etc.  

So then it generates a random value between 1 and 100 and based on how that relates to the H/D/A % above assigns the game as a 1-0 win or a 1-1 draw. The one bit it’s (or I am) lacking is the ability to factor in multi goal wins to allow for big GD swings. The ratings of the teams then update ahead of their next game. To keep using Morton as an example if they win they’ll move to 1402, a loss will have them at 1382 and a draw puts them at 1392 so if a team goes on a good run they’ve got a better chance of maintaining it in the simulated season if their rating moves, or vice versa.

Every game for the remainder of the season is therefore simulated like this and a table generated. In the unlikely event of teams ending tied on points, GD and GS it tie breaks in alphabetical order which obviously isn’t ideal but it’s easy.

It also outputs the table with the teams and points totals like (to give two random examples)

ROS    UTD    AYR    ICT    DUF    MOR    ALL    QOS    FAL    PTH
68    61    57    57    45    43    42     39     39     37
ROS    UTD    ICT    AYR    DUF    ALL    PTH    FAL    MOR    QOS
72    64    57    53    43    42    41     40     38     36

Obviously for 1000 seasons via this is done a macro rather than manually copying and pasting, originally did 10,000 but that took about 20 minutes, 1000 sims takes about 2 minutes and it’s not going to be that far away.
I can then use the 1000 simulated seasons to show how many times a certain points total got 8th, or how many times Ayr are likely to finish 2nd etc, and then overwrite it with the real results as the season goes along to provide an ongoing picture of (for example) how unlikely it was that QoS have found themselves where they are compared to 2 months ago.

* actually postponements are a bit of a pain as I need to move the order of fixtures around.

**The ratings for this obviously exist in a bubble as I’ve manually input them, whereas clubelo.com tries to compare across leagues. I’m not suggesting ICT are top half of the English 2nd tier standard

 

Edit - formatting hasn't come across well but you can see an example below 
 

Edited April 15, 2019 by Fuctifano

[Fuctifano]

7 minutes ago, Poet of the Macabre said:

What was the scenario that saw a side finish 9th with 42 points?

That would be very unlucky.

It doesn't hold individual results but you might be able to work them out from the final table 

 

[Marshmallo]

14 minutes ago, virginton said:

If all the teams with nothing to play were to pathetically down tools like Dunfermline did at the weekend then it could still require more than 42 points tbh. 

You're terrified?

[Stellaboz]

You're terrified?

@throbber

[Poet of the Macabre]

23 minutes ago, virginton said:

If all the teams with nothing to play were to pathetically down tools like Dunfermline did at the weekend then it could still require more than 42 points tbh. 

It would reflect better on the players if they weren't trying tbh. We're just pish.

[NEFarab]

23 minutes ago, Fuctifano said:

It doesn't hold individual results but you might be able to work them out from the final table 

 

If Ross county only get one more point and we still don’t catch them I will be sad for a very long time. 

[Poet of the Macabre]

24 minutes ago, Fuctifano said:

It doesn't hold individual results but you might be able to work them out from the final table 

 

Queens win at County, we win at Caley and Falkirk pick up 10 points from their last 4 games?

I'll mark that one down as unlikely 

Amazing that 42 points could see a side heading into a play-off though.