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On 23/02/2021 at 21:06, johnnydun said:

Old Firm in Premiership win shocker.

Yeah, this.

Rangers have spent £30m+ on transfer fees, and taken 3 years, to overtake a side managed by Neil Lennon.

It's hardly some inspiring rags to riches story.

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21 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Yeah, this.

Rangers have spent £30m+ on transfer fees, and taken 3 years, to overtake a side managed by Neil Lennon.

It's hardly some inspiring rags to riches story.

Yep. The 2nd richest in the country goes from the 4th tier to the 1st tier champions in 10 years. 
 

Edit - It’s the equivalent of using a Champ Man editor and putting Man United in the Conference with the same players and giving them £500million to spend.

Edited by TheScarf
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Just now, TheScarf said:

Yep. The 2nd richest country goes from the 4th tier to the 1st tier champions in 10 years. 
 

It’s the equivalent of using a Champ Man editor and putting Man United in the Conference with the same players and giving them £500million to spend.

It's wild.

Understand Rangers fans are giddy and all that, but this ceaseless desire to get every single person alive to tell them how absolutely brilliant and incredible they've been this season is weird.

They're winning the league for a reason and all that, but they start every season with a 50% chance of doing so, and their only competitors self imploded halfway through. They still managed to f**k up the easiest treble to win in World football aswell.

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3 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

It's wild.

Understand Rangers fans are giddy and all that, but this ceaseless desire to get every single person alive to tell them how absolutely brilliant and incredible they've been this season is weird.

They're winning the league for a reason and all that, but they start every season with a 50% chance of doing so, and their only competitors self imploded halfway through. They still managed to f**k up the easiest treble to win in World football aswell.

With all due respect, it wasn't a 50-50 shot. If we accept that player wages have the highest correlation to league placing, then at best this season was 67-33 in Celtic's favour.

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2 minutes ago, G51 said:

With all due respect, it wasn't a 50-50 shot. If we accept that player wages have the highest correlation to league placing, then at best this season was 67-33 in Celtic's favour.

You can factor it whatever way you want, but Celtic/Rangers should both comfortably be winning enough games that the head to heads should decide the title, and it was clear a year ago Beale had sussed out Lennon.

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3 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

You can factor it whatever way you want, but Celtic/Rangers should both comfortably be winning enough games that the head to heads should decide the title, and it was clear a year ago Beale had sussed out Lennon.

That's not how league championships work.

Teams with the higher wage bills can buy better players. Better players create more opportunities and limit the oppositions. The more opportunities you create and the less opportunities the opposition have, the less chance you have of randomness impacting the result of the football match. The less chance you have of randomness impacting the result, the less points you will drop, and the higher your chances of winning the championship.

This is literally the reason why xG is used to analyse football teams.

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Just now, G51 said:

That's not how league championships work.

Teams with the higher wage bills can buy better players.

Yes, and Rangers/Celtic are so far ahead of the other 10 they should be comfortably winning the vast majority of games against these sides. So the 4 head to head games become vital.

Celtic having moron manager + shit recruitment + losing head to heads = comfortable Rangers title if they simply remain competent.

Or if it makes you happier I can claim this is one of the most incredible title wins in the history of football and Rangers should go into the history books for overcoming such massive odds.

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11 minutes ago, G51 said:

That's not how league championships work.

Teams with the higher wage bills can buy better players. Better players create more opportunities and limit the oppositions. The more opportunities you create and the less opportunities the opposition have, the less chance you have of randomness impacting the result of the football match. The less chance you have of randomness impacting the result, the less points you will drop, and the higher your chances of winning the championship.

This is literally the reason why xG is used to analyse football teams.

Two other aspects of 'budget' have to be considered.  1. Buying more players and 2. Paying for coaching/backroom staff.

What we've done successfully this season (though it has taken us a couple of years) 1. Having a squad that is interchangeable - apart from Goldson and Tavernier and 2. Having a situation wherein our backroom staff have backroom staff.  This, of course, helps with point (1) as we have the luxury of coaching bandwidth which most other teams don't.

Obv. Celtic pay much higher wages than we do but I'd be interested to compare our coaching budget vs theirs.  I'd reckon ours is much higher.

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15 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Yes, and Rangers/Celtic are so far ahead of the other 10 they should be comfortably winning the vast majority of games against these sides. So the 4 head to head games become vital.

Celtic having moron manager + shit recruitment + losing head to heads = comfortable Rangers title if they simply remain competent.

Or if it makes you happier I can claim this is one of the most incredible title wins in the history of football and Rangers should go into the history books for overcoming such massive odds.

Again, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of how league championships work.

If Team A can buy better players than Team B, then it will generally create more opportunities and limit the opposition more. If both Team A and Team B then go into a league and both play Team C, a significantly weaker team, then Team A is going to have a higher winning percentage against Team C than Team B.

Say Team A has a win probability of 85% against Team C, with a draw probability of 12% and a loss probability of 3%. Team B has a win probability of 80%, with a draw probability of 15% and a loss probability of 5%.

Both teams should win those matches against Team C convincingly. But if you play Team C 34 times in a season, then Team A's distribution of outcomes is significantly better than Team B's. So much so, that the 4 games between them have surprisingly little impact on the destination of the league title. Neither Team A or Team B are going to win all 34 games against Team C, the odds of that are exceptionally small.

What decides league championships is primarily finance, and then smaller factors like luck, tactics, injuries etc. The more money you have, the higher your floor and your ceiling. Smaller factors then dictate which you finish closer to. This season, Celtic finished closer to their floor, and Rangers are on course to come very close to their ceiling.

I honestly don't care what you say about the title win, I'm just pointing out that this league was never a 50-50 shot at the start of the season and thinking about it for longer than two seconds would tell you that.

 

Edited by G51
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5 minutes ago, The_Kincardine said:

Two other aspects of 'budget' have to be considered.  1. Buying more players and 2. Paying for coaching/backroom staff.

What we've done successfully this season (though it has taken us a couple of years) 1. Having a squad that is interchangeable - apart from Goldson and Tavernier and 2. Having a situation wherein our backroom staff have backroom staff.  This, of course, helps with point (1) as we have the luxury of coaching bandwidth which most other teams don't.

Obv. Celtic pay much higher wages than we do but I'd be interested to compare our coaching budget vs theirs.  I'd reckon ours is much higher.

Yes, but again this factors into why finance is the primary factor in where a league championship goes.

There's a very reasonable argument to be made that managers have almost no impact on a teams fortunes, unless you hire an absolutely exceptional one. It's not one I subscribe to, but the truth is likely far closer to it than most peoples current understanding of what wins league titles, which seems to revolve around narrative-driven issues like "bottle" and "mentality" and other such nonsense.

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13 minutes ago, G51 said:

Yes, but again this factors into why finance is the primary factor in where a league championship goes.

There's a very reasonable argument to be made that managers have almost no impact on a teams fortunes.

That's the basic idea behind the whole 'director of football' model which no team in the UK has managed to get right.  It also has importance for us as a club when Gerrard goes.

My take is that most of this season is down to 'the staff' rather than 'the gaffer' but I am willing to be convinced otherwise.

Edited by The_Kincardine
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3 minutes ago, The_Kincardine said:

That's the basic idea behind the whole 'director of football' model which no team in the UK has managed to get right.  It also has importance for us as a club when Gerrard goes.

My take is that most of this season is down to 'the staff' rather than 'the gaffer' but I am willing to be convinced otherwise.

My take would be that we got closer to our ceiling rather than our floor because:

a) We avoided injuries, and when we did have them we had the squad depth to cope. This is primarily down to the medical/sports science lads, with an honourable mention for recruitment.

b) Our summer signings were, by and large, very good. Again, this is down to recruitment.

It's why I said in the other thread that it didn't really matter who Celtic had as manager this season. Even if they didn't have Lennon burning everything to the ground, they likely wouldn't have caught us. Our top-end league campaigns beat their average-good ones.

It's also why I said that the important recruitment role for Celtic next season isn't the manager (though getting someone who isn't a total idiot is a necessary requirement), but the guy who signs the players, which will presumably be their new sporting director. In the modern era, smart fanbases will drop the focus on managers, and instead focus on sporting directors. They are the people who are mostly accountable for whether a season is a success or a failure.

 

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35 minutes ago, G51 said:

Again, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of how league championships work.

If Team A can buy better players than Team B, then it will generally create more opportunities and limit the opposition more. If both Team A and Team B then go into a league and both play Team C, a significantly weaker team, then Team A is going to have a higher winning percentage against Team C than Team B.

Say Team A has a win probability of 85% against Team C, with a draw probability of 12% and a loss probability of 3%. Team B has a win probability of 80%, with a draw probability of 15% and a loss probability of 5%.

Both teams should win those matches against Team C convincingly. But if you play Team C 34 times in a season, then Team A's distribution of outcomes is significantly better than Team B's. So much so, that the 4 games between them have surprisingly little impact on the destination of the league title. Neither Team A or Team B are going to win all 34 games against Team C, the odds of that are exceptionally small.

What decides league championships is primarily finance, and then smaller factors like luck, tactics, injuries etc. The more money you have, the higher your floor and your ceiling. Smaller factors then dictate which you finish closer to. This season, Celtic finished closer to their floor, and Rangers are on course to come very close to their ceiling.

I honestly don't care what you say about the title win, I'm just pointing out that this league was never a 50-50 shot at the start of the season and thinking about it for longer than two seconds would tell you that.

 

A very detailed and studious take for someone who honestly doesn’t care but here is the thing

97/98 will always be remembered as the season Celtic stopped the 10 not that Rangers or Walter Smith blew it because they didn’t. 

I’d also hedge my bets that 20/21 will be remembered as the year Celtic blew/chucked/choked/fucked the 10 and not the year Rangers stopped it unless ofc you are a Rangers fan.

Which is shame considering how good Rangers have been however the litany of f**k ups at Celtic will likely be what stands out about this season

 

 

 

Edited by Jinky67
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4 minutes ago, Jinky67 said:

A very detailed and studious take for someone who honestly doesn’t care but here is the thing

97/98 will always be remembered as the season Celtic stopped the 10 not that Rangers or Walter Smith blew it because they didn’t. 

I’d also hedge my bets that 20/21 will be remembered as the year Celtic blew/chucked/choked/fucked the 10 and not the year Rangers stopped it unless ofc you are a Rangers fan.

Which is shame considering how good Rangers have been however the litany of f**k ups at Celtic will likely be what stands out about this season

 

 

 

To underline this point for the third time tonight, I do not care about that. The point I'm making is about the assumption that the league title was a 50-50 shot, when it isn't.

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20 minutes ago, The_Kincardine said:

That's the basic idea behind the whole 'director of football' model which no team in the UK has managed to get right.  It also has importance for us as a club when Gerrard goes.

My take is that most of this season is down to 'the staff' rather than 'the gaffer' but I am willing to be convinced otherwise.

Correct - Summed up perfectly by the vast amount of times I’ve seen the following this season:

Q: Rangers best signing this season?
 
A Michael Beale.

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16 minutes ago, Jinky67 said:

A very detailed and studious take for someone who honestly doesn’t care but here is the thing

97/98 will always be remembered as the season Celtic stopped the 10 not that Rangers or Walter Smith blew it because they didn’t. 

I’d also hedge my bets that 20/21 will be remembered as the year Celtic blew/chucked/choked/fucked the 10 and not the year Rangers stopped it unless ofc you are a Rangers fan.

Which is shame considering how good Rangers have been however the litany of f**k ups at Celtic will likely be what stands out about this season

You could make the same argument the other way around for 19/20, when Rangers were flying up until New Year then blew/chucked/choked/fucked their league challenge and Celtic got handed a title* on Zoom.

Edited by 8MileBU
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2 minutes ago, 8MileBU said:

Correct - Summed up perfectly by the vast amount of times I’ve seen the following this season:

Q: Rangers best signing this season?
 
A Michael Beale.

Agree with this actually, it was similar with Chris Davies at Celtic during Rodgers tenure. The amount of positive comments this guy received was unreal

Exact same with Beale, he seems to have strengths where Gerrard doesn’t and as such they compliment each other well

 

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