Lots of back and forth about how hard/easy we've had it so far this season, so I wanted to build a SOS/SOV picture (based on an NFL/american sports stat) which looks at your opponents win-draw-loss records to build an overall picture of how strong your 'schedule' has been, while taking only the records of the teams you have beaten to create a 'strength of victory' number. The quirk with this stat is that after an entire season, everyone's SOS will be the same. But during a season, it can help to determine who's played the most difficult teams.
For example, with Charlton, our opponents so far have been: Accrington, Derby, Sheff Wed, Plymouth, Cambridge and Wycombe.
These six teams have 17 wins, 9 draws and 9 losses across a total of 35 games played.
To calculate Charlton's SOS: a win is worth 1, a draw is worth half and a loss is worth zero, divided by the overall total of games.
17+(9/2)+(9 times 0) / 35 =
0.614 SOSTo calculate Charlton's SOV, we take only the teams we have beaten (Derby & Plymouth) who have seven wins, two draws and three losses across 12 games.
7+(2/2)+(3 times 0) / 12 =
0.666 SOV
I'm working on building SOS and SOV tables and will post them later. (Now posted below)
Edit to add:
SOS (29/08/22):
SOV (29/08/22):
Comments
Living by Numbers - New Musik.
2 times 2 is 4
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- Forest Green have had the hardest start to the season so far facing three of the top five in their first five games. Not far behind are Charlton, MK Dons, Sheff Wed, Bolton and Cheltenham.
- Ipswich have had the easiest start to the season (by some distance) followed by Accrington, Bristol Rovers, Wycombe and Oxford.
- 0.500 should be considered average so I'm pleased to see that even at this early stage, both Plymouth and Derby / 12th and 13th are showing a 0.500 score. It means I did the maths right. :-)
(I realized building an SOV table is going to be a lot more manual effort combing through results to figure out who beat who so maybe that'll come later. :-) )
@Scoham we will see about updating through the season. Perhaps a monthly update or every couple of games rather than every three or four days a new round of matches are played.
I can see the benefit in doing "at the time" calculations but that adds another layer of complexity to the process that adds time and I'm not aware of an easy excel formula that could save me...
Teams that Wycombe have faced have 9 wins, 12 draws and 15 defeats.
By contrast, Charlton have faced teams with 17 wins, 9 draws and 9 defeats.
It's easy to tell from those figures that Charlton have had harder matches so far, the SOS/SOV numbers just quantifies everything with a score between 0 and 1.
I'm not anti stats but, for this one, I have to be honest, I prefer the old cliché - "there are no easy games", because it is largely true.
Will work on SOV in a bit.
Well while you're waiting it's interesting to note already that we have a higher SOV score than SOS. That's not so common although definitely possible with a smaller sample.
It's a numerical measure showing that the wins we've picked up so far are against harder opponents. Which obviously makes sense when both Derby and Plymouth are top six while Accrington and Wycombe are 11th and 12th.
The question then becomes did we over perform against Derby and Plymouth or did we underperform in other games? Or could it be both?
The sample is too small at the moment to make solid conclusions either way but it's still interesting to see the picture forming nonetheless.
This one doesn't say a massive amount when teams have only won 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4 games. Fleetwood, for example, are as high as they are at this stage because their only win came against Plymouth who have won 4/6 games. There is a lot of bunching that will disperse over the season with more data in the mix.
Charlton and Fleetwood share top spot with a 0.667 score. Morecambe and Burton share 0.000 scores as both have yet to win a game.