We're baaa-aaack

Huh. Long hiatus. There's actually an explanation for that one, and it doesn't involve a new kid. Not really. My work had been languishing on IE7, and I generally try to knock out entries around my lunch break. Google seemed to have updated their Blogger interface and it no longer worked for the Enterprise IE7 I was on, so I kept on posting to Big Soccer, but let this blog languish. I'm gonna try to pick it up again in the near future.

Anyway, like I said, I've been mostly keeping up with Power Rankings. Player ratings, less so. Power Rankings have been crazy though. The league has been so tight and there's been so many twists and turns that the new mashup system I started using has been a little wild. I may have mentioned it before, but I think I'm going to weight recent results less next season, simply because there's so much variability, though on the flip side, a few unpredictable weeks have the league sort of turned around anyway, so who knows?

I did change the format somewhat to a more "explanatory" (is that a word) table, showing the season rank and the rank over the last 5, the average of which is the ultimate rank. I also added a snapshot column, showing their most recent form and a Form column, showing whether they're trending up relative to their current ranking position or down. So here's the table for Week 28. Click to embiggen.

Bottom five teams can all probably be written off at this point of the season and Vancouver needs to turn things around to avoid joining them, but other than that, the league is wide open right now. It's going to be a great finish to the season methinks.

I did what I swore I wouldn't...

So I told myself this season I was going to stick with the same methodology that I started with. And I thought I really meant it. But then I came up with something better. So I'm changing. I'm sorry. It's not you, it's me. Or something.

While the system had been working pretty well so far, it still didn't seem to capture 'momentum' shifts all that well. However, Itried to compensate that with adding a Flavor of the Week ranking syste. I've ultimatly decided that the 'mashup' system, using both systems and then combining the rankings, was probably the best, and when comparing it to how other sites rank teams, it looks like it's doing a better job.

Remember, these are still purely numerical, data driven rankings, that don't hvae any input from me other than results. I think it's become a very good way to creating "power rankings" that mirror what "experts" are saying and is backed up by results and not just hand waving mumbo jumbo.

Anyway, enough exposition. Let's check the numbers.

I'd note that I also did back calculate "mashup" rankings for each team over the course of the season. This will do away with the need for some of the extraneous info I had been providing earlier. From now on it'll just be teams rankings and movemnet form the last week and a chart showing ranking position over the course of the season.

Numbers. Yes. Here.

Dallas still at the top, New York with a big jump, and both LA teams with big falls (poor Chivas ;/ ).

Here's the graph for the full season. Check out Vancouver. What a crazy poor season they've had... Click to embiggen, I'm trying to go with a .png to see if that makes it prettier.

 Annnnd... that's all I have to say about that. More fun next week. Until then... courage.

MLS Wants a Cracker

It's a parity - "parroty" joke. Get it?!?!!?1

Lord.

Anyway, not been updating this much since there's not been much action, but I thought I'd revisit the season by season correlation between MLS and the Premier League with a few free minutes.

I should note that this is all based on final standings, since MLS crowns our Champions sort of  weird (not better or worse, just differently) when compared to the rest of the world.

One thing I do enjoy about the way we do it here is that in any given year you may just have yourself a good home team to watch. Unless you live in Toronto. Or anywhere in Canada, really.

Conversely, Premier League teams tend to generally find a way to stay in the same position as before. You could certainly argue that that sort of league structure makes upsets that much more compelling, and watching "super clubs" a la the Big4/5/6/whatever makes for the most exciting matches, but there's really something to me about the whole "any one can win any game on any given day".

So the question is, can we quanity that?

The answer is, of course, "Yup." With pages and pages of "buts..."

But we're not gonna get into buts here. Unless that's your thing.....

I digress.

I looked at the 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 MLS seasons for MLS season-to-season correlation. That is, how well did your performance last year predict your performance for the following year. In a word? Not good. Interestingly though, the 2011 season had a very strong correlation to the 2010 season, with an R value of 0.70. The next highest was 2009 to 2008 at 0.54. The average correlation was 0.38, but average isn't a great way to do it. Instead, I lumped all the seasons together into one data set to come up with a total correlation value. That value was 0.41. That's not very good correlation. I'd note I did throw out inaguarl years for expansion teams, but that should be a given.

In contrast, the Premier League has excellent correlation. Teams generally may move up or down two or three places over the course of a year, but, in general, where you finished last season is a pretty good indicator of how you'll finish this season.

For the Premier League I looked at 2006-2007, 2007-2008, 2008-2009, 2009-2010, 2010-2011, and 2011-2012, throwing out single data points for promoted/relegated teams. Interestingly, correlation seems to be increasing since 2006-2007. The lowest R value of 0.65 occured that year, and has increased in every season since, up to a value of 0.86 for 2011-2012. Could more money be "locking in" teams as player wage wars serve to stratify the league into the Haves and Have-Nots?

Anyway, these numbers might not make much sense, so here's the plotted data sets for both leagues. It's pretty obvious that in MLS, the results are all over the place, whereas in the Premier League, things look very linear.

 MLS Correlation

Premiership Correlation



And... that's all I have to say about that...

Gotta pick em all!

Getting predictions in early today ahead of the Canada clash and, also, so I don't have to worry about it any more.

It would also be great if I could sotp picking SKC wins, it seems like that's bad luck. I guess it wasn't at the start of the season though...

Anyway, here's what we've got this week. A bunch of two goal wins and some draws.

Team	Result	GD	Confidence
Montreal	WIN	+2	97.21%
Toronto	LOSS	-2	97.21%
Kansas City	WIN	+2	88.50%
Chicago	LOSS	-2	88.50%
New York	WIN	+2	93.67%
Toronto	LOSS	-2	93.67%
DC	WIN	+2	95.74%
Montreal	LOSS	-2	95.74%
New England	DRAW	0	97.09%
Seattle	DRAW	0	97.09%
Salt Lake City	DRAW	0	86.33%
Columbus	DRAW	0	86.33%
Houston	WIN	+2	96.75%
Philadelphia	LOSS	-2	96.75%
Colorado	WIN	+2	90.13%
Portland	LOSS	-2	90.13%
LA	DRAW	0	74.36%
San Jose	DRAW	0	74.36%

Captains of the Sky

Man I'm excited for this weekend. Last round and still a lot at stake for a lot of teams, plus evening MLS action? PREPARE YOURSELF FOR SIEGE, LIVER!

Ah hem. At any rate, I once again took a chance to update the Euro rankings. Granted, it's a short tournament, so maybe things should swing more, but the formula I've come up with essentially tracks momentum gradually, which I feel is as important as game to game results. So despite some teams booking a ticket to the next round and some teams booking tickets home, there weren't any crazy swings this week. Russia is still top dog with Spain and Germany close behind, and, a big surprise to me, at least, the French sitting in 4th. Ukraine probably got dealt the biggest blow. Anything but advancing would be horrific for them, in my opinion. And while I'd be surprised if Poland holds on and advances, their showing against Russia was a good one, and they may just have enough to get into the knockouts, where anything can happen.

Actually, now that we're on the topic, the Dutch showing has been the worst performance so far. And I'd like to point out that my formula had sort of predicted that since the pre-Euro rankings. Math wins again!

Here's the table.

Team	Ranking	Change	Rating
Russia	1	NC	2.00
Spain	2	+1	2.67
Germany	3	+1	4.33
France	4	+3	6.00
Ukraine	5	-3	6.33
Portugal	6	+2	7.67
Denmark	7	-2	8.00
Sweden	8	-3	9.00
Italy	9	NC	9.33
England	9	+2	9.33
Croatia	11	-1	9.67
Czech Republic	11	NC	9.67
Greece	13	NC	12.33
Poland	14	+2	12.67
Ireland	15	-1	13.33
Netherlands	16	-1	13.67

Does this mean we can make some predictions? Yes. Yes it does.

The Czech Republic over Poland in a close game, ending Poland's (and my own) hope's for European glory.
Russia over Greece(should be another LeBron style slam dunk)
Portugal over the Netherlands (I'm really excited for Ronaldo vs Robben)
Germany over Denmark (sorry Puma)
Spain over Croatia (is Torres back!?!)
Italy over Ireland (will Balotelli show up? I think some day he's just going to play a game while wearing sunglasses, because fuck you, that's why)
Ukraine over England (again, probably an unpopular pick against an English team with nothing to lose and gaining Rooney)
France over Sweeden (nothing witty to add)

And, finally, props to the Ireland traveling fans. Man I would have loved to have been in the stadium for this.