I was watching the EPL review show, and thinking about Pompey. So I started to wonder about newly promoted teams. I'd be interested in looking at how they fare in the first 19 games vs. the second 19. But I'd need an internet resource (or two) that a) list the newly promoted teams for every season and b) have each team's results for a season. We've all been thinking about the "match" unit, but not about the "season" unit. There are interesting questions there, too.
http://www.geocities.com/fapremleague/ Has all the tables, but you'd have to figure out who the promoted teams were for each season. I'll start working on it and post the promoted teams for each year in this thread. [edit]--scrap the above link. Here's a better one: http://rsssf.com/engpaul/FLA/league.html
A little Perl code is a dangerous thing [No time to check what happened to 1996, though] 1947 1 MANCHESTER CITY 1947 2 BURNLEY 1948 1 BIRMINGHAM CITY 1948 2 NEWCASTLE UNITED 1949 1 FULHAM 1949 2 WEST BROMWICH ALBION 1950 1 TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR 1950 2 SHEFFIELD WEDNESDAY 1951 1 PRESTON NORTH END 1951 2 MANCHESTER CITY 1952 1 SHEFFIELD WEDNESDAY 1952 2 CARDIFF CITY 1953 1 SHEFFIELD UNITED 1953 2 HUDDERSFIELD TOWN 1954 1 LEICESTER CITY 1954 2 EVERTON 1955 1 BIRMINGHAM CITY 1955 2 LUTON TOWN 1956 1 SHEFFIELD WEDNESDAY 1956 2 LEEDS UNITED 1957 1 LEICESTER CITY 1957 2 NOTTINGHAM FOREST 1958 1 WEST HAM UNITED 1958 2 BLACKBURN ROVERS 1959 1 SHEFFIELD WEDNESDAY 1959 2 FULHAM 1960 1 ASTON VILLA 1960 2 CARDIFF CITY 1961 1 IPSWICH TOWN 1961 2 SHEFFIELD UNITED 1962 1 LIVERPOOL 1962 2 LEYTON ORIENT 1963 1 STOKE CITY 1963 2 CHELSEA 1964 1 LEEDS UNITED 1964 2 SUNDERLAND 1965 1 NEWCASTLE UNITED 1965 2 NORTHAMPTON 1966 1 MANCHESTER CITY 1966 2 SOUTHAMPTON 1967 1 COVENTRY CITY 1967 2 WOLVERHAMPTON WANDER 1968 1 IPSWICH TOWN 1968 2 QUEENS PARK RANGERS 1969 1 DERBY COUNTY 1969 2 CRYSTAL PALACE 1970 1 HUDDERSFIELD TOWN 1970 2 BLACKPOOL 1971 1 LEICESTER CITY 1971 2 SHEFFIELD UNITED 1972 1 NORWICH CITY 1972 2 BIRMINGHAM CITY 1973 1 BURNLEY 1973 2 QUEENS PARK RANGERS 1974 1 MIDDLESBROUGH 1974 2 LUTON TOWN 1974 3 CARLISLE UNITED 1975 1 MANCHESTER UNITED 1975 2 ASTON VILLA 1975 3 NORWICH CITY 1976 1 SUNDERLAND 1976 2 BRISTOL CITY 1976 3 WEST BROMWICH ALBION 1977 1 WOLVERHAMPTON WANDER 1977 2 CHELSEA 1977 3 NOTTINGHAM FOREST 1978 1 BOLTON WANDERERS 1978 2 SOUTHAMPTON 1978 3 TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR 1979 1 CRYSTAL PALACE 1979 2 BRIGHTON & HOVE ALBI 1979 3 STOKE CITY 1980 1 LEICESTER CITY 1980 2 SUNDERLAND 1980 3 BIRMINGHAM CITY 1981 1 WEST HAM UNITED 1981 2 NOTTS COUNTY 1981 3 SWANSEA CITY 1982 1 LUTON TOWN 1982 2 WATFORD 1982 3 NORWICH CITY 1983 1 QUEENS PARK RANGERS 1983 2 WOLVERHAMPTON WANDER 1983 3 LEICESTER CITY 1984 1 CHELSEA 1984 2 SHEFFIELD WEDNESDAY 1984 3 NEWCASTLE UNITED 1985 1 OXFORD UNITED 1985 2 BIRMINGHAM CITY 1985 3 MANCHESTER CITY 1986 1 NORWICH CITY 1986 2 CHARLTON ATHLETIC 1986 3 WIMBLEDON 1987 1 DERBY COUNTY 1987 2 PORTSMOUTH 1988 1 MILLWALL 1988 2 ASTON VILLA 1988 3 MIDDLESBROUGH 1989 1 CHELSEA 1989 2 MANCHESTER CITY 1989 3 CRYSTAL PALACE 1990 1 LEEDS UNITED 1990 2 SHEFFIELD UNITED 1990 6 SUNDERLAND 1991 1 OLDHAM ATHLETIC 1991 2 WEST HAM UNITED 1991 3 SHEFFIELD WEDNESDAY 1991 4 NOTTS COUNTY 1992 1 IPSWICH TOWN 1992 2 MIDDLESBROUGH 1992 6 BLACKBURN ROVERS 1993 1 NEWCASTLE UNITED 1993 2 WEST HAM UNITED 1993 5 SWINDON TOWN 1994 1 CRYSTAL PALACE 1994 2 NOTTINGHAM FOREST 1994 4 LEICESTER CITY 1995 1 MIDDLESBROUGH 1995 3 BOLTON WANDERERS 1997 1 BOLTON WANDERERS 1997 2 BARNSLEY 1997 6 CRYSTAL PALACE 1998 1 NOTTINGHAM FOREST 1998 2 MIDDLESBROUGH 1998 4 CHARLTON ATHLETIC 1999 1 SUNDERLAND 1999 2 BRADFORD CITY 1999 5 WATFORD 2000 1 CHARLTON ATHLETIC 2000 2 MANCHESTER CITY 2000 3 IPSWICH TOWN 2001 1 FULHAM 2001 2 BLACKBURN ROVERS 2001 3 BOLTON WANDERERS 2002 1 MANCHESTER CITY 2002 2 WEST BROMWICH ALBION 2002 5 BIRMINGHAM CITY 2003 1 PORTSMOUTH 2003 2 LEICESTER CITY 2003 5 WOLVERHAMPTON WANDER
OK, now all I need is a place to find out how, for example, Crystal Palace did in every match in '98. Ideas?
http://rsssf.com/tablese/eng98.html Change the numbers to whatever year you want (the year in the URL is the season-end year, so the link is the 97-98 season). Basically anything you want will be on www.rsssf.com
So far I've done 2 seasons, and 4 of 6 teams have done better in the 2nd half of the season. At this point, that's pretty meaningless. (I finally got some time at work to work on this. )
I've done 3 seasons so far. In those 9 trials, 3 teams have been better the first half of the year, the rest were better in the 2nd half. So you're probably thinking, OK, if a promoted team gets to the halfway point in decent shape, not far from 17th place, it would be smart to bet on them to stay up. This indicates that it takes these clubs a bit of time to get accustomed to the higher level of play in the EPL. But guess what? Of the 9 teams, 6 were relegated. Of the 3 teams that stayed up, TWO of them were also among the 3 who were stronger in the first half of the year. It's early, there are 8 more seasons to do, but to me, it looks like a manager of a promoted team should focus on getting off to a good start. It'll be interesting to see if this holds up.
Keep us apprised of what you do...this looks pretty interesting. Bill James, the baseball sabermetrics guru, did a piece on the 84 Tigers -- the team that went, I think, 18-2 in their first 20 games and then went on to win World Series. James told the anecdote about Earl Weaver, when asked by a reporter whether it's important for a team to get off to a good start, asked the question in response -- "What's a 'start'?" It's a very very good question. What James did in his study was look at the various probabilities based on the 1st 20 games of a season? The questions were framed thusly: "What is the probabilty of a team that goes 15-5 in its first twenty games being a .650 team? A .600 team? A .550 team?" What he found was that there was a threshold, a tipping point, at which it was clear that the '84 Tigers were just SOOOO much better than the rest of the league, and the likelihood of them playing less than .600 baseball was so remote as to be insignificant. If I recall correctly, it was when they went 17-1. At 16-1, there was STILL a reasonable chance that they would finish below .600. Anyway, not to complicate your study, but it would be really interesting to see what the probabilites are for teams that win X number of games over the first X games in the season that they inevitably escape the relegation zone. This may entail looking at the results of EVERY team, not just the newly promoted ones.
I know that in the EPL that each team plays each other home and home. Is the schedule such that after 19 games each team has played each other once? If so, that's one big difference between looking at an EPL start and a MLB start. After 20 games in MLB (which is what, 15-20% of the season?), would a team have played each of the teams in their division yet?
I'm thinking about creating an Access database with all of this stuff in there. Then I can slice and dice any which way. But that would take hella time.
In the MLB you'd play probably 6 teams over the first 20 games. Probably not everyone in your division. The MLB schedule tries to have a bunch of divisional games in the last week or two of the season. Before that you generally won't play many division series in a row (you might have 2 or 3 but then you'd play against teams from other divisions). There are 162 games in MLB, so 20 games is a little less than 12.5% (12.3%, to be more exact). The equivalent number of games in the EPL would be 4.69 games. I'm pretty sure the EPL schedule isn't set up so that you play every other team in the first 19 games. There are too many other variables (European competitions, domestic cups) that would throw a plan like that off. This is just my guess, but you'd probably play all 19 teams within the first 22 or 23 games.
Yeah, they list it by "rounds," and I noticed one time that a match in round 16 (or thereabouts) was played in February and not December. So this ain't perfect.