league rankings based on a different system

Ranking by goals for? Unless you mean in addition to points for wins or draws (which would still be a very bad and gimmicky idea - beating the last place team at home 7:0 should never be worth more than winning 1:0 at your nearest rival's stadium - this also goes for ranking by goal difference) that's just crazy... you don't mean giving someone 5 points after losing 5:6? In this case, you could pretty much say bye to tactics.

And complicated formulas? When I'm in the stadium watching a game, I don't want to need to get out my pocket calculator to see how the current result would affect the standings. 3-1-0 is easy, everyone gets it and it actually works. A team that wins 10 games deserves to be ranked ahead of a team that won five games and lost five. A team that scores 38 goals doesn't have to be better than one that scored 37 goals at all.

 

Racing Santander 23 GF, 34 Pts
Sevilla 41 GF, 32 Pts

Is Sevilla twice as good as Santander now?

It's a cup competition. Two teams play each other twice - of course the one scoring more goals will go through. That's how the World Cup final (or every other single football game ever) works as well... If the CL knock-out round was best of three (not that this would be a good idea, mind you) suddenly this system wouldn't be as good anymore, as we could just see which team won twice.

 

I do agree that goal difference is often an indicator of which teams are under/overperforming, but the league table is a record of achievement, not potential. Winning two games 1-0 and losing another 0-2 can never be worse that winning one game 3-0, and losing two 0-1.

and under what circumstance would a team win a tie on goal difference that would have seen them eliminated if points were awarded instead?

 

You could just as easily say it works on a points system over the two games. If both teams have the same number of points, then it comes down to goal difference. Then away goals, then extra time.

 

What if a team, say Wigan, was 3GD points from saftey with 4 games left. They play Everton, Tottenham, Chelsea and Arsenal in their final 4 games. They battle hard and win 1-0 againts Everton, Spurs and Chelsea. Then they play Arsenal and lose 7-0. 4GD points lower than when they started and they one 3/4 of their games. They get relegated. Hardly fair is it?

 

the problem with the system is that you'd lose the whole point of playing the matches.

A lesser team is playing Man Utd, for example. They are a goal down with 20 minutes to go. Under the current system they'd have a right go at trying to equalise. Under your system they'd probably just accept that trailing 1-0 in such a game is pretty good, and they'd sit back and accept the score.

There's also no reason to suspect it'd lead to higher scores overall. Teams would be just as cagey about defending a one goal lead in your system as they would a one goal lead where two points are at stake.

It'd probably encourage negative football. After all, most teams will finish their away season with a negative goal difference, so it'd make sense to go away to play for a draw, as theoretically drawing every game would be better than a more adventurous team who maybe win 6, draw 3 and lose 9 of their away games.

 

If it ain't broke don't fix it.

 

An interesting idea would be to keep the existing pts for a win and draw but have bonus pts for a certain number of goals scored. For example scoring 4 goals in a game gives an extra pt. This would encourage attacking play as if a team was on 3 goals they have an incentive to score again. So if they won 4-1 they would get 4pts, 3 for the win and 1 extra for scoring 4.

The same concept is used at the Rugby World Cup where teams gets a bonus pt if they score a certain number of tries.

Basically a team performance that wins 4-0 is more impressive than a 1-0 scrappy win. If they get rewarded with an extra pt then I doubt people could really complain.

 

RevX, this is the kind of system that the USL tried a few years back, called the 4-1-0+1 system (four points for a win, one for a tie, one bonus point for scoring three goals). They scrapped it, but never really said why. If they scrapped it because "it isn't standard" or "everyone else does it that way" then they were just being knee-jerk. If they scrapped it because "the flaw of the system was..." then I could accept it.

Note that the USL PDL does use a muted system of GF-GA-GD in its tie-breakers, for U.S. Open Cup qualifying: GF or GD is limited to +/- 3 per game; so in your case where you beat the last-place team 8-0, you only get credit for 3-0. This does even out PDL qualifying a bit, where you play only for qualifying games, against a seemingly-random set of teams.

But the basic premise of this thread, is something I think about in passing. The main point being this: the same system used in a World Cup group (where you play 3 games), is the same system used in WCQ (where you play 10-12 games), is the same system used in a league (where you play 30+ games). Prove to me that all these cases should use the same scoring system. It might be true, but it hasn't been statisically shown.

 

I think the system I proposed above could work. The major flaw in it is that it might place so much emphasis on attack that teams place less and less importance on defence. The quality of defending would then decline such that teams from a league with this scoring scheme would struggle when playing teams from another league where defending is of a high standard.

Also the rankings would still be determined by Pts, then GD, then Goals For.

 

could we have it this season?

Reading's 7-4 and 6-4 defeats this season would then put us 2 points clear of the relegation zone.

Ultimately though, you have to look at the results of two teams. One wins one match 4-0, and loses the other two 0-1. The other team wins 3-0, draws one, and loses the other 0-1.

Which of those two deserves to be ranked higher?


It'd also be interesting to see if in leagues where this rule has been applied, did it make any difference at all to the number of goals scored?

 

Nice, a polemic example... let me give one, too: one team wins 1:0 and loses the next 0:7, the other draws both 2:2, which one deserves to be ranked higher?

The additional-points-for-many-goals idea sounds interesting, however the change from 2 pts per win to 3 pts per win was already introduced to support attacking play, and it ultimately failed. I'd say let's stay with the current system. Using Richards arguments, we should probably even go back to the 2 points per win system. But if you think about it hard enough, you'll probably find examples where that is not very good, too.

 

ultimately the object of the game is to win. Three points for a win does reward teams that play for a win, even if it hasn't eradicated negative play from the game.

You could argue that there should be more points awarded for a win, to lessen the benefit of playing for a draw even further, but you get to a point where teams that have played a competitive open match that happens to end level are getting punished too heavily.

 

Is it? I'd say that's just your opinion on what should be the object of the game... In the threadstarters opinion, the ultimate object should be to shoot goals, in my opinion the ultimate object of the should be to have fun

Truth is that you set the objectives with the rules. The target in a league is not to win every match, it is to gather more points than the other teams, under certain circumstances it is more important for a team to prevent the opponent from winning than winning yourself. Likewise, in a knock out tournament, the objective is to advance to the next round, over a two leg tie a draw or even a close loss can be the target in the second leg if you won the first match by a margin, and if you don't think you can score against the opponent, you might try to get to the penalty shoot-out.

The threadstarter obviously thinks that the rules should be changed to make shooting lots of goals a more important objective for the teams. I think that's not a bad idea, however I do agree that winning should stay more important point.

By the way, neither the number of goals nor the number of draws changed significantly after introducing 3 points per win, thus the 3 point rule ultimately failed, either the teams already tried to win before or the additional point wasn't enough to change priorities.

 

that would make our 4-7 loss at Portsmouth better than our 3-1 win over Liverpool.

teams playing schoolyard 0-0-10 formations, with "rush" keepers might be more fun, but wouldn't necessarily result in better play.

3 points for a win wasn't brought in to increase the number of goals, but in some places, such as Italy, you could say that it has worked. There are less draws and there are more goals.