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Jim
Probably for the hard-core supporter, winning is almost all that matters. But there are many – I regard myself as one – who enjoy watching football first and foremost, and the result is secondary. Thus when the main Sky match on a Sunday afternoon is, say, Arsenal v Man. United I look forward to it with keener anticipation than if Liverpool v Chelsea, and very much greater anticipation than say Middlesborough v Everton or Derby v Bolton. Apart from the overall pattern of play, it is the moments of individual magic that the likes of Ronaldo, Giggs or most of the Arsenal side produce throughout their games. Not, of course, that players in other clubs can’t do similar – Kanu (Portsmouth), Taylor (Bolton), Arteta (Everton) and Bullard (Fulham) are among many players in the Premiership capable of "magic" moments.
The very best sides can "shut up shop" when necessary – and Man. United at Barca, the match you mention, is a case in point. But it would be absurd to think that that defensive performance was the essential Man. United who this year have come close to matching Arsenal for the sheer fluency and style of their play.
I think the difficulty Rangers face is that most weeks you don’t really have any competition – unlike the Premiership, where lower teams can and do regularly put the "big four" under presssure. West Ham, for example, solidly mid table last season, have an excellent record against Man. United (and indeed Arsenal) over the last few years. Bolton caused Chelsea no end of trouble last Sunday before equalising in the last minute. Reading (relegated, of course) did a "Man. United at Barca" early in the season at Old Trafford, and Fulham drew away at Chelsea and had two excellent chances of ending C’s unbeaten home record (now three full seasons) in the last ten minutes of that match. By contrast, much of the SPL aren’t really capable of giving the top two a game.
Looking at the game on Wednesday, Rangers defence was impressive – as it had been in all the competition games I have seen. But where was the flair or attacking skill? By contrast, both Zanet’s goals were gems as skilled passing, eventually cut Rangers defence to shreds. I am not anti-Rangers, or indeed anti any club. But with due respect, on what I saw on Wednesday night I didn’t see a single player whose performance would have Premiership clubs flocking to sign them. And I note with interest that one of the hardworking middle fielders was sold by Aston Villa to Fulham last Summer (no disrespect to Fulham but clearly not an advancement for the player concerned) and, despite the latter’s dire position, allowed to go on loan to Rangers during the Winter transfer window. It will be interesting to see whether he returns to Fulham, transfers to another Premiership side (and of course WBA, Stoke and either Bristol City or Hull will be anxious to get some players with Premiership experience), or stays at Rangers.
Here’s hoping that we see some good football in the Cardiff v Portsmouth match today. Early season Portsmouth looked excellent but they seem to have tailed off rather since Christmas, and of course Defoe can’t play so their attacking aspect will be a touch blunted. So the result is certainly not a foregone conclusion.
Jim
"winning is everything, nice football is only a bonus these days"
Can’t agree with that. I’d rather watch Arsenal or Man. U than Chelsea or Liverpool, or at the other end of the table Newcastle (under Kegan, not Allardice) or Fulham (under Hodgson, not Sanchez) than Bolton or Wigan.
Batman
Personally, I hope it never happens, but it is mooted from time to time.
A stumbling block (the international footballing authorities might well be another) is the mechanics if it was to be seriously considered. It has been suggested that the two big Scottish clubs should be allowed straight in. Leaving aside the resentment that would arouse in the better Championship sides if promotion from the Championship was limited to one club for a season, if that happened the two clubs’ current level of competence would be important and my view is that Rangers, especially, wouldn’t last.
Yes, if either Celtic or Rangers could stay in the Premiership for several years, they’d probably do very well. With the their fan bases and the tv/sponsorship they’d get they’d be as wealthy as probably any of the 14 established Premiership sides, save possibly Man. United and Chelsea. But so what? If say the just promoted West Bromwich Albion were guaranteed five years in the Premiership they’d be able to invest and would, I am sure, be a serious top ten Premiership side by 2012. But as things are they will probably stuggle to survive the coming season, as investing all the resources they’ll get from being in the Premiership is a huge gamble which, if it comes unstuck, can spell disaster for a club. And even £30-40m doesn’t go far when it comes to buying players of proven Premiership quality.
We saw the two strategies in action this year with Sunderland (who did invest fairly heavily) and Derby (who didn’t). Sunderland survived, but it was a close run thing. At least Derby (like Watford the year before) haven’t ruined their finances and can hopefully look forward to a decent season in the Championship.
Jim
The quality of the Premiership cannot be over-estimated – no coincidence that the European club cup next Wednesday in Moscow is being contested between our two most successful clubs and that two others were in the final stages.
When the Premiership season starts in August, and subject to correction if my memory is faulty, only 14 clubs can be regarded as established Premiership teams (which I define as having been there for at least the last six seasons): Arsenal, Aston Villa, Blackburn, Bolton, Chelsea, Everton, Fulham, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Middlesborough, Newcastle, Portsmouth and Tottenham Hotspur. And three (arguably four if one includes Newcastle) came very close to losing that status this season. It is hugely competitive and staying there is no easy matter.
Quite a few sides get there and go straight down (Birmingham and Derby most recently). Others, like Reading, do quite well for the first season, but as the established Premiership clubs get to know their strengths and weaknesses they do less well and are often relegated.
What distinguishes the Premiership from any other national league, including Scotland’s, is the relentless pace and (for want of a better word) physicality), coupled with – even among the lesser sides – no little skill. Scoring goals against Premiership sides is very hard (no one should be fooled into thinking differently by Middlesborough’s eight last Saturday, achieved in very particular circumstances). From what I have seen of Rangers (solely in European matches) by Premiership standards they are slow, and have no cutting edge when attacking. Having seen your defence in action, I am sure that the clubs in the bottom half of the Premiership would have trouble scoring against them – but drawing against such clubs and being beaten by the classier sides is a sure path to relegation.
Of course things might be different if Rangers and Celtic had the benefit of the income that even ordinary Premiership clubs enjoy from television (apparently the hapless Derby received the lowest for the last season, and that was nearly £30m). But with the side Rangers currently has, I’m afraid you’d have a very disappointing experience if you suddenly found yourselves in the Premiership.
" …. thousands of scots who where going crazy, throwing all kinds, screaming in our faces"
This extract from report 3 that Jim posted suggests that Rangers’ official press release has a touch of spin about it.
I thought the game itself was interesting,and yet further evidence that genuine football skill will usually win. Some of the Russian team’s movement, especially in the second half, was on a par with Arsenal’s and easily of Premiership quality.
By contrast, although it is sometimes suggested that Celtic and Rangers should be allowed to join the Premiership, on last night’s evidence it is difficult to see Rangers surviving a season there. A good defence is important, but only Derby of last season’s Premiership sides looked as poor attack-wise.
Ginge
Van der Wheil was interested in identifying that relatively small number of horses he was confident would win but he made it clear that such horses (winner In the race types) should not be backed regardless of price. In one of his best known articles he discussed a race in March 1981, and concluded thus: "This race [analysis] clearly shows Little Owl is a racing certainty and when the true odds are calculated a price better than 3/1 on would represent value." One assumes that despite his high level of confidence in the selection he would not have backed it at, say, 1/4.
A man writing in the late 1970s and 1980s under the pseudonym "Che Van der Wheil" made what to my mind is an important distinction – between there being a winner OF the race (which, obviously, there always is) and there being a winner IN the race (by which he meant a horse with all the characteristics, identifiable in advance, necessary for one to be confident it will win), which is a markedly less frequent occurrence. (He said that he found only about 20% of the horses his selection procedure threw up as the most likely winners had all the necessary characteristics and were thus bets, and that was from races he deemed suitable to analyse which were not all races on the card.)
This suggests to me that any system needs both an ability to compare the merits of runners, and a qualifying threshold, as it were. It is not enough merely to identify the horse with the best chance according to the factors and weightings included in the selection procedure. When that horse has been identified it is necessary to have a sense of how close it comes to being reasonably sure to win, however one defines that. (Van der Wheil expressed his idea of reasonably sure as 80%+. Others undoubtedly make money by backing horses much less certain to win, though obviously accepting longer losing runs in the process.)
Underscore
I focus solely on Flat handicaps, class 5 and above, and delete data over two years old. That leaves me with 20,000 or so rows with only 16 primary data cells each, which I handle comfortably within Excel, where my requirements are met by the formula function and a handful of macros. I can quite see that someone with more elaborate requirements might need Access or even MySQL. It is principally, as you say, a matter of being clear about one’s requirements.
Petski
Obviously we all prefer the highest price we can get for our selections, but from your example I wonder if strike rate, rather than price, is really the problem.
Petski
May I ask why you bother with bookmakers at all, as from your posts and those of others it seems they often won’t lay a decent bet at the price ostensibly on offer, and anyone who makes a profit is likely to have his or her account closed. What is wrong with Betfair?
I can’t remember when I last bet with a bookmaker, because almost invariably the Betfair price, even after commission, is better, and there is none of this refusing to take bets, closing accounts because one is too successful, etc.
I used to think that Betfair was all right for the likes of me – a relatively low stakes punter – but probably not for those who need to place much larger sums. But the most interesting interview with Alan Potts for which Cavelino Rampante kindly posted a link suggests he now largely uses Betfair, and he is certainly placing much larger bets than me – in the £400 to £700 range.
So unless you are staking so much that you can’t get matched on Betfair, why bother with bookmakers? Do you or other members see ANY advantage in them?
Seagull
Thanks. I see he has a website for his financial advice business. I wonder whether his warning off from racing has hampered that, or indeed added to his client list!
Seagull
"Darren Mercer was at the time a Manchester based stockbroker with many horses so how much would he have got on"
I have seen elsewhere that bookmakers are often willing to accommodate owners with much larger bets than they would take from others, because it gives them direct information about the confidence behind a horse. Not being an owner, I don’t know whether that is true, but it sounds plausible.
If you are right about Mr Mercer laying a horse of his knowing it was not going to run, it tells us all we need to know about him.
John
Congratulations on an excellent winner today.
I see from one of your early posts that your approach is a "convoluted offshoot of VDW". Another couple of winners and even the most closed-minded of contributors whose posts I’ve been reading with amusement on the VDW thread may be getting Mr Peach’s booklets out again!
Bulwark
You commented that you rarely see a result that shocks you, and that is also my experience. And it seems that that was the case over fifty years ago, too – when looking through some threads in the "systems" section I came across this quote from a booklet of which I’ve now bought a copy ("The Judgement of Form", Marvex, 1950):
"… very seldom does the result of a race so confound the form student that he tears his hair; he may be surprised by a result but he has only to get out his form books to find substantiation therein in 99 cases out of a 100."
I also agree with you about race fixing. I tend only to watch races in which I’ve found a bet, and naturally am focused on what I’ve backed. From that narrow perspective I’ve almost always thought the race have been fair: indeed only once in many years have I felt that my selection might have been "pulled" (and that was in quite a valuable Flat handicap).
High Ken
For the avoidance of doubt, the comment of yours I described as speculative was "from charitable donations by others who have little idea where their money goes".
What, in the long term, remains lawful and what doesn’t is in large measure a matter of what proves publicly acceptable as, in England, reflected by the majority in the House of Commons. The examples I gave were of practices that were commonplace until sufficient body of opinion led (in the first two instances) to legislative imposed change. In the last few years we have seen sufficient body of opinion for the banning of coursing and the substantial modification of foxhunting. To suppose that horse racing will prove exempt from change to eliminate what many perceive as cruelty to horses is to spit in the wind. The only question is whether that change comes from within racing, or is imposed by Parliament.
