Pre-season analysis: Superliga squad values and chances graphed

Alright, season starts tomorrow. Here is a chart of approximate squad transfer values (blue columns, from transfermarkt.de), championship winning chances (red connected dots, from betbrain.com) and relegation risks (orange connected dots, from betbrain.com).



Since the above interactive graph will change if sources change, here is a screenshot taken on publishing day:

Magic league table at 3/4 of season

Just ran my little helper script again. Since I also developed another tool, I'm looking at the results and wondering how to integrate the statistical clairvoyance some time in the future (probably after TH!NK3).


Click image for larger view.

It's basically a color code made from significant deviations in wins-draws-losses that makes an alternative differentiation across the distribution of possible final points for each team. Red at minimum and maximum, green in the middle but with some variation. Should probably just do the whole thing over in a genius way but until then...

Feeling more and more secure of another championship. FC København is now at 16 wins and just 4 lost in 25 games, a comfortable score of 45 for to 13 against and an impressive 14 clean sheets. Sure, OB is just 6 points behind but certainly looking less impressive.

The bronze medal is going to Silkeborg, Esbjerg fB, FC Midtjylland, AaB or even Brøndby IF. Or OB if one of these snatches the silver.

HB Køge is relegating. And Randers looks doomed too - except they recently sprinted closer and closer to Sønderjyske.

I may or may not do more of these tables at my Twitter, footracle.

Pre-spring season 2010 status

The table drawn as crude probablility distributions for final standings (see earlier explanations if not obvious):



Championship chances as inferred from bookmakers are: FC Kobenhavn 49%, OB Odense 41%, Esbjerg F.B. 5.2%, Brondby I.F. 2.4%, Silkeborg IF, AGF Aarhus, Aab Aalborg, FC Midtjylland and others less than 1%.

What people are talking about: New signing Bryan Oviedo, 19 year old Costa Rican national (Presentaron a Bryan Oviedo con el F.C. Copenhaguen de Dinamarca, FCK to sign Costa Rican), and Kenneth Zohore, 15 year old youth team striker.



...none of which are likely to get us past Olympique de Marseille, currently 6th in Ligue 1 and looking like this recently:

Arfa - Brandão or Niang - Kone

Cheyrou - Mbia or Cisse - Abriel

Bonnart - Hilton - Diawara - Kabore

Mandanda

Hard to predict though since manager Didier Deschamps shuffles his cards often.

Placed 2nd with three matches to go things are getting tricky

A picture is worth a thousand words...

X-axis is final standing points of the top three teams, Y-axis are probabilities. Many combinations are mutually exclusive, of course. The graph is based on this Google Spreadsheet.

It's about 47 hours 'till the "final":

• 17-05-2009 17:30 FC København - Brøndby

However, FC Midtjylland placed 4th will play both Brøndby and OB plus OB will have to play Sønderjyske and Horsens who are fighting to avoid relegation. Nothing has been settled.

Waiting for Thursday by...

...uploading graphics and stuff!

A scene from last Saturday's friendly vs Norwegian Stabæk as seen through the fence.

Of course I went to see the home friendly. And of course my inside intelligence - which could completely revolutionize your expectations for Thursday's UEFA Cup clash with Manchester City - is staggering I guarantee you. But I won't bother sharing :-)

Here's another weird thingie for you:

The league standings as I see it through my little helper script. Top teams in green box, bottom in red. Gaps marked by green strokes. (Key: 0 is points now / minimum, X is most likely / finish tendency and 3 is maximum finishing points.)

Before hacking the already messy script for my new ideas I draw them. Such as these boxes that attempt to define the top and bottom. I'm not so sure I'll program this one though.

According to my not-so award winning probability assessment script the chance of a Copenhagen victory is 31%, the probability of a draw 28% and the risk of a loss 41%. Perhaps that is realistic.

Unofficial list of injuries: Manchester City: Shaun Wright-Phillips, Daniel Sturridge, Richard Dunne, Dietmar Hamann, Benjani Mwaruwari, Martin Petrov, Michael Johnson, Valeri Bojinov; FC København: Cesar Santin.

That will be as much copy/pasting I'll bother for this time. In the good old days I'd have dropped the story about Ståle dissing City's buying of many players you see above anyway. And I would have written something nearly artistic. Not so much anymore, folks. I have to admit I'm having fun with other projects.

Checking out Footbo.com

Yet another chunk of my "need" for this blog has been chopped off. Perpetrators being the people behind Footbo.com, a social website for football fans.

So what is that site about? I've been checking it out lately and have gone from quite skeptical to nearly excited. It's a "Facebook only about football" type thing. You create a profile, connect with "friends" and write on their walls, show off your favourite teams, pick your favourite 11, taunt the opponent fans at the match page et cetera. What use is another social networking website then!?

What makes it worth your time is functionality it has that potentially leaves hitherto essential football sites obsolete. Like livescore.com, Footbo has that. And football-lineups.com too. For each game users can grade the players and best-of teams are automatically generated. Of course, there are league tables and all the usual sort of stuff. Users guess at any future result and "distribution cakes" are generated to illustrate expectations before the result is settled and each users prediction score is calculated (so far I didn't do too well). Sort of useful for match probabilities. And they have Michael Ballack write a blog (well one post so far).

Since I first set up Copenhagen Files in excitement about Google News and Blogger (Hello World) I have successively changed scope and direction (Media & Mission Statement (sort of) and Spring cleaning). Footbo has managed to merge so many features in one site it is actually both useful and fun. I'll now (every now and then) participate in their never-ending prediction game, grade players of matches I've seen, follow live scores and mingle with fellow football geeks. And perhaps post a bit less here at Copenhagen Files.

It remains to be seen how succesful Footbo will become. Will users add to its value or mess it up? And if the few weird kinks (it's still in beta) will be worked out nicely. But I already added a link to FC Københavns team page there in this blogs right hand column. And if you read this, please consider visiting my Footbo profile and add me as a "friend".

Enjoy.

Standings and tendencies - 1/7 into the season

30 games already played let me drop a snap shot of how the league is unfolding this season.


Standings with each team's finishing points tendency as a probability distribution. 'X' marks most likely finishing points; line begins at current points and ends at maximum points.

An entirely different picture than last time I shot it. But revealing none the less.

We're doing OK, placed second making up a sort of early title race along with OB and FC Midtjylland. Unbeaten and having conceded only three goals. Followed by Randers and Brøndby in a not too dangerously looking pursuit.

The promoted teams, Vejle BK and SønderjyskE, have done very well so far. Vejle has more points (7) but SønderjyskE has actually managed to draw both us and FC Midtjylland at home (1-1 both).

Esbjerg fB and FC Nordsjælland are in relegation zone and the disappointments for now. They have lost home games to Vejle and SønderjyskE respectively. Both still without wins.

Aalborg clinched Danish title; Brøndby darby tomorrow

In case you didn't notice...

Aalborg clinched the Danish championship with two matches to go on Thursday, beating Brondby at home 2-0 and opening an insurmountable eight-point lead over last year’s champions, FC Copenhagen.

Most likely final standings include:

1. Gold / Champions League qualification: AaB 68, 69 or 71 points


2. Silver / UEFA Cup qualification: FC København 60, 61 or 63 p


3. Bronze / UEFA Cup qualification: FC Midtjylland 59 or 62 p


4. Fourth / TOTO Cup: OB 52, 53, 54, 55 or 57 p


5. Fifth / n/a: AC Horsens 47, 49, 51 or 53 p

(My emphasis on most probable final points.)

So this season's far from over: Tomorrow we have to beat former rivals Brøndby to put them in place and secure the silverware!

Placed ninth Brøndby looks relatively easy this year and statistics speak of a possible win. But actually they made 28 points at home so far, FC København only 23 away. And averaging this season's scores the tendency is 1.05 - 1.4 which is a bit narrow for my liking - but since 53% of the team's games had less than three goals, that might be a good bet. Significant injuries: Brøndby IF: Mikkel Bischoff, Morten 'Duncan' Rasmussen, Morten Rasmussen and Trond Andersen; FC København: Jesper Grønkjær is recovering from knee surgery while Mikael Antonsson, Niclas Jensen and Rasmus Würtz might soon be playing.

Wild guess: 1-1 draw, our goal scored by Morten Nordstrand ;-)

Crisis: 2008/09 Eurpean games in danger

Readers of my humble blog will know I'm not the type of fan to join the first choir of critics when something goes wrong. But a number of things has now added up to the 4th position being more realistic than the gold medal. Here is a quick look at how the league will end and the most obvious issues.

Monday Esbjerg fB drew 1-1 against AaB. Crucial actually, as a Aalborg win would have definitely put them in a position to move past the painful 60 point barrier. It was when looking forward to that game I realized how much in trouble we are. But thanks to Esbjerg the league is still open.

My prediction is actually done by a Perl script that eats the league table and the remaining matches outputting a distribution of likely finishing points for each team. It's still in beta (whatever you'd call a big hack) and I don't have time to figure out how to show you the actual distributions because i do not agree with the code tag right now ;-) but look:


AaB 64
FC Midtjylland 58
FC K�benhavn 57
OB 55
AC Horsens 51
Esbjerg fB 46
FC Nordsj�lland 47
Randers FC 45
Br�ndby IF 44
AGF 32
Viborg 24
Lyngby 19
Most guesses are about +/- 6 "precise". Meaning it wouldn't be unreasonable to hope for more than 60 points and that AaB can still miss that threshold.

And a bit of the harsh criticism I agree with:

• Jesper Grønkjær is not a striker


• A number of players deserves more playing time: Oscar Wendt, Ailton Almeida a.o.


• New players hasn't played fully as good as expected


• The midfield is impotent

Whatever the problem we need to win our three games versus the bottom three teams with whatever team we got. Take revenge on Esbjerg on the 27th. And approach the AaB game on the 12th of May like it was life or death. And on the 24th of May we play relegating Lyngby (3 points) while AaB host OB in a very open game. Nothing is settled until the 90th minutes of those games is my guess.

Danish Championship probabilities

Calculated from averages of bookie's odds. It's too early for any modeling and stuff like that, but here we go...

• FC København ~2/3
  
• AaB (Aalborg) ~20%
• FC Midtjylland & OB (Odense) 5-10% each
• Brøndby IF, AC Horsens & Randers FC ~1-1½% each
• FC Nordsjælland & Esbjerg fB ~½%
• Lyngby BK, AGF (Aarhus) & Viborg FF n/a
  

UEFA Cup Group B analysis

Graphical presentation of the outcome of our UEFA Cup group.

It's not exactly surprising Aberdeen and Lokomotiv Moskva are favorites to leave the tournament: They are placed bottom and they each have only one more game to get points from.

Most likely Panathinaikos will finish 1st with 9, 10 or 12 points, Atlético Madrid 2nd with 7 or 8 points, Lokomotiv Moskva 4th with 2 or 3 points and Aberdeen last. We, FC København, are the group joker.

Quick preview: Sunday's home game vs. Brøndby IF

(Sorry. I forgot how Blogger mutilates tables. Scroll down, please...)

	FC København	Draw	Brøndby IF
Probabilities (win)	~60%	~25%	~15%
Injuries	Jesper Grønkjær, Rasmus Würtz and Michael Silberbauer		David Williams, Jean-Philippe Peguero, Mikkel Bischoff, Morten Rasmussen, Nicolaj Agger, Peter Madsen and Trond Andersen
League position	#1 +12 goals, 33 points		#9 -3 goals, 23 points
Past 10 encounters	5 wins, 9 goals	2 draws	3 wins, 7 goals
Points last 5 league games home/away	20		5

Championship 2007/2008 probability assessments

• FC København 63%
• Brøndby IF 13%
• OB 8%
• FC Midtjylland 7%
• AaB 6%
• FC Nordsjælland, Esbjerg fB ~1-2%
• Viborg FF, Randers FC, AGF, Lyngby BK, AC Horsens <½%

Hmmm...

Brøndby away tomorrow

This one's worth a few more copy pastes...


Last 6 games: Brøndby: DWLWLW (10 points); FC København: LWWWWW (15 points).
Last 5 games, Brøndby home: WWWWW ; FC København away: WWWWD.
Brøndby points home: 34; FC København points away: 33.

Injuries & suspensions: Brøndby IF: Andreas Randrup, Henrik Kildentoft, Jean Philippe Peguero, Kasper Lorentzen, Mads Jørgensen, Martin Ericsson, Thomas Andresen, Trond Andersen (some of the injured may get ready); FC København: Dan Thomassen, Michael Silberbauer, Nathan Coe.

Approximate outcome probabilities: Brøndby win: 27%, draw 27%, FC København win 46%.

We're the champions! - but when and by how much?

Yanks Abroad has an epic summary of this weekend's AaB - Vejle game, which sums up the league situation...

With the win, Aalborg BK stay in fourth ahead of Saturday's trip to Danish leaders FC Copenhagen, but are now only a point behind third place Odense BK and two points shy of second place FC Midtjylland.

That's right, there's some excitement about the silver and bronze ware. But the gold medal is destined for FC København. The question is: by what margin will the record of league lead be extended.

FC København has 66 points, FC Midtjylland and OB 50 and 49. With six games to go these teams can reach a maximum of 68 and 67 points respectively. But what are the chances they manage that? Quite low. At the same time, what is the risk FC København can't make just three more points? About 0.1% So the probability of gold is higher than 99.9%

And quite likely the medals are secured next Saturday after the AaB home game. A win will do it, as can a draw or even a loss depending on the results of FC Midtjylland and OB. I'd say it's almost 60% sure we'll cheer to a gold medal Saturday night in Copenhagen. On the other hand AaB are in much more need of points as they struggle for a bronze or perhaps silver medal. And they appear to be in good form. I hope we're in for an entertaining game. Østerbro bars: order extra beer.

The league is settling

Top contenders FC Midtjylland just got trashed 1-4 on their own turf. Here's a paste of a fresh approximate assessment of the league outcome...

Gold medal

• FC København 93%


• FC Midtjylland or OB 3% each


• Any other 1% total

Relegation

• Vejle or Silkeborg IF 91% each


• Any other 18% total

Almost boring.

Superliga probabilities

Season kicks off in less than an hour. Here's a dump of my current assessment of championship and relegation probabilities.

Gold medal

1. FC København 82%


2. FC Midtjylla 8.8%


3. OB Odense 6.1%


4. Aab Aalborg 1.8%


5. Brøndby I.F. 0.7%

Relegation

1. Vejle 79%


2. Silkeborg IF 77%


3. AC Horsens 20%


4. Viborg FF 13%


5. Randers FC 8.5%


6. Esbjerg F.B. 1.0%

Royal League in The Twilight Zone

11th of February is early for football in Denmark. So the roof had been pulled over the stadium to make it kind of an indoor experience. By the onset of second half it was so foggy you couldn't see the spectators farthest away on the other side of the field.

In all honesty I think FC København was the best team on the day and did control the game most of the time. Even though Tobias Linderoth, Jesper Grønkjær, Niclas Jensen and Markus Allbäck had been allowed a day off. But things didn't work out our way. An unbelievably lucky goal for Brøndby on one of their few attacks, a similarly unbelievably disallowed goal scored by Dan Thomassen (Man of the match in my book) etc. A "symmetrical number" of fans: 17,071. A loss of 0-1. All in all a bit weird.

Here's the only main stream media report in English about the game: Intl. Herald Tribune (AP) / Ericsson scores winner for Brondby in Royal League. Did AP miss there's still two games left?

Check out the miserable standings in group 2. Looks bleak eh? But note FC København only played four games and still have 6 points to play for. That's because of schedule re-planning due to Champions League (first priority, fair enough). And because the two best no. 3's also qualify for the quarterfinals all isn't lost yet.

The games to go are Brøndby IF again but away on the 18th and Hammarby at home on the 25th. Both are games with points in them. To not finish worst no. 3 we may just need one win because that's already likely to be better than AIK from group 3. They have just 6 points and a goal deficit of 5. I'd prefer two wins though.

All in all, I estimate the probability of FC København progressing from the group to be 65-70%. Also, consider the only bookmaker with odds on the tournament winner this morning has us and Vålerenga IF for equal favourites at roughly 16% chances.

So, even if it is living on the edge the ruling champions may not be totally lost in the darkness in this tournament that itself could be in it's last year. With the help of a little coffee, probability calculations and a look out the window things appear a lot brighter than they did walking home through the park in the snow and darkness.

Danish championship probabilities

1. FC København 82%


2. FC Midtjylland 9.9%


3. Odense B 5.3%


4. Aab Aalborg 1.6%


5. Brøndby I.F. 0.7%


6. FC Nordsjælland 0.4%


7. Esbjerg f.B. 0.2%


8. Viborg FF 0.1%


9. Silkeborg IF 0.1%


10. Vejle 0.1%


11. AC Horsens 0.1%


12. Randers FC 0.1%

Source: Bookmakers.

The league restarts in about five weeks but because the transfer deadline has passed I guess it's an appropriate time to do a snapshot of the odds.

Champions League Group F forecast

10 days to next game and I can't wait. After winning at home vs Manchester, the group has opened up for a number of interesting outcomes. But how open is it really? I've taken a look at experts and bookmakers assessments.


Probabilities of number of final points for each team. Note: The graph could imply 5^4 = 625 outcomes. Of course there is only 3^4 = 81. Meaning each of four games have three different possible outcomes.

And a quick assessment of each team's probablity of winning the group and ending up second place.

1. Manchester United 86%/8%


2. Celtic 9%/46%


3. Benfica 4%/34%


4. FC København 1%/13%

Who ends up third place will be exciting.

What are people saying? Billy McNeill has spoken on Celtics chances:

vitalfootball.co.uk / McNeill backs Celtic's Euro bid

"I still think Celtic have a very good chance of progressing. If you had said at the start they would have had six points by this stage you would have been happy. Celtic know they'll get no favours from Sir Alex. United will feel they have to come here and take something but my old club rise to the challenge on nights like these. It was disappointing to see them lose against Benfica but the big blow came when Copenhagen beat Manchester United."

stv.tv / McNeill hopeful Rangers can reach UEFA Cup final

I still think Celtic have a great chance. At the start of the league you'd have been happy with Celtic having six points at this stage. It will be difficult as Manchester United are a magnificent team and FC Copenhagen away will be tough. It will be difficult but not impossible for Celtic and I think they'll get enough points. The fans can play their part as they were magnificent against Benfica and the team will respond to that.

Appears to be the same interview, just different journalists typing. BBC got it and there's yet another one at teamtalk.com / Gers can reach Euro final - McNeill.

Finally, the Benfica vs København match background article is ready at UEFA.com.