Fellow Spurs fans how are we preparing for Sunday? I'm already terrified. Guide me through the storm please.

It's a theory that has yet to be falsified.

"Leicester have great team spirit and momentum" Lots of people would agree with that statement, but measuring it in a quantifiable way is difficult.

if you look at the winner of a 100m race, it's usually the guy with the greater momentum that wins. They each maximum velocity around 2/3rd's of the way which they are unable to maintain, and the winner is usually the guy who slows down the least.

Leicester couldn't have picked an easier schedule before xmas if they tried. They got off to a great start, and have carried that momentum forward. Pretty much every season you get a team with a very soft set of early fixtures that leads to them getting off to a very good start, and they are usually able to carry that on to finish above they expected position.

Newcastle 11/12 was a good example. The only difficult early games were Arsenal (H) and Spurs (H) and both games were drawn. The clustering of wins and losses during that season clearly suggests that momentum, or form, or w/e is a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011%E...esults_summary

My original post:

No, but those are things we can at least see.

This is the problem. Without delving too much into the philosophy of science, if a theory is unfalsifiable then it should be setting off major alarm bells.

experience, eye-test, process of elimination etc etc
basically the same methods we use to come to the conclusion that running fast(er) is a fairly important physical variable.

you can see momentum too
EXTREMELY clearly in tennis

If momentum is not real, then home advantage is not real either, psychologically speaking.

Team with the worst pass completion rate in the PL?

Some of that is matches being fixed though

I've always found home advantage to be a really interesting phenomenon. I've never been fully convinced of any causal explanation as to why it exists to the extent it does.

However, there is a huge difference between the two. You can use the theory of home advantage to predict future results. As BAIDS excellently put it above, momentum is something which people use to explain everything but predict nothing.

I just flipped a coin and got 3 tails in a row so that must mean my coin has great tails momentum.

Go down your local casino, you'll find a whole load of poor people who agree with you.

momentum is a huge factor for (profitable)sports bettors, especially ingame
the "momentum is something which people use to explain everything but predict nothing" is just completely untrue

Yet baids statement is the same if you replace the word momentum with confidence. And confidence is something that exists. Dismissing one way or another is foolish but attempting to identify variables is obviously hard at this point in time. Ask in 20 years

Home advantage is definitely a thing. People perform better in a familiar environment than an unfamiliar one, and there are lots of studies to support this.

I don't really watch enough Tennis to know if it really is momentum you can see, but standard operating procedure for our brains is to try and find causal patterns even if there aren't any there.

Bob's rewarding Oviedo for his impressive workrate and commitment in training after a series of long-term injuries, and Galloway has emerged as a competent option too. Baines has lost a bit of his pace and overall attacking threat, and is no longer an auto selection irrespective of opposition as was the case previously. Even when he plays, ROMELU will be taking penalties so Baines no longer has that in his favour for Fantasy purposes.

I assume it's Fantasy you have in mind, so I suggest you stick with Seamus if you want an Everton defensive option (which I wouldn't necessarily advise, lol). He's hit top form now and will be marauding into the opposition box at will, plus he'll occasionally take free kicks as well as most corners; he's basically undroppable unless he has an injury setback.

your method is flawed because it relies on eye-tests and anecdotal evidence which can't be trusted as humans are prone to seeing patterns in everything, i.e. get confused by variance in small samples

Yeah, I've heard something similar, I guess I'm just a bit sceptical of the extent of the advantage.

I lent my copy of Thinking, Fast and Slow to a friend, but there is quite an interesting bit where he dissects the idea of a 'hot hand' in basketball and basically poo poos it, with studies to support it.

every method of analyzing the value of an undefinable variable is flawed one way or another

nope this means heads is due

...and therein lies the problem of trying to apply statistics to open and closed skills. Closed skills like free-throws in basketball remove any number of extraneous variables that exist in an open skill, and are therefore infinitely easier to measure.

You can perform a closed skill in a familiar environment, repeat it in an unfamiliar environment and measure performance difference. With a supportive crown, a hostile crowd and no crowd. Just flip the independent variable and see how it affects performance.

With an open skill, it's virtually impossible. This is why I'm sceptical about the overuse of analytics in football.

I always wonder how much the actual pitch and its dimensions influence this stuff. Like Barcelona's is huge, for example.

Barca perform better the closer they are to their blood freezer imo

WHL is small. I would guess this is a distinct advantage playing a well-organised high pressing game, although the lack of width also means it's easier to defend.

U21's in 3 hours on a slow, boring Thursday..United v. City..if anyone gives a rat's arse..