Quote:
Originally Posted by JaredL
Sorry Ajax guys, ****ing brutal. Run better next year.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bigindiemen
Tnx, hope so. We certainly let the players know they did well and showed them our respect when they arrived back in Amsterdam.
I may write my first blog article in a while with something more detailed, but I did some calculations on just how badly you ran. I'm not sure if you'll like them or not, it's pretty brutal. I was thinking it was like losing on the river because an underpair hit a set, but it's much much worse.
As you may know, I've studied the relationship between goal differential and points and found that goal differential explains points extremely well and as far as I can tell there is no evidence that differences are due to anything other than luck. At the very least I'd say that luck is the major factor when it comes to how many league points you get for a given goal differential.
Using data from the Eredivisie for every season since 1995-1996, the first using the 3-1-0 points system, I estimated how much variance there is as far as how far off teams are a given year in points compared to expectation according to goal differential. Because one team performing above expectation makes another a bit more likely to be below, I also had to estimate how strong that effect is.
According to these calculations, if you take a team with a goal differential of +86 and another at +40, there is a 1 in 4581 chance that the +40 team will get more points than the +86 team. In poker terms, you didn't just lose to a one-outer with one card to come, it's more like you did that twice in a row and then lost a 60/40 as well.
Other than stuff like plane crashes, I think this Ajax team is the unluckiest in the history of football.