Entertainment

Without too much thinking about it...

Preston was an entertaining game, one of my favourites so far, though more so in the second half than the first.
The Cardiff game failed to provide much entertainment at all.

I suspect there's a correlation between perceived entertainment levels and the outcome of the match, which is possibly amplified by the manner of the victory or defeat in question. Coming from behind to beat Preston felt terrific. By contrast, the 3-0 pasting at Cardiff offered very little by way of entertainment.

 

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

FINALLY!!

 

The scores for the Preston game were Reds 77 v Preston 30 Total 107
The Cardiff Game scored Reds 23 v Cardiff 149 Total 172

You are right that many will find it hard to separate entertainment from result. In my humble opinion, that is why a coach who is getting results is always considered entertaining. It is not that his team is particularly entertaining. It is that we are winning. My memory of Mark Robins time with us is not particularly vivid, but as I recall, his results were OK. Nevertheless, he very nearly stopped me from going because I found the football his team played so boring. I am sure other will argue that he was OK because their priorities were different to my own. That is why I wanted an independent measure of entertainment. I did not want my judgement to be clouded by my own biases, or indeed the biases of other people. On the other hand, both the football and the results were wonderful during the first coming of Danny Wilson, and wasn't that preferable to just winning games.

 

The original post is like someone hacked your account to do a Red Rain parody. Trying to quantify entertainment via a points scoring system?

Although that is a hallmark of the neoliberal era- the idea that everything in life can be reduced to values and quantities so that it may be marketised. You see that in football with opta , 'xg' , 'the spreadsheet' and a seemingly ever-increasing obsession with statistics. Pretty bleak to me when entertainment is reduced to that.

 

I like Red Rain's reports, not that I necessarily agree with the conclusions, but the beauty of them is they always have something in them that I hadn't considered.
In this case I think RR has set himself an impossible task...and that is not a criticism, it's a worthy aspiration.
It seems rather like attempting to analyse comedy or beauty or music...it's in the eye or ear of the beholder, the difference being that football has the added complication of geographical affinity or perhaps loyalty....only a poll of neutrals could suggest if it was entertaining and why it was entertaining.

 

Interesting question RR.

To answer it I found the Sheff Wednesday away game entertaining - for obvious reasons. Winning, against a bitter local rival, coming from behind. I also, strangely, found the Wycombe game entertaining also, being able to win games against opponents posing a different threat was hugely satisfying, and significant for our football club.

I suspect that the game that will be top of your scoring system will be the Blackburn away game, where we had what seemed to be nearly 30 attempts on target. However, I did not find this game entertaining. I found this game very frustrating, not just losing the game, but the manner in the defeat. Wasting many many opportunities to score, whilst conceding twice to a team that barely posed a threat. In fact we seemed to be the conquerors of our own downfall that day. So to try and quantify "an entertaining game" is a futile exercise, in my humble opinion, as entertainment is a personal choice and is also in the eyes of the beholder.

EDIT - If you're counting cup games, the Chelsea away game was "entertaining" in that both teams had lots of shots and there were very few cards (the fact Collins should have been red carded is neither here nor there)

 

Was NEVER a red card, that one

 

Thank-you to everyone who has taken the trouble to reply.

The system has given the following results:

Most entertaining Barnsley performance - Barnsley 3 (159) v QPR 0 (48) and Blackburn Rovers 2 (76) v Barnsley 1 (153). That game was also the one in which the losing team scored substantially more entertainment points than the winning team.

Least entertaining Barnsley performance - Barnsley 0 (6) v Luton 1 (3) and Cardiff 3 (149) v Barnsley 0 (23).

The least entertaining performance by an opponent - Barnsley 0 (6) v Luton 1 (3) and Birmingham 1 (23) v Barnsley 2 (86)

The most entertaining game was - Barnsley 2 (115) v Bristol City 2 (131) Total (246) and Blackburn Rovers 2 (76) v Barnsley 1 (153) Total (229)

The least entertaining game was - Barnsley 0 (6) v Luton 1 (3) Total 9 and Barnsley 1 (41) v Watford 0 (31) Total (72)

I include myself in all the following conclusions, so please do not jump down my neck.

This process has been interesting in that it has confirmed to me that entertainment has little bearing on the enjoyment that the committed fan gets from watching his football team. Enjoyment comes from victory, but also from the circumstances of victory. Enjoyment is an emotional reaction to the game and the events that took place within the game. That emotional reaction changes with the importance that attaches to the result. Earlier in the thread, SuperTyke confused his emotional reaction to the result of a game, with the entertainment that a game offered to an uncommitted observer, and his reaction showed how hard it is for the committed fan to separate his emotional response from the logical one. The biased fan has less interest in what might interest the neutral (the number of attempts on goal, near misses, attractive play). He is interested in those things, but only when his side is the one that produces them. Does that inherent bias make the average committed fan a good observer of the sport? I do not think that it does.

It was my intention to include entertainment scores as a part of Minority Report. However, after the comments that my straw poll has garnered, I have decided that I will not. There is clearly not enough interest. I have enjoyed the exercise, and it has been interesting. Thank-you again to those who took part.

 

Have you considered adjusting your scoring system to include a home/away/neutral weighting?

In the Cardiff game above, despite it's high entertainment score, only Cardiff fans and neutrals would have derived any entertainment. And I'd argue that Cardiff fans would have been more entertained than neutrals. If I'm watching as a neutral, I generally feel less entertained by a match that is heavily one-sided. Unless I'm seeing a local rival getting a good walloping.

And what about the "wow factor"? An unexpected away win at QPR was more satisfying than the same scoreline elsewhere. Ditto giantkilling cup exploits.

 

Thank you Sigmund Freud.

 

reds goal +5 (x THE FACTOR OF 1.76 if outside the box)
Crap ref +7
Dodgy Pen in our favour +9
Comedy own goal +6
Opponent goal ~3
Fight +4
Mass brawl +12
Red Card opponent +6
10 plus corners +7.4
Dodgy Pen against us +8

SUB TOTAL of above

if I’m pissed when watching I multiply the sub total by 1.29

If it’s windy at Oakwell (above 10 knots) I divide the final total by 0.78


combined TOTAL = entertainment rating

 

The most entertaining games were those that both sides scored high entertainment points. The total points accumulated in the Cardiff game made it only the 4th most entertaining game of the season to date, and that was because Barnsley contributed so little to the game.

 

I gather you are not impressed.

 

What about naked female mud wrestling at half-time?

 

The only reason I didn't turn over the channel was because Laura wouldn't let me.

 

Opposition keeper slips taking goal kick +1
Referee knocked over +1
Appearance of Southend physio +3
Streaker (same sex) +2
Streaker (opposite sex) +10
Floodlight failure -6
Peppa Pig thrown on pitch +500

 

I use a similar system to mark my sexual partners but they always have the possession but no entertainment and I usually score single numbers. But I'm a trier and biased so I always add misen a few points on. I keep a record in a jotter under bed and fill it in when they're pretending to be asleep or when I hear the door slam when they said they were just going to the bog.

 

I used to mark women out for how dirty they were over looks.

 

It's Ying and Yang

Dirty = 1980s Wimbledon, not much to look at and rough as **** but you'll always get a result

Looks = Late1990s Arsenal, pretty on the eye but no real naughty side.

Both = us 96-97, pure porn, beautiful to look at but could get pretty ruff if required

 

Whilst I too believe RRs contributions to have value, my issue is that his ‘analysis’ falls into the same trap as most amateur analysis.

He sets arbitrary success criteria, and then treats them as concrete goals. We could beat every team in the league and with no sense of self awareness he could argue that we’d failed spectacularly.

But it does feed debate