Minority Report v Birmingham City

I think a few people on here have already forgotten that last week at QPR in the first half we were almost unplayable. Surely that’s cause for optimism. Acorns, oaks etc.

 

Football is a simple game made difficult by footballers

 

I don’t agree with personal abuse red rain, to be fair I’ve actually seen little sign of that on this thread, but you do take some stick you don’t warrant at times on these posts. No need for it, I agree.

But that statement above is a bit rich, given you spent two or three seasons writing all of your posts with an air of superiority and with a massive tone of condescension running through them; offending a good number of very reasonable posters on here with your tone, and refusing point blank to accept that it was happening despite people pointing it out - often very softly and gently. We were all just abusing you then as well. You never acknowledged you were doing it - but your tone did change. I acknowledged that at the time and thanked you for adjusting.

As for this thread, it is only fair to point out when you appear inconsistent in your treatment of managers in what you write, indeed it is also fair to ask what the indexes are all about and what the scores mean/how you derive them.

It is also very fair to question the entertainment score you afforded Birmingham yesterday when they played in a fashion very akin to us under Ismael last season, a way you derided and which you still say you don’t like. That is more than fine - but how can you find Birmingham entertaining doing so but not your own side when they did? They were hugely direct, lumped long and took long throws; they just weren’t as good at it as we were, didn’t have the energy to press as we did. If anything much less effective and entertaining you’d argue, and yet you appeared to rate them highly, or at least more than you did Ismael’s Barnsley, going on your index score.

As for giving Schopp time, of course we must. However it isn’t an excuse to say he’s missing a lot of players; there doesn’t appear to be a plan, a tactic. Yes we are missing key players, in particular Morris, but I am less than convinced that a bit more physicality and presence up front improves us all that much. There is no intensity, at times the passing is laboured and almost lackadaisical. He clearly wants to return to playing out from the back, but that draws both the defence and midfield into our half, isolating the front three massively. It’s not a tweak to last year to improve, it’s tearing it up and starting again. We don’t have the players to play in that way successfully nor the time or money to implement it.

As much as pretty passing football seems to be the in-thing, it isn’t as pleasing to me as winning games. There is nothing wrong with clearing your lines, or putting a ball into a channel when there’s no ball to feet on, so long as you get up behind it sharply and gain territory if not immediate possession.

We are not good enough to tika-taka our way to even mid-table. If we try all season to pass round everyone, than it will be just like the Struber survival season - which let’s be honest we absolutely got away with - everyone will say we’re one of the best sides they’ve beaten.

We’ve got quite a few points on the board this season. That is a positive. However we have to be realistic and accept that we have conceded a few goals less than we maybe ought to have - our defensive record in terms of goals conceded is flattering compared to actual performances: we’ve got away with a few.

We are also toothless up front; yes we are missing a lot of players up there, but there’s not a lot happening behind them either.

The jury is still out. But I’ve not been impressed by Schopp so far - there is no plan B - but it isn’t even that obvious what plan A is. And I think the players are struggling to understand too.

 

I was not especially a fan of the tactics but as Wesf Brom will demonstrate this season they are very difficult to overcome if you have decent set piece delivery.

 

There are a lot of points in this post and I hope you will forgive me if I do not answer all of them.

The Entertainment Index and Performance Index are not my opinion. They are both arrived at by multiplying the important statistics from each game by a list of multipliers that are supposed to reflect the importance of each statistic to the eventual result, goals obviously being the most important. The statistics are taken from the BBC. Because all that I have done is apply the maths, the Indexes do not reflect my own personal opinion. Effectively they condense the various statistics into a single number for each team and for each index, thereby producing numbers that I have had practically nothing to do with. That is why I have separated the indexes from my own personal opinion of the merits for our play under Ismael. Ismael scored quite well under the system last season, and I was forced to accept that my opinion of our play under Ismael was just that. My opinion.

Of course, scoring just our games tells me about us, but I can only put that into context if I score all Championship games. I do not need to attend all the games because I am using independent figures and a fixed scoring system. That has turned what was a fairly quick job last season, into a labour of love this season, even with a spreadsheet. It has come to the fore this week because we have reached the end of the month, and I intended to show comparative tables with the rest of the clubs in the Championship, with a league table to compare our entertainment values and performance values with the rest of the league after 5 games. It does not read well, but as we both agree, there are reasons to believe our scores will improve when we sort out our problems. I do not believe that Schopp is happy with the 3-4-3 system, after all, he has never used it before. However, he inherited a team that had seen some success by using it, and I think he was fearful of changing too much too soon. However, like you, I cannot see how a hybrid system can be made to work successfully, and I think that he will change to one of his favoured systems during the International break.

 

and good players

 

Sorry but the squad did not have limited talent.
Compared to who.

 

Where do the multipliers come from? Are they essentially your own weightings or have they come from somewhere else?

Also, do you take all of the stats into account or is a select list?

Would it be possible just as a one-off, to show the scoring system in detail for yesterday's game - just to illustrate things?

Thanks in advance.

PS Did you know Anders Buaas has another album out? "Tarot" I think it's called.

 

Quite reasonably argued. I'm still in patience mode at the moment. There are been some glimmers of potential already with this team yet as you say there's also a weakness with them that looks like we are potentially easier to pick off than last year. I'm still undecided about Schopp and am willing to give him srveral more weeks yet....

 

If the indexes are purely stats based then it does answer the question about Birmingham’s rating and your view of the style of play not matching up. Thanks for that.

 

As Val showed with us you don’t necessarily need the best players if you have a clear defined system. I would say player for player Bournemouth were the best team in the division last season but they had no identity or plan.

 

Lies,damn lies and statistics

 

First the important stuff.

Yes I have listened to Tarot. It is available on Progstreaming. Whilst the playing is good, nothing on there quite has as much appeal as the CD I recommended, in my opinion of course.

As for the Entertainment Index/Performance Index..... I never thought to check what this BBS would do with formatted files produced on WORD. Clearly, I should have suspected something would go wrong considering what it does to the formatting on Minority Report, but it never crossed my mind. Suffice to say, it messes tables up and makes them unreadable. Unless someone has the answer, I'm afraid I must keep this stuff to myself.

The multipliers to arrive at the Entertainment Index are as follows Barnsley scores first:

49%/51% Possession - 1 point for each 1% +/- 50%
25%/35% Territory - 1 point for each 1% =/- 50% (actually it is slightly different because I use only possession in the final thirds)
2/2 Corners - +1 point each
10/11 Fouls - -1 point each
2/4 Yellow cards - -5 points each
0/0 Red Cards - -10 points each
7/14 Shots at Goal - +5 points each
2/4 Shots on Target - +5 points each (10 points in total)
1/1 Goals - +10 point each - (20 points in total)
I also have a system of bonus points for the following although none were earned yesterday
Hat-trick +/- 10 points
Winning goal in added time +/- 10 points
Winning from being behind
1 goal - +/- 10 points
2 goals - +/- 30 points
3 goals - +/- 50 points
penalty save - -/+ 10 points

Although the scores finished level, Birmingham were 2 points batter on possession, 10 points better on territory. We were level on corners and Barnsley were 1 point better off for fouls. However, Birmingham had more shots (35 points) and more shots on target 10 points.

Barnsley scored 32 points and Birmingham 77 points making a match total of 109 points. The highest scoring team yesterday was Fulham (166 points) and the highest scoring match Fulham v Stoke City (229 points).

The performance index uses the same data and the same multipliers, but it recognises that a positive score for 1 team is a negative score for the other for all statistics. That means that the match will always score zero. A negative total score recognises that the team was dominated by its opponent, and vice versa. The level of that domination is reflected in the total scores. Barnsley scored -40 because according to the statistics, Birmingham dominated the game. The highest scores of the weekend were at Millwall, where the home team scored 126 against Blackpool.

 

In my opinion, from my limited viewing live match action (home games only) the teams with the better players could continue to play in the way that suited them. For example, Norwich continued to play their possession based game, even though they were behind for long periods. They were confident enough in their ability and their system of play, and never felt they needed to change it. For most of the season, that philosophy was adopted by most of our visitors, even the ones that did not have a squad that was superior to ours. Many of them went away defeated, and the reason (in my opinion) was that they did not change their tactics in order to mitigate the effect of our long ball into space and our tireless press. In the final six weeks of the season, the message got through and more teams adopted a pragmatic approach. They played us at our own game. Defenders hit the ball back at us long at the earliest opportunity, and our press was pointless. So yes, I agree with you, but only up to a point. It is important that the coach adopts the right game plan, even if he has the better players.

 

Thanks for the detailed reply. Much appreciated and an interesting read. Clearly it's a labour of love!

I've not had chance to check out Tarot yet, but really like The Witches Of Finnmark. I ended up buying all 3 volumes on the strength of your recommendation.
I've also come across some recordings of Porcupine Tree concerts, including one of their first public appearance. If you've not heard these before, they're available via the Bandcamp app (or possible the website?).

Thanks again.

 

Porcupine Tree were at the height of their popularity when I joined the Classic Rock Society, and they were heavily plugged both in the magazine and by the membership in general. On the strength of their advice, I bought Lightbulb Sun, and loved it. I followed up with Deadwing and In Absentia. Steven Wilson played the CRS a few times, but I do not think I ever saw Porcupine Tree (my mind is beginning to fog about these things). I was absolutely gutted when they folded back in 2010, and although the individual members are still playing in other bands, I do not think that they have produced anything as good as they produced together..

 

Reading the debate with interest.

One point I would like to raise is that the Possession part of the performance index appears to be flawed. As we know, using Valerien's system football games can be won with 29% or 30% possession.

 

That may explain why RR only includes possession in the final third? Personally I think there's the potential to be entertained anywhere on the pitch, although obviously the final third is where the good stuff happens.

 

that's the territory stat. there's still the possession +/- 1% either side of 50%

 

One key thing you seem unable to accept is that your entertainment index score IS your opinion as it was unilaterally created by yourself based on what YOU find entertaining. I can see no logical reason why a player recieving a yellow card means the match was less entertaining than if the referee had decided the foul didn't warrant a card or how a team can be considered more entertaining by passing the ball between the two centre backs for 90 minutes than by trying killer passes down the wings that don't quite come off etc. These are all opinions, mine and yours differ and so does everyone else's but you simply have to accept and acknowledge that your entertainment index is purely YOUR entertainment and doesn't reflect what the vast majority of fans necessarily find entertaining