Posts Tagged tottenham
The battle for fourth place
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 6th, 2010
While most eyes were firmly focused on Man City vs Spurs last night, a remarkable battle was taking place 200 miles further north for the same place in the Scottish Premiership. Unlike the English battle, which ensured ‘arry team has broken into the previously exclusive top four, the battle in Scotland was for Europa cup place and infinity more exciting and in fact totally remarkable.
UK users can watch the highlights here: -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/scot_prem/8658858.stm
The match ended 6-6 and that included a saved penalty! The last goal in the match was worthy of squaring such an amazing game. As soon as the result flashed in I was scrambling through my data to find out if there had ever been a 6-6 draw in the top divisions before. When I was young I was lucky enough to watch a 5-5 draw but 6-6 seemed a virtually impossible result. Just seeing twelve goals in a match was remote according to the stats. If you are optimistic then it would be around a 1 in 20,000 chance, but on average it would take nearly 70,000 matches before you would see 12 in one match, the chance of 6-6 would be even remoter.
My correct score spreadsheet didn’t show a single one so I had to dig around to find another. From what I can find , there have been two previous 6-6 draws. Leicester and Arsenal drew 6-6 in April 1930 in the top division, and Charlton drew 6-6 with Middlesbrough in October 1960 in the second division. Charlton had three other matches that season with six or more goals. So unless somebody can inform me otherwise in the many tens of thousands of intervening matches there have been no 6-6 draws. The mean return time appears to be 30-50 years for the entirety of top flight football.
I feel sorry for the Motherwell fans who left at 6-2 down, they just missed a piece of football history.
1234 & 9-1
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on November 23rd, 2009
Amazing result from Spurs on Sunday. Not often you get to see 10 goals in a match, especially nine of the them in the second half. That said, Spurs did get a 6-4 against Reading on 29/12/2007. In the same season we also had Portsmouth vs Reading on the 29/9/07, which produced a 7-4 scoreline. I have actually watched a 10 goal match. It was Southampton vs Coventry, which Southampton won 8-2. Some time ago though, that was back in 1984.
1234, where does that come into it? Well according to my model, that was the theoretical odds that there would be ten goals in this match. Checking my database that turns out to not be far from what what we have seen in recent years.
Personally, I think it would be fun to have odds above 1000 on the exchanges and also more correct scores to choose from, at least something starting with 4′s would be good. Somehow I don’t think we will be seeing any 9-1 markets any time soon though.