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Hi all,

This thread will, hopefully, become a little more than it starts as after a while, so bear with it for a time.

Some of you will be familiar with my (probably) unique method of assessing the strength of opposition faced by X club over a period of Y games. It's commonly referred to as The Ferrarilover Scale and it makes occasional appearances on this very board.
Well, I've been at it again and I have devised a method of mathematically comparing strikers. It works across all divisions (from the Conference to the Premier League, with universal conversions for foreign divisions) and allows comparison between strikers at all levels.
Essentially, it's very simple, we take the number of games played in each division and apply some basic maths. We do the same with goals scored and then divide the two resultant numbers by each other. The numbers themselves represent nothing except a figure for comparison. The maths is based upon the method used by MLB to calculate Slugging Percentage, so it has provenance. Unlike in Slugging Pct, here, the lower the score, the better. While there is no theoretical minimum or maximum score, but we will explore the real world limits a little later.

On another thread, we are discussing Dick Logan, so I started by comparing he and our present two.
The useful thing about my system is that it allows us to compare these players despite their having played different numbers of games and scored different numbers of goals, but importantly, across very different divisions.
Accordingly, we see that Ryan Jarvis has a Ferrarilover Goalscorer Scale (FGS) score of 7.24. This is in comparison to Rene Howe who scores 3.88. The numbers are directly comparable, but the reader must accept that the underlying realities of football mean that it is not necessarily correct to apply the numbers to any other measure of a player. For example, we see here that Rene is 1.86x as "deadly" as Jarvo, lb for lb. However, to merely point to, say, the number of goals each has scored this season and saying that Rene has scored 5x the number of League goals as Jarvo, the FGS is faulty, is, in itself, not correct.

So, where does Logan fit in. Well, across his whole career, but including only league matches (in order to remove the unfair advantage held by clubs more liable to play cup games, such as Premier League teams) he has scored a total on the FGS of 5.21. This makes him approximately 1.39x as deadly as Jarvo, but only 0.74x as deadly Rene.

For comparison, we see that Adam Le Fondre scores 2.67, Alan Shearer scored 1.87 across his illustrious career and the enigmatic Lionel Messi comes out with a score of 1.03, which pretty much suggests that the lowest score possible in the real world is somewhere around 1.00.

Hopefully, the FGS will prove a useful tool in deciding just which of the strikers available to ML we should prefer to sign.

Matt.

You really need to get a girlfriend.

It's a good read Matt and i don't mind a bit of Mathematics, after all, Maths underpins the very foundation of why we are here but i've got to admit to not understanding it a great deal mate. If Messi is 1.03 then what score did Jamal Easter get? 565,264.8!

jonnyfive wrote:You really need to get a girlfriend.

Sorry about the noise, my irony meter tends to make quite a din when it goes off the scale.

Dammit! I thought I'd be able to do JE, but sadly, FGS Mk 1.0.0 doesn't allow for it. Suffice to say, Andy, that your guess might not be too far wrong.

Matt.

wow!and to think I use to think ferrarilover must be some nerd with to much time on his hands sat in his little box room at home.How wrong am I

This has to be the most inane post in the history of posts. In my humble opinion you really need to be doing other activities on a Saturday evening. if I had to apply my trade to your post my analogy would be "lives at home, aged between 20-24 drives a low grade car very few real friend (defined not net friend) and holds down a mundane job and especially single (thats a given). mate you clearly need to get out there and interact with humans, because based upon your post, it looks like home life is making you go stir crazy.

torquay nerd wrote:This has to be the most inane post in the history of posts. In my humble opinion you really need to be doing other activities on a Saturday evening. if I had to apply my trade to your post my analogy would be "lives at home, aged between 20-24 drives a low grade car very few real friend (defined not net friend) and holds down a mundane job. mate you clearly need to get out there and interact with humans, because based upon your post, it looks like home life is making you go stir crazy.

I thought I held the record for that?

The post is a bit odd i admit but so am i so i defend Matts right to post such stuff. At least he can spell and has a vocabulary bigger than most. I don't know Matt well at all but if he has no friends that's his life and shouldn't be slagged off for it. Inanity is what makes the world go round nowadays. It's on our TV every day with reality programmes, manufactured pop music who don't sing anything other than things like 'i need you baby' and singing about lovin' a bird all the time. Why doesn't someone make a metal song about fish? I love fish and i'm sure many other people do so why sing about love and banal inane songs about the same gay sh*te all the time? Like Lingy, it's predictable, boring and will end up on a car boot sale for a quid in a years time.

I'm not blessed with a million friends like some facebook users but the ones i see i'm happy with. I just have an odd sense of humour and that is the reason for my inanity but if Matt wishes to undertake rigorous study of analytical statisical data in his spare time then fine. I'd rather that than some boneheads who spend their entire weekend washing and polishing their chav wagons only to spend the next 5 weeknights doing wheelspins in B&Q car park. THAT'S INANE!

So what works for one doesn't work for all of us and we shouldn't be hammered for it. I read maps on the sh*tter, am i inane? I post matchday threads about three weeks before the game takes place, am i inane? I can't drink liquid with bits in it, I don't take photographs of my dinner and post it on facebook, see that's soemthing inane that i DON'T do. So there are pros and cons and if it offends you then don't respond to it. I respond to most things that get on my nerves because i'm like that, some people snigger and think 'tosser' and move on with no further action necessary.

Just to respond to the 'racist term removed' thing, i have no idea what that is about as i would never post anything racist or have racist thoughts as i'm not racist so don't know what that's about. Got it now , i put a word that rhymes with digger but with an s before to mean a term of secret laughter and it has omitted it and called me a f*cking racist!!! Snig*ger, that's the one.

A more inane thread than Matts could be entitled: I AM TORQUAY FAN AND I'M IN LOVE WITH LING AND HIS AMAZINGLY POSITIVE FOOTBALL. IT'S A BREATH OF FRESH AIR AND I DON'T KNOW WHY FANS ARE COMPLAINING.

That's a good one.

Good work- thanks for sharing
It would be interesting to see our top 10 strikers on the FGS ratings for the past 20 years...
If you have any trending capability in the model to see how FGS is changing over time, that would be most helpful for ML
Sadly, I have also been known to spend long hours with excel looking at endless data and attempting to make sense of it, and I am left to reflect that all models are wrong, some are useful

I even went to the trouble to say that this thread would be a little vacuous initially, but would prove useful as a data analysis tool as time went on. If you can't keep up, Torquay Nerd, maybe just let the grown ups talk for now.
Wisconsin will testify that data analysis is not particularly thrilling, but it is tremendously useful in determining the relative value of things which seem, at first glance, to be incomparable. If it doesn't interest you, no one is forcing you to either read the thread, or indeed be on the board at all. If you aren't sure how the Internet works, maybe ask your carer to show you?
As to the idea that you have a 'trade', if you're going to lie, lie convincingly. 5 minutes with the board search engine will show you up as 90% wrong.
Interestingly, I once worked out the address of a member's place of work (which was in a foreign country, to make it even harder), based on nothing more than one completely obscure post (alright, 'interestingly' might be unfair =D )

Matt.

ferrarilover wrote:I even went to the trouble to say that this thread would be a little vacuous initially, but would prove useful as a data analysis tool as time went on. If you can't keep up, Torquay Nerd, maybe just let the grown ups talk for now.Wisconsin will testify that data analysis is not particularly thrilling, but it is tremendously useful in determining the relative value of things which seem, at first glance, to be incomparable. If it doesn't interest you, no one is forcing you to either read the thread, or indeed be on the board at all. If you aren't sure how the Internet works, maybe ask your carer to show you?
As to the idea that you have a 'trade', if you're going to lie, lie convincingly. 5 minutes with the board search engine will show you up as 90% wrong.
Interestingly, I once worked out the address of a member's place of work (which was in a foreign country, to make it even harder), based on nothing more than one completely obscure post (alright, 'interestingly' might be unfair =D )

Matt The n00b.

And ME!

Ferrarilover: Im not impressed with your thought that I must have some kind of mental illness due to the fact I state your post is inane. surely the idea of any web based fans board to to post something and get a spectrum of responses, just because it may not fit well with your idea of utopia does not mean it has no credence. your respone is indicitive of how you seem to operate on this site.

As a foot note: Anyone who posts over 3800 posts in two years clearly has far too much to say for themselves and far too much time on their hands. as for my "trade" I am really great at working people out. stop the abuse and embrase everyones differing opinions, and remember your manners.

kind regards

How does this method work regarding appearances as a substitute?

Does say an appearance as a sub coming on after 85mins count as one game played?

torquay nerd wrote:Ferrarilover: Im not impressed with your thought that I must have some kind of mental illness due to the fact I state your post is inane.

You ask me to accept this..

torquay nerd wrote: surely the idea of any web based fans board to to post something and get a spectrum of responses

And then post this.

You have posted some old (completely inaccurate) tripe about me and I have given my response to it. Just because it does not fit well with your idea of Utopia, does not mean it has no credence. Now, where have I heard that before?

torquay nerd wrote: I am really great at working people out.

No, you're not.

Next.

Matt.