Concentrating on facts rather than transfermarkt conjecture
Players out: Leon Cort, Cedric Evina, Mark Gower, Andy Hughes, Bradley Jordan (all released), Ben Hamer (Leicester, free), Dorian Dervite (Bolton, free), Kevin Feely (Newport, free), Danny Hollands (Portsmouth, free), Richard Wood (Rotherham, free), Adebayo Azeez (AFC Wimbledon, free), Danny Green (MK Dons, free), Diego Poyet (West Ham, compensation), Jordan Cook (Walsall, free), Bradley Pritchard (Leyton Orient, free)
Of the 15 let go, 3 were first team regulars (Hamer, Devitte, Poyet) and of those 3 only really Poyet was a nailed on certainty with plenty of doubts raised about the other two. Two were credible squad players (Court, Wood). The rest were not close to the first team (or in Danny greens case, were but we'd rather he wasn't)
Players in: Zak Ansah (Arsenal, free), Kurtis Cumberbatch (Watford, free), Yoni Buyens (Standard Liege, loan), Igor Vetokele (FC Copenhagen, undisclosed), Franck Moussa (Coventry, free), Andre Bikey (Panetolikos, free), Tal Ben Haim (Standard Liege, free), Johann Berg Gudmundsson (AZ Alkmaar, free), George Tucudean (Standard Liege, free)
Add to that list Osbourne along with Pope and Gomez who seem to be very much in the first team mix.
On the incoming players, I doubt Ansah and Cumberbatch have been signed for the first team yet. I expect the other 10 to be in and around the first team squad. so we've got a net 5 more players competing for the first team.
Whether Osbourne, Ben Haim, Bikey, Gomez, Buyens are adequate replacements for Hamer, DeVitte, Cort, Wood and Poyet remains to be seen. But I don't think you'll get anyone arguing that Pope, Vetokele, Moussa, Gudmundsson and Tucudean are not a step up from the rest.
Ergo we've a stronger squad than last year.
Anything less than mid table will be a disapointment imo
not sure why you are having a go at serious_red as his point is a reasonable one. that is, the analysis by the DM has ignored the overall improvement of the side compared to others.
also using transfermarket isn't necessarily a bad idea as it it is a data set that applies to all players and teams in england. over time such a data set will become normalised because the figures will be adjusted to correspond to all other figures in the set. so it doesn't matter whether the figures are accurate individually, because, for most part, the are relative and will show a reasonable picture of where everyone stands. there will be some bias and outliers, but that doesn't matter, that just reflects real life of some transfer fees being out of line with the player. as far as i can see, seriously_red was not saying that the figures are correct, he was saying that there is correlation, which is true.
Yes, but any damn fool, can probably have a good stab, at ranking, where the teams will finish & this for the most part is obviously based on the value of the players, more than anything else. I fully expect Cardiff & Norwich to be near the top as their players values will be high and Blackpool to be near the bottom. It's not rocket science. Yes, we all agree that The Mail's comment about Charlton is crass.
Transfermarkt is simply a proxy for player values in the championship nothing more, nothing less. The values stated last season bear a remarkable correlation to the final league position - When two variables are correlated, I mean that knowledge of one enables you to predict the other with known accuracy.
Textbooks often classify different strengths of correlation. For example, a coefficient of .90 or above will be said to be strong, correlations of .70 to .89 will be said to be moderate. In this case the correlation was -.749 or moderate. There are two other obvious factors affecting results - club management ability and lady luck! Let us hope both are on our side for the next couple of seasons.
Hopefully you can see on the image attached the obvious link between the values and league position together with some outliers.
There are some interesting comments and questions posted today:
1) What Transfermarkt does not do is predict whether an individual player will settle or play to their potential - the correlation is with the overall squad value. 2) Neither will it predict head to head matches with any accuracy. 3) The point I am making in relation to CAFC and the transformation of our squad is that we are really not going to miss all those 20+ loan and out of contract players who transfermarkt valued at £500K or less. 4) And for those who asked about the lowest valued clubs are as follows: Blackpool £3.5m, Brentford £7m, Rotherham £9.2m, Birmingham £9.8m, Wednesday £9.9m, Ipswich £10.4m and Millwall £11.2m... There are then five clubs, Charlton, Brighton, Bournemouth, Huddersfield and Leeds all valued at £13-16M. Then a big jump to the top 11 clubs starting with Reading and Wolves valued at £23M and working up to more than double that.
5) Burnley and Derby both had squads valued at around £20m last season which suggests that is a reasonable bar to set as the minimum to compete in the top ten. They built these squads by developing their own players and borrowing £1m+ players from the Premier league. It's not rocket science, it's what CAFC need to do and it is clear that this is what Duchatelet and Peeters are doing right now.
6) Of course @tricky a lot has to be down to how players settle and the squad gels - perhaps some of these signings of ours will only play 5 games? But I think it highly unlikely that they will all fail especially given that Peeters has worked with some before.
This is the Duchatelet model in action and I hope it works as well as Watford's links to Europe have done over the last couple of years.
Interesting that the club last season with the most similar strategy to us, Watford, is one of the biggest underperformers according to their average player valuation in the chart you provide. Perhaps hinting that value isn't immediately transferable across countries as I suggested.
Anyway, I know the point you are trying to make. I just think you are embellishing to try and "prove" that RD's strategy is the golden ticket to success. Perhaps it is, but if it is then it will be because the players have provided value in the pitch and not on a website.
Truth is how can anyone accurately predict how we will perform this year whether it be journalists, fake statistics websites or us as fans. 6-7 starters have changed from last year and replaced with players from foreign leagues or youngsters. That is part of the reason I am so anxious for the season to start as we could finish anywhere from 6th to 19th and it wouldn't surprise me
This year is going to completely come down to how good an evaluator of talent is RD's scouts as well as BP. I discount the previous January window as RD had just purchased the club and there was all kinds of transitions taking place, let alone that it is extremely hard at that time given only overpriced mediocre talent is usually available.
Perhaps why a lot of people are writing you off is as a result of the somewhat surprising decision to replace Riga with Peeters despite doing a fantastic job, what did he do to deserve that? Did he refuse your owners grand plans to bring in players from Liege etc or was it simply because he didn't think he could take you to the next level? Whatever it was, it bemused many people.
Next up is the selection of signings you've made recently, a lot of upheaval has occurred and that doesn't always signify improvement (look at Palace under Holloway and his 16 new signings!). That, along with the fact you have a huge amount of players now with very little experience of playing in England could have a detrimental effect on your league position, the lad from Copenhagen could also be a rough diamond so who knows?
All I can safely say is that I'm surprised how content the vast majority seem to be on this board, your academy has been a great source of talent in recent years yet your owner and manager seem intent on scouring the foreign market excessively to achieve success and I wouldn't be overly pleased if that happened at CPFC.
Good luck for the season, if we don't start signing some players soon, we might see you sooner rather than later!
To be fair we only have only signed 4 players that have never played in the championship wouldn't say that was a vast amount and our youth players will still be very much involved in the squad including Harriot ,Cousins, Gomez, Fox and Solly.
In this case the correlation was -.749 or moderate.
So even you admit the correlation is only at best moderate yet you continue to claim that it "proves" something
And that is after you have somehow boosted it from your first claim of a 60% correlation (on 1 July) which by you own admission is even lower that moderate ie no significant correlation at all.
You haven't explained how or why you boosted the correlation from 60% to 70% but I suspect that you realised the correlation was too weak so had to create another figure.
Regardless it is a meaningless. Football is played by non-statistical human beings with real lives and issues and is subject to luck, injuries, good or bad refereeing, loss of form, settling in periods, good management, bad coaching etc etc.
Which is why Polish Pete statistically was a better option that Yann but three human football coaches just didn't rate him and he has now been shipped, unheralded and unannounced, back to the low countries.
Back in the real world we have a POTENTIALLY strong squad but so do 22 of the other teams in the division. We have POTENTIALLY exciting players like Moussa who can score a wonder goal one week but disappear the next, we have other managers and squads working out how to stop Igor and kick Johan B Gud.
It is the uncertainty and unpredictable nature of sport and football in particular that make it so exciting, so frustrating, so glorious.
I feel sorry for those that have to use statistics and algorithms to get their kicks, they really are missing out on the fun.
It could probably be statistically argued that before the 2006/2007 we on paper, considerably strengthened the value of our squad with Sorondo, Walton, JFH, Faye, Traore, Reid & Diawara coming in for the loss of Jeffers, Perry, Bothroyd & Euell. Certainly the spend at £11.2m far out weighed the incoming fees £300k.
Contrast this to our best ever season under Curbishley when we spent £1.5m (half of which was on a back up GK) & finished 7th.
In the latter case we had a manager who knew the team inside out and a settled squad built up steadily over a number of seasons.
In the former, a manager out of his depth struggling with a squad of strangers & arguably not given enough time to get out of the mess he created.
Perhaps why a lot of people are writing you off is as a result of the somewhat surprising decision to replace Riga with Peeters despite doing a fantastic job, what did he do to deserve that? Did he refuse your owners grand plans to bring in players from Liege etc or was it simply because he didn't think he could take you to the next level? Whatever it was, it bemused many people.
Next up is the selection of signings you've made recently, a lot of upheaval has occurred and that doesn't always signify improvement (look at Palace under Holloway and his 16 new signings!). That, along with the fact you have a huge amount of players now with very little experience of playing in England could have a detrimental effect on your league position, the lad from Copenhagen could also be a rough diamond so who knows?
All I can safely say is that I'm surprised how content the vast majority seem to be on this board, your academy has been a great source of talent in recent years yet your owner and manager seem intent on scouring the foreign market excessively to achieve success and I wouldn't be overly pleased if that happened at CPFC.
Good luck for the season, if we don't start signing some players soon, we might see you sooner rather than later!
Perhaps why a lot of people are writing you off is as a result of the somewhat surprising decision to replace Riga with Peeters despite doing a fantastic job, what did he do to deserve that? Did he refuse your owners grand plans to bring in players from Liege etc or was it simply because he didn't think he could take you to the next level? Whatever it was, it bemused many people.
Next up is the selection of signings you've made recently, a lot of upheaval has occurred and that doesn't always signify improvement (look at Palace under Holloway and his 16 new signings!). That, along with the fact you have a huge amount of players now with very little experience of playing in England could have a detrimental effect on your league position, the lad from Copenhagen could also be a rough diamond so who knows?
All I can safely say is that I'm surprised how content the vast majority seem to be on this board, your academy has been a great source of talent in recent years yet your owner and manager seem intent on scouring the foreign market excessively to achieve success and I wouldn't be overly pleased if that happened at CPFC.
Good luck for the season, if we don't start signing some players soon, we might see you sooner rather than later!
Have you got the dosh together to deal with the inevitable problem of Selhurst Park or a new stadium? Grounds don't come cheap and many teams who have had to face the expense of that change such as Derby, Leicester, Sunderland, Boro, Bolton, Stoke, Southampton and others have not been able to sustain a consistent run in the premier league at the same time as sorting out their stadia, although you could argue that once they are sorted, the future then looks more secure. Crystal Palace are doing brilliantly at the moment, but sooner or later you have to find £130million or so you need. The Amex cost Brighton £93million, and even with the recent financial boost for Crystal Palace those kinds of numbers are serious ones.
Not too weird when you consider that is probably Nigel Farage posting from his holiday in Bucharest...making it 7.13am for him, just having a cheese roll breakfast with his pals from the Romanian Supporters Club.
In this case the correlation was -.749 or moderate.
So even you admit the correlation is only at best moderate yet you continue to claim that it "proves" something
And that is after you have somehow boosted it from your first claim of a 60% correlation (on 1 July) which by you own admission is even lower that moderate ie no significant correlation at all.
You haven't explained how or why you boosted the correlation from 60% to 70% but I suspect that you realised the correlation was too weak so had to create another figure.
Regardless it is a meaningless. Football is played by non-statistical human beings with real lives and issues and is subject to luck, injuries, good or bad refereeing, loss of form, settling in periods, good management, bad coaching etc etc.
Which is why Polish Pete statistically was a better option that Yann but three human football coaches just didn't rate him and he has now been shipped, unheralded and unannounced, back to the low countries.
Back in the real world we have a POTENTIALLY strong squad but so do 22 of the other teams in the division. We have POTENTIALLY exciting players like Moussa who can score a wonder goal one week but disappear the next, we have other managers and squads working out how to stop Igor and kick Johan B Gud.
It is the uncertainty and unpredictable nature of sport and football in particular that make it so exciting, so frustrating, so glorious.
I feel sorry for those that have to use statistics and algorithms to get their kicks, they really are missing out on the fun.
The year we ran away with the league one title the Bastian of soccer knowledge FourFourTwo magazine predicted we would finish 18th I believe. I agree with the sentiment of printing this off and putting it up for the players. I have a good feeling about this season and I actually think that Buyens will turn out to be a bit of a star
Given that I'm in South America (6 hours behind) at present, it's not THAT weird. It wasn't long ago that CAFC fans stalked our boards in big numbers.
Have you got the dosh together to deal with the inevitable problem of Selhurst Park or a new stadium? Grounds don't come cheap and many teams who have had to face the expense of that change such as Derby, Leicester, Sunderland, Boro, Bolton, Stoke, Southampton and others have not been able to sustain a consistent run in the premier league at the same time as sorting out their stadia, although you could argue that once they are sorted, the future then looks more secure. Crystal Palace are doing brilliantly at the moment, but sooner or later you have to find £130million or so you need. The Amex cost Brighton £93million, and even with the recent financial boost for Crystal Palace those kinds of numbers are serious ones.
We're making do at the moment, I know we've spent a fair few quid replacing all the seats around the ground, updating all the bars and catering facilities, a new big screen is going in etc but it's all the bare minimum until a new stand is given approval. We're not in a position where we need to upgrade the whole stadium at once like Brighton but certainly two stands need replacing asap.
Unless we sign players soon though, we'll struggle this season. I'd certainly hope we get players in who aren't mainly untested in England though, that's for sure.
You are going to 'upgrade' Selhurst Park? And is the awaited approval for the main stand or the Arthur Waite? Either way planning permission and building it is going to be, dare I say, hardly worth it as you will still be at Selhurst Park. Building a new stand down one of the sides is not going to be possible in the close season, and the capacity of the ground will be very restricted in the meantime anyway. If Mr Parrish has planned and costed this it is going to be very much make do and mend, and may not deliver the premier league stadium you need. It would make more sense to try to cash in on the whole plot (attractive to homeowners as there will be a supermarket very close by) and scrape together more planning permission and build a new ground from scratch in New Addington which is your spiritual home and provides the bulk of your support doesn't it? I reckon you're looking at a three year project minimum, and a possible outlay after selling Selhurst Park of at least £100mil, which would restrict player spending to about 20-30 million per season which may not be enough to compete, unless of course Pulis wants to stick around. If you are half way through the project, and you get relegated then you may be headed for your (fourth?) administration.
@Henry Irving Oh dear, oh dear! Since when did moderate correlation mean no significant meaning?! I've just checked how one applies a correlation status and you square the correlation figure so 74.9 figure means that 55% of final league position is down to squad value ~ not nothing as you assert and not everything as you appear to imply I am saying in your hostile response.
The irony is that I think you will find, upon reflection, that we are in agreement that lady luck (with injuries, referees etc) and the quality of the management are a big part of it and a big unknown at this time. I've stated this but in your keyboard rage you've blindly ignored that. And nowhere am I suggesting absolute certainty which would be a 100% correlation.
You can choose to state that 23 teams are all hoping for the best but my statement is simply that the value of the squad has a big, big impact. And one can break the division into three groups of the top 11, the next 7 (including us) and the bottom six who coincidentally are the bookies favourites to go down.
Our most valuable front six now comes in at £9m as opposed to £3m last season. That has to make a difference at this level. I'd fail to see why any Charlton fan wouldn't celebrate the fact! And this is clearly a concern for Liege fans who are wondering why Buyens and Vetokele are playing for us and not them.
So mindless criticism in an attempt to belittle an independent website and/or silence another fan with a different view is entirely up to you. But that doesn't make the fact go away that we've experienced a huge uplift in the squad this summer.
To avoid all doubt I am saying without equivocation that this looks like a massive change for CAFC, that the exercise can potentially be repeated in future windows and that "failing to secure the assets" last summer cannot be changed and more importantly simply doesn't matter in the bigger picture - Poyet and Sordell are the only players to play regularly in the Premier League next season and neither were signing for us long term. So we have a brand new squad now half academy and half bought in by Duchatelet led by three loyal and skillful professionals who helped us win league 1, messrs Solly, Morrison and Jackson
One can argue that the new players are foreign (no championship experience) or will take time to settle or that a European player valuation system is garbage... But that final point just doesn't stack up when the squad values so clearly tie to league position. Not all the new signings will make an overnight impact if at all but we are most definitely moving towards the top half of the table.
@Henry Irving Oh dear, oh dear! Since when did moderate correlation mean no significant meaning?! .
oh dear on dear. you didn't read what I put.
"So even you admit the correlation is only at best moderate yet you continue to claim that it "proves" something
And that is after you have somehow boosted it from your first claim of a 60% correlation (on 1 July) which by you own admission is even lower that moderate ie no significant correlation at all."
You really do make yourself look silly. Your original figure of 60% was less that a moderate correlation by YOUR OWN ADMISSION.
You haven't explained how 60% became 70% and now 74% but it doesn't matter as the whole meaningless house of cards is based on valueless guess work by amateurs not empirical data.
This is the same mess you got the Trust into when you insisted on measuring their "success" in hits on stories rather than the quality of the stories or taking any meaningful action.
Another observation - if this was a film then towards the end there would be an encounter between Henry and Seriously Red which would involve one of them saying, "Come here, you bastard", followed by a frenetic sex scene.
Could seriously red be right, but for the wrong reasons?
Quite possibly. It is a reasonable OPINION that the squad is stronger but it is so far untested. And it can only be untested as football is played on grass not on spreadsheets
The issue is that relative strength is almost impossible to predict so while most of us take a "we'll see how it pans out approach" SR is so desperate to "prove" his theory right that he is relying on dubious data and even weaker correlations to such an extent that they are meaningless
Just about any of us could say. "Leicester's squad cost more than Yeovils so it is likely that the first will finish about the latter." But as we know it doesn't always work out that way as Wolves going down proved and as I suspect one or both of Fulham and Cardiff will show this.
I think @Henry Irving is confused on a couple of counts here:
The correlation is in fact moderate - the only open question is whether CAFC squad valuation is as accurate as any other club...not perfect but accurate enough for this purpose.
I am more than hopeful that our new look front six will prove the case - some wish to wait and see and I respect that.
FYI the 60% quote was my error and is in fact the relationship between club expenditure and league position - spending more money helps but spending loads more is no guarantee of success.
Comments
Players out: Leon Cort, Cedric Evina, Mark Gower, Andy Hughes, Bradley Jordan (all released), Ben Hamer (Leicester, free), Dorian Dervite (Bolton, free), Kevin Feely (Newport, free), Danny Hollands (Portsmouth, free), Richard Wood (Rotherham, free), Adebayo Azeez (AFC Wimbledon, free), Danny Green (MK Dons, free), Diego Poyet (West Ham, compensation), Jordan Cook (Walsall, free), Bradley Pritchard (Leyton Orient, free)
Of the 15 let go, 3 were first team regulars (Hamer, Devitte, Poyet) and of those 3 only really Poyet was a nailed on certainty with plenty of doubts raised about the other two. Two were credible squad players (Court, Wood). The rest were not close to the first team (or in Danny greens case, were but we'd rather he wasn't)
Players in: Zak Ansah (Arsenal, free), Kurtis Cumberbatch (Watford, free), Yoni Buyens (Standard Liege, loan), Igor Vetokele (FC Copenhagen, undisclosed), Franck Moussa (Coventry, free), Andre Bikey (Panetolikos, free), Tal Ben Haim (Standard Liege, free), Johann Berg Gudmundsson (AZ Alkmaar, free), George Tucudean (Standard Liege, free)
Add to that list Osbourne along with Pope and Gomez who seem to be very much in the first team mix.
On the incoming players, I doubt Ansah and Cumberbatch have been signed for the first team yet. I expect the other 10 to be in and around the first team squad. so we've got a net 5 more players competing for the first team.
Whether Osbourne, Ben Haim, Bikey, Gomez, Buyens are adequate replacements for Hamer, DeVitte, Cort, Wood and Poyet remains to be seen. But I don't think you'll get anyone arguing that Pope, Vetokele, Moussa, Gudmundsson and Tucudean are not a step up from the rest.
Ergo we've a stronger squad than last year.
Anything less than mid table will be a disapointment imo
It's astonishing, but if we sign another 10 players worth £1M each, I reckon we're 60% or 70% likely to have a better season, than if we don't !
Jeez, wait until Man C, Chelsea, Man U & Liverpool find out. I reckon they'll start spending big bucks :-)
also using transfermarket isn't necessarily a bad idea as it it is a data set that applies to all players and teams in england. over time such a data set will become normalised because the figures will be adjusted to correspond to all other figures in the set. so it doesn't matter whether the figures are accurate individually, because, for most part, the are relative and will show a reasonable picture of where everyone stands. there will be some bias and outliers, but that doesn't matter, that just reflects real life of some transfer fees being out of line with the player. as far as i can see, seriously_red was not saying that the figures are correct, he was saying that there is correlation, which is true.
I fully expect Cardiff & Norwich to be near the top as their players values will be high and Blackpool to be near the bottom. It's not rocket science.
Yes, we all agree that The Mail's comment about Charlton is crass.
Textbooks often classify different strengths of correlation. For example, a coefficient of .90 or above will be said to be strong, correlations of .70 to .89 will be said to be moderate. In this case the correlation was -.749 or moderate. There are two other obvious factors affecting results - club management ability and lady luck! Let us hope both are on our side for the next couple of seasons.
Hopefully you can see on the image attached the obvious link between the values and league position together with some outliers.
There are some interesting comments and questions posted today:
1) What Transfermarkt does not do is predict whether an individual player will settle or play to their potential - the correlation is with the overall squad value.
2) Neither will it predict head to head matches with any accuracy.
3) The point I am making in relation to CAFC and the transformation of our squad is that we are really not going to miss all those 20+ loan and out of contract players who transfermarkt valued at £500K or less.
4) And for those who asked about the lowest valued clubs are as follows: Blackpool £3.5m, Brentford £7m, Rotherham £9.2m, Birmingham £9.8m, Wednesday £9.9m, Ipswich £10.4m and Millwall £11.2m... There are then five clubs, Charlton, Brighton, Bournemouth, Huddersfield and Leeds all valued at £13-16M. Then a big jump to the top 11 clubs starting with Reading and Wolves valued at £23M and working up to more than double that.
5) Burnley and Derby both had squads valued at around £20m last season which suggests that is a reasonable bar to set as the minimum to compete in the top ten. They built these squads by developing their own players and borrowing £1m+ players from the Premier league. It's not rocket science, it's what CAFC need to do and it is clear that this is what Duchatelet and Peeters are doing right now.
6) Of course @tricky a lot has to be down to how players settle and the squad gels - perhaps some of these signings of ours will only play 5 games? But I think it highly unlikely that they will all fail especially given that Peeters has worked with some before.
This is the Duchatelet model in action and I hope it works as well as Watford's links to Europe have done over the last couple of years.
Anyway, I know the point you are trying to make. I just think you are embellishing to try and "prove" that RD's strategy is the golden ticket to success. Perhaps it is, but if it is then it will be because the players have provided value in the pitch and not on a website.
This year is going to completely come down to how good an evaluator of talent is RD's scouts as well as BP. I discount the previous January window as RD had just purchased the club and there was all kinds of transitions taking place, let alone that it is extremely hard at that time given only overpriced mediocre talent is usually available.
Let's hope for the best
Perhaps why a lot of people are writing you off is as a result of the somewhat surprising decision to replace Riga with Peeters despite doing a fantastic job, what did he do to deserve that? Did he refuse your owners grand plans to bring in players from Liege etc or was it simply because he didn't think he could take you to the next level? Whatever it was, it bemused many people.
Next up is the selection of signings you've made recently, a lot of upheaval has occurred and that doesn't always signify improvement (look at Palace under Holloway and his 16 new signings!). That, along with the fact you have a huge amount of players now with very little experience of playing in England could have a detrimental effect on your league position, the lad from Copenhagen could also be a rough diamond so who knows?
All I can safely say is that I'm surprised how content the vast majority seem to be on this board, your academy has been a great source of talent in recent years yet your owner and manager seem intent on scouring the foreign market excessively to achieve success and I wouldn't be overly pleased if that happened at CPFC.
Good luck for the season, if we don't start signing some players soon, we might see you sooner rather than later!
So even you admit the correlation is only at best moderate yet you continue to claim that it "proves" something
And that is after you have somehow boosted it from your first claim of a 60% correlation (on 1 July) which by you own admission is even lower that moderate ie no significant correlation at all.
You haven't explained how or why you boosted the correlation from 60% to 70% but I suspect that you realised the correlation was too weak so had to create another figure.
Regardless it is a meaningless. Football is played by non-statistical human beings with real lives and issues and is subject to luck, injuries, good or bad refereeing, loss of form, settling in periods, good management, bad coaching etc etc.
Which is why Polish Pete statistically was a better option that Yann but three human football coaches just didn't rate him and he has now been shipped, unheralded and unannounced, back to the low countries.
Back in the real world we have a POTENTIALLY strong squad but so do 22 of the other teams in the division. We have POTENTIALLY exciting players like Moussa who can score a wonder goal one week but disappear the next, we have other managers and squads working out how to stop Igor and kick Johan B Gud.
It is the uncertainty and unpredictable nature of sport and football in particular that make it so exciting, so frustrating, so glorious.
I feel sorry for those that have to use statistics and algorithms to get their kicks, they really are missing out on the fun.
Contrast this to our best ever season under Curbishley when we spent £1.5m (half of which was on a back up GK) & finished 7th.
In the latter case we had a manager who knew the team inside out and a settled squad built up steadily over a number of seasons.
In the former, a manager out of his depth struggling with a squad of strangers & arguably not given enough time to get out of the mess he created.
Grounds don't come cheap and many teams who have had to face the expense of that change such as Derby, Leicester, Sunderland, Boro, Bolton, Stoke, Southampton and others have not been able to sustain a consistent run in the premier league at the same time as sorting out their stadia, although you could argue that once they are sorted, the future then looks more secure.
Crystal Palace are doing brilliantly at the moment, but sooner or later you have to find £130million or so you need. The Amex cost Brighton £93million, and even with the recent financial boost for Crystal Palace those kinds of numbers are serious ones.
I agree with the sentiment of printing this off and putting it up for the players.
I have a good feeling about this season and I actually think that Buyens will turn out to be a bit of a star
Have you got the dosh together to deal with the inevitable problem of Selhurst Park or a new stadium?
Grounds don't come cheap and many teams who have had to face the expense of that change such as Derby, Leicester, Sunderland, Boro, Bolton, Stoke, Southampton and others have not been able to sustain a consistent run in the premier league at the same time as sorting out their stadia, although you could argue that once they are sorted, the future then looks more secure.
Crystal Palace are doing brilliantly at the moment, but sooner or later you have to find £130million or so you need. The Amex cost Brighton £93million, and even with the recent financial boost for Crystal Palace those kinds of numbers are serious ones.
We're making do at the moment, I know we've spent a fair few quid replacing all the seats around the ground, updating all the bars and catering facilities, a new big screen is going in etc but it's all the bare minimum until a new stand is given approval. We're not in a position where we need to upgrade the whole stadium at once like Brighton but certainly two stands need replacing asap.
Unless we sign players soon though, we'll struggle this season. I'd certainly hope we get players in who aren't mainly untested in England though, that's for sure.
If Mr Parrish has planned and costed this it is going to be very much make do and mend, and may not deliver the premier league stadium you need.
It would make more sense to try to cash in on the whole plot (attractive to homeowners as there will be a supermarket very close by) and scrape together more planning permission and build a new ground from scratch in New Addington which is your spiritual home and provides the bulk of your support doesn't it?
I reckon you're looking at a three year project minimum, and a possible outlay after selling Selhurst Park of at least £100mil, which would restrict player spending to about 20-30 million per season which may not be enough to compete, unless of course Pulis wants to stick around.
If you are half way through the project, and you get relegated then you may be headed for your (fourth?) administration.
Oh dear, oh dear! Since when did moderate correlation mean no significant meaning?! I've just checked how one applies a correlation status and you square the correlation figure so 74.9 figure means that 55% of final league position is down to squad value ~ not nothing as you assert and not everything as you appear to imply I am saying in your hostile response.
The irony is that I think you will find, upon reflection, that we are in agreement that lady luck (with injuries, referees etc) and the quality of the management are a big part of it and a big unknown at this time. I've stated this but in your keyboard rage you've blindly ignored that. And nowhere am I suggesting absolute certainty which would be a 100% correlation.
You can choose to state that 23 teams are all hoping for the best but my statement is simply that the value of the squad has a big, big impact. And one can break the division into three groups of the top 11, the next 7 (including us) and the bottom six who coincidentally are the bookies favourites to go down.
Our most valuable front six now comes in at £9m as opposed to £3m last season. That has to make a difference at this level. I'd fail to see why any Charlton fan wouldn't celebrate the fact! And this is clearly a concern for Liege fans who are wondering why Buyens and Vetokele are playing for us and not them.
So mindless criticism in an attempt to belittle an independent website and/or silence another fan with a different view is entirely up to you. But that doesn't make the fact go away that we've experienced a huge uplift in the squad this summer.
To avoid all doubt I am saying without equivocation that this looks like a massive change for CAFC, that the exercise can potentially be repeated in future windows and that "failing to secure the assets" last summer cannot be changed and more importantly simply doesn't matter in the bigger picture - Poyet and Sordell are the only players to play regularly in the Premier League next season and neither were signing for us long term.
So we have a brand new squad now half academy and half bought in by Duchatelet led by three loyal and skillful professionals who helped us win league 1, messrs Solly, Morrison and Jackson
One can argue that the new players are foreign (no championship experience) or will take time to settle or that a European player valuation system is garbage... But that final point just doesn't stack up when the squad values so clearly tie to league position. Not all the new signings will make an overnight impact if at all but we are most definitely moving towards the top half of the table.
"So even you admit the correlation is only at best moderate yet you continue to claim that it "proves" something
And that is after you have somehow boosted it from your first claim of a 60% correlation (on 1 July) which by you own admission is even lower that moderate ie no significant correlation at all."
You really do make yourself look silly. Your original figure of 60% was less that a moderate correlation by YOUR OWN ADMISSION.
You haven't explained how 60% became 70% and now 74% but it doesn't matter as the whole meaningless house of cards is based on valueless guess work by amateurs not empirical data.
This is the same mess you got the Trust into when you insisted on measuring their "success" in hits on stories rather than the quality of the stories or taking any meaningful action.
Give it up now, you are embarrassing yourself
Also, I don't have a problem with Nigel coming on here and having a sensible discussion.
The issue is that relative strength is almost impossible to predict so while most of us take a "we'll see how it pans out approach" SR is so desperate to "prove" his theory right that he is relying on dubious data and even weaker correlations to such an extent that they are meaningless
Just about any of us could say. "Leicester's squad cost more than Yeovils so it is likely that the first will finish about the latter." But as we know it doesn't always work out that way as Wolves going down proved and as I suspect one or both of Fulham and Cardiff will show this.
I think @Henry Irving is confused on a couple of counts here:
The correlation is in fact moderate - the only open question is whether CAFC squad valuation is as accurate as any other club...not perfect but accurate enough for this purpose.
I am more than hopeful that our new look front six will prove the case - some wish to wait and see and I respect that.
FYI the 60% quote was my error and is in fact the relationship between club expenditure and league position - spending more money helps but spending loads more is no guarantee of success.
All the rest is noise and doesn't merit a reply.