2019-20 A-League Predictions – Round 3, the Ladder is Interesting

It’s too early into the new season for any narratives to truly be emerging around the A-League. Fortunately for this blog, and the pursuit of #content, our predictive system is by no means reasonable.

2019-20 A-League Predictions – Round 2, the New Impressioning

The new season started off with a big game, reigning champions Sydney FC getting a 3-2 win over Adelaide in a game that swung wildly in momentum. Other highlights featured Western Sydney’s epic return to their home ground in a 2-1 win over Central Coast, and Western United earning their stripes with an away victory in Wellington.

It wouldn’t be a new season without some big VAR moments, as it spread its influence across the round – in addition to the two goals it helped award in the opener, it overturned a late offside decision to give Brisbane Roar a 95th minute equaliser.

2022 World Cup Qualifiers – AFC Second Round, Matchday Four

There was one clear advantage of all of the lopsided games that we had in the last matchday – we were able to get almost a clean sheet. With the exception of the 0-0 draw between Jordan and Kuwait, we correctly tipped every game of that matchday, bringing our tally to 34/48, ~71%.

2019-20 A-League Predictions – Round 1, the Infodumping

After a lengthy off-season, we’re trying to get back into the swing of the A-League (and actually stick to predicting the entire season this time). Plenty of questions are set to be answered throughout this new season, but there’s one bigger than all: what to do with Western United FC?

2022 World Cup Qualifiers – AFC Second Round, Matchday 3

In the middle of writing this, we realised we made a big mistake in our post for Matchday 1. With the best intentions, we’d just included an embedded spreadsheet for that matchday’s long-term predictions.

What we didn’t realise was that that would update as time went on, meaning that we wouldn’t be able to use it to compare our predictions for future matchdays (like this one) with the originals.

Fortunately, the spreadsheet client we’re using has a ‘revision history’ feature included, so we can just make copies and save our skins. But it’s a lesson for the future!

2022 World Cup Qualifiers – AFC Second Round, Matchday 2

Well, that didn’t work out the way we thought it would. After commenting on/complaining about Kuwait’s impressive rating in the last blog post, we have to raise it even higher after their 7-0 win over Nepal in their last match. The Kuwaitis now have an absurdly high offensive rating of +0.0109, which is equal to an extra goal every game on top of whatever home ground and defensive bonuses they get.

In the end, Kuwait climb to top spot on our ratings, one of a few changes made to the system – mostly around the middle reaches:

We’re pretty satisfied with how well our predictions went first off, correctly tipping nine out of sixteen winners – a figure that increases to nine out of twelve when you exclude draws. Given that success, we see no reason to mess with the system, even if it looks like it’s tipping an awful lot of away teams for this matchday.

2022 World Cup Qualifiers – AFC Second Round, Matchday 1

If you’ve ever wanted to care about Tajikistan, then this is the blog post for you!

Under our current system, the Asian Football Confederation’s qualifiers for the FIFA World Cup are the greatest thing in the sport. Teams have to travel big distances for games less than a week apart, there’s sixteen matches on one day at any given matchup, and there’s still another group stage after this.

We did get lucky this year, though. Some of the highlights include Australia being drawn against Jordan again, Group E having more cricket countries than football ones, a Korean derby in Group H, and the massive rivalry that is Group G. And we’re going to be offering predictions for all of it.

2019 Women’s World Cup Predictions – Final

After a long month, we’ve reached the final of the Women’s World Cup, and it’s set for a perfect Europe vs. America matchup. The two finalists, the United States and the Netherlands, are the reigning continental champions – the US beat Canada in the final of the 2018 CONCACAF Women’s Championship, while the Netherlands had come out victorious over Denmark in the 2017 UEFA Women’s Euro.

Women’s World Cup Predictions – Match 51

2019 Women’s World Cup Predictions – Match 50

VAR played its influence all over England in today’s semi final. An equalising goal got scrubbed off during review, but was balanced out when the English got awarded a penalty. Unfortunately for them, it was saved, the USA qualifying for their third consecutive final.