Toon 3 times better than last season?
Posted on November 9th, 2011 | 60 Comments |
Much has been wondered about whether we’re worthy of our 3rd place position. Not just from the usual suspects in the world of punditry who seem incapable of giving Newcastle much credit for anything, but we’ve had cause to wonder a bit ourselves.
There are too many variables to consider and the semantics of the word ‘worthy’ leaves too much open to subjective opinion to ever reach an objective conclusion about our ‘worthiness’. All we can say is that we’ve met the challenges that have been thrown our way so far.
But I had this burning urge to create an HTML table. Don’t knock it – it’s no more unusual than fancying a pork pie and rates fairly low in my list of insanities. So create a table I did and what it does is to compare last season to this season with the games we’ve played so far.
Observe ye the following work of beauty:
| Team | Home/Away | Last Season | Pts | This Season | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arsenal | Home | 4-4 | 1 | 0-0 | 1 |
| Sunderland | Away | 1-1 | 1 | 0-1 | 3 |
| Fulham | Home | 0-0 | 1 | 2-1 | 3 |
| QPR | Away | n/a | 0 | 0-0 | 1 |
| Aston Villa | Away | 1-0 | 0 | 1-1 | 1 |
| Blackburn | Home | 1-2 | 0 | 3-1 | 3 |
| Wolves | Away | 1-1 | 1 | 1-3 | 3 |
| Tottenham | Home | 1-1 | 1 | 2-2 | 1 |
| Wigan | Home | 2-2 | 1 | 1-0 | 3 |
| Stoke | Away | 4-0 | 0 | 1-3 | 3 |
| Everton | Home | 1-2 | 0 | 2-1 | 3 |
| Total Points | 6 | 25 | |||
There was no QPR last season, by which I mean they weren’t in the Premier League rather than having disappeared into another dimension, but even if we assume we’d have beaten them and picked up 3 points, our tally against these teams last year would have been 9 points. This year it’s 25 points.
So does this mean we’re nearly thrice as good this season than we were last season? Who knows?
Comparisons like this are fairly dodgy things to make because we played the teams at different stages of the season and the opposition themselves may be considered to be better or worse than they are this season. And stats can be squeezed and wrung out in such a way as to back up just about any point of view – politicians do it all the time. So I present them here mainly for interest. Mine, anyway – I wouldn’t presume any such interest from my readers. In fact it’s probably wise to assume the opposite.
I tend to think it says something though. Even if we adopt wild hair, wear lab coats, assume thoughtful expressions and try to analyse the results away, I think the sheer scale of the difference between the two seasons says something in our favour.
No? Well suit yourself. I’ll clear off and pester someone else now.
NUFCBlog Author: Hugh de Payen
I'm a baby-boomer of the punk rock persuasion, currently exiled in Somerset for crimes committed in a previous life where locals keep trying to poison me with something called 'scrumpy'. Hates sprouts, coat-hangers, Cilla Black, ornaments, Steven Seagull movies and 50 Cent (he's not worth 10).
Hugh de Payen has written 634 articles on this blog.
Hugh – Brilliant! I like the idea, let’s see another in a couple of months mate. Or even after the manure-citeh-chelski games – we got precious little there last season so why worry this year, we will still be 3 times better!