Nice Guys and Throw-away Lines

Had a comment on my last post, which I’ll reproduce here:

1. Anonymous13 September 2012 16:53

Hi, 

I read your blog most days and would normally agree with your thoughts but this piece I find to be completely wrong. Murray seems to me to be a shy individual who shows grace in defeat and victory. His interview with sky sports straight after victory showed yet again what a non arrogant, hard working guy he is. You have to remember that nowdays we have a hawkeye which means about 80% of the arguments are now defunct. Imagine Mr McEnroe today or Mr Connors what would they have to argue about? Henri Leconte was a genial guy who showed how much he enjoyed tennis but what did he win?

If you want to talk sad montone people please point the finger at Tiger Woods who must be the saddest and most miserable character around. Mind you he is not a bad golfer either...

Thanks for the comment. A couple of good points in there but also a little bit of confusion. First-off, totally agree  about Tiger Woods. He’s not a very endearing character and there aren’t many people around who seem to feel sorry for him with regards to his self-inflicted woes. Also, I think our commenter has a point about Hawkeye, in that it is a fine argument-settler. This will inevitably lead to less tantrums and arguments. Fair enough. All decent points.

The rest I will have to argue a bit with however. Murray is shy and shows grace in defeat and victory. In interviews he shows how non arrogant he is. Okay, that may all be true, but none of that is relevant to what I was saying. At no point did I suggest that he was arrogant or that he lacked grace. I also didn’t say that he wasn’t a nice or decent guy. He may well be. I said he was cheerless and gave nothing of himself to the viewing public. 

The shyness thing may be an answer, and if indeed he is struck low by huge waves of shyness whenever he speaks then perhaps I'll give him some leeway, but I can't honestly buy that. Maybe at the beginning of his career, but still? After all the cameras that have been shoved in his face over the years? Surely that would be something you would simply grow used to?

The last thing I would like to object to is that our anonymous friend makes a good case for saying that Murray is a nice guy, graceful in defeat, non-arrogant, etc - but then he seems to attack his own argument by saying that Leconte was a genial guy but he never won anything. Are you saying that you can't win if you're a nice guy? Haven't we just made a case for Murray being nice? Don't understand that bit.

Anyway, as I've said already, thank you for commenting and reading the blog. It's appreciated.

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Throwaway Statements

Maybe it’s the anal retentive part of my personality, but sometimes little throwaway statements that people make often catch in my mind like a fingernail snagged on a woollen sweater. I was reading Gundulf’s blog today, and by any standard it’s a good, intelligent blog and always worth reading, but in his discussions about laying at low-liability, he casually threw in this statement:

The nice thing about trading rather than selecting an outcome and running with it is that you don't have to stick with the trade. Many more games that are 3-0 at half time end at that score or 3-1, 3-2 etc than go over four goals.

Hmm, is that last part really true, I said to myself. Do more games that are 3-0 at half-time end-up with the winning team still on three goals? Well, this immediately stuck in my brain, and I just had to check out the veracity, or otherwise, of this casually lobbed-in sentence. 

Now I’m sure having me picking over and analysing his individual words is about as welcome to Dave as a turd in a swimming pool, and if he’s annoyed by it then he’s more than welcome to tell me to go and boil my head, but some things do need checking in my view.

Okay, well I only had a look at the Premier League so it may well vary from league to league, but since the 2005/06 season and excluding the current season, there have been 50 matches that were 3-0 at half-time. Of those games, 33 went on to become AU, which is 66% or fair odds of 1.52. Just in case Dave was talking about 0-3 as well, I have included those in my analysis too. There were 19 matches that were 0-3 at half-time and seven of those finished AU. That’s 36.84% or odds of 2.71. Overall, that’s 40 out of 69 (58%) matches going on to AU, or odds of 1.73.

Many more games that are 3-0 at half time end at that score or 3-1, 3-2 etc than go over four goals.

Sorry Dave, but unfortunately this doesn’t seem to be true. Generally there may be less goals in the second-half as the winning side take their foot off the pedal, but it does appear that this coasting team will often still manage to pop another goal in before the final whistle blows.

As I say, I've only analysed the Premier League, so perhaps Dave takes advantage of other leagues where the stats differ - but then again this may be this "hunch" thing that Dave has discussed on his blog previously. Either way, I trust you don't feel I'm being unfair by looking at this, but it just interested me.

Breakdown of analysis below. First column shows how many matches were 3-0 or 0-3 at half-time.