How much does 'luck' play a part in results?

[Millsy]

Luck plays a part of course.

Does it even out over a season? No, but over the years probably it does to a degree.

The trouble is with footy the way it is, seasons the way there are, defined campaign times etc.. a small bit of luck can magnify to have enormous ramifications. Eg Archie's miss. Us finishing 2nd in the second tier in the ONLY year when only the top was autopro. etc etc.

Those season-changing, club-changing bits of luck would probably need centuries to even out for all clubs in the league.

Good thread!

[Snowball]

The idea that luck "balances out" is false

Just like "The Law of Averages" is false

Just like in roulette, "If there have been four consecutive reds, it's gonna be black next time"

Mistaken ideas like these just help bookies make more money

Most statistics books will explain this. If a perfect coin is fairly tossed it will come down H or T at exactly 50/50 chance (duh).

Two Heads consecutive happens a quarter of the time from pure randomness

Three consecutive heads happens 12.5% of the time, once in every 8 sequences

Four consecutive heads happens once every 16 sequences. That is still a significant percentage (6.25%)

Randomness for no other reason than the vagaries of chance is such that experiments need to show that X would not happen 5%or more of the time, simply .

In important situations scientists set the bar at 1%.

5 consecutive heads is still over over 3%, 6 consecutive heads is still over 1%, so a typical (honest) drug trial using five per cent would REJECT four consecutive heads as "just randomness" and a stringent test would throw out five consecutive heads as well.

I presume honest count, honest trials, fair roulette tables etc.

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[Snowball]

Just think, first coin is a Head. Next toss is EXACTLY 50/50 to be a head again. If a head is "we had good luck" in Game 1, then we have exactly 50% chance of good luck in game 2, and so on. There is NOTHING in science or maths or statistics that says the universe has a hidden mechanism to make a tail more likely "to even things up" "because of the law of averages"

Humans have a lot of built in prejudices that are just plain WRONG. Punters lose a lot of money because of that. We say "Barnsley have won 6 on the trot, or 7, or 8 THEREFORE they are likely to draw or lose their next game "because runs of 9 wins "don't happen".

It's twaddle.

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Sides who played Reading when JOAO was on fire were (slightly) less lucky, surely?
Sides who got JOAO 2 had a big break.

Sunday, had Ayew's hammy strain been a little worse and he didn't come off the bench...

Were we not slightly unlucky to get Birmingham Mark 2 and suffer the new-manager bunch?

Every club will have a bell-curve of luck-in-games and they will all look SIMILAR but not identical. Again, by chance, one club's bell-curve might be more to the luck end then the unlucky one.

The idea that each club will have (say) 1 very unlucky game, 10 unlucky games, 24 neutral games, 10 lucky, one VERY lucky is just ridiculous. OF COURSE, in a season there will be sides who get "the rub of the green", and sides where (it seems) nothing goes right.

And, even if luck DID average out, sometimes luck might mean winning 3-1 instead of 2-1, whereas luck might mean a crucial 1-0 win in the PO Final. Not all luck or bad luck will matter the same.

[Chairman Mao]

Over time, of course it evens out.

and when it doesnt, thats often something to do with how we are playing/set up

[URZZZZ]

As Lower West mentioned, you generate your own luck. Statistically, the more crosses you get into the box, the more shots you have etc - the more times the ball will “fall” for you, the more times the goalie will make an error, and deflections etc

Even with that being so, we’ve still had periods of “luck” with regards to that, Samba pretty much single handedly gave us 4 points alone against Forest as an example

Refereeing decisions is another one but again, we’ve had plenty on our side. Barnsley’s first red card was contentious back in September, Boro’s disallowed goal, Luton’s “penalty”, Barnsley’s disallowed goal all being examples

Would say luck does somewhat play a part but is also controllable to some extent

[URZZZZZZZZ]

I’ll try and be careful to word this correctly, but we as a fan base have been very unlucky that Joao’s head has gone in the final couple of months of the season. I’m not looking to label all the blame of our demise at his door, but you have to look at some of those horror moments throughout the season and feel it has cost us hugely.

Birmingham home - penalty and sending off, score and we pull level with a decent chance of going onto win.
PNE away - late penalty to probably win the game
Wycombe away - see Birmingham
Barnsley miss - in what was quite a cagey game that could have given us a huge advantage for the run in

There is potentially 11 points gained on Barnsley there across four moments where we really ought to have scored. I appreciate the argument that he would have won us more points in his blistering start to the season, but personally, given how gilt edge the chances above are, they need to be focussed on in isolation.

[tmesis]

Not really one for Snowball as it is not a measurable statistic but how much does luck play in a team's progress through a season and how much is down to skill/hard work/good referees.

Some examples:

In the Swansea game Joao was wrestled to the ground by a player already on a yellow card. If it was spotted it was a penalty and a probable sending off. The officials either didn't see it or decided it wasn't a foul. Were we unlucky/Swansea lucky or was the referee right?

In the Barnsley v Rotherham game the goal was scored by a player who smashed his forearm into the face of the goalkeeper resulting in a fractured eye socket. The goal stood. Lucky or was the referee right?

There was a period when any ball hit from outside the area towards our goal went in. Skill by the opposition, bad keeping/defending or luck?

The penalties that weren't give against Sheffield Wednesday - unlucky or correct decisions?

Often while watching EFL on Quest you see some goals where you think we'd never get that luck - goalkeeping howlers, lucky deflections, dodgy penalties (Swansea kept getting late pens at one stage, were they all correctly given?)

Were there any instances where Reading were on the receiving end of some good luck - any of the sendings off against us? Offside goals ruled out that were actually on?

Does it really even itself out over the season or are we just an unlucky side.

Always irks me when people say it evens out over a season
No reason it should - what's special about a season? Why not say it evens out over 10 seasons? Or 10 games? Its just arbitrary and you can just be unlucky all season or two or more seasons in a row. That's the nature of luck.

I think we were unlucky a few times but we also had plenty of chances to win games which we should have been able to take. So unlucky or not we haven't been good enough when it mattered.

I think it's more of a case of just accepting you'll have good and bad luck over a season, rather than implying it'll exactly even out.

People tend to remember things that go against them, such as not getting penalties, but forget the ones that should probably have been given, that weren't.

Even with "we should have won at..." type 'bad-luck' you tend to forget the games where the team got a better result than the performance merited.

The biggest element of luck is probably injuries, Any side that has a lot will suffer