Daniel Finkelstein Column

I mentioned this in another thread and thanks to Daniel Finkelstein himself who responded almost immediately to my email,he sent a copy to me,here it is.


Here’s the story of Leicester City. Half way through last season a weak, recently promoted, team were languishing just as one might expect. And then they had a miraculous escape, winning almost impossible games and staying up. Now they are persisting with this amazing upturn in their fortunes.

A reasonable way of looking at things. But here is an alternative, Fink Tank, take. Leicester City, a very strong side, stumbled very badly on entering the Premier League, doing much worse than they should have. Then, just before it was too late, they recovered their footing and may soon be as good as they were when they were first promoted.

The advantage of the computer modelling carried out by Dr Henry Stott, Dr Mark Latham and Dr Dinesh Vatvani is that it assesses the strength of teams regardless of the division they are in and provides a 92 team ranking without division markers.

Over the last decade Leicester have been very inconsistent and a team with a noticeably better defebnce than attack. About two and half seasons ago, the clubs attack and defence rankings swapped over, signalling a climb in the club’s fortunes.

By the first week of March 2014, City had risen to 10th in the ranking, despite being a Championship side. This was their highest position in a decade. They are now in 14th position. In other words their performance last season was not miraculous, it was rather disappointing and what we are seeing now may just be mean reversion.

The encouraging aspect of this for Leicester fans is that it may mean the process has some way to go. Already it has lifted the probabilities of a good season. As the graphic shows, the chance of relegation has gone down from 23.4 per cent to 4.2 per cent. And the chance of a Europa or Champions League finishing place is – at 4.7 per cent – very slightly larger.

There is some evidence that the side have adapted their play to the Premier League. They are shooting much less but with a far greater conversion rate into goals. However they are also conceding fewer shots on target but have allowed the conversion rate of these to go up.
Despite their unbeaten run – which has netted them 4.2 points more than expected – the Fink Tank’s expectations is of a mid-table finish in 12th place.

Only one of their players can be considered European class.

Riyad Mahrez is the 7th best player in England and the 24th best player in Europe this season.