Spanish Primera Division 2006 - 2007

[JaredL]

[ QUOTE ]
Zaragoza will play a huge part here. For me they've been the most exciting team of the season. Victor Fernandez teams are always exciting it seems. I remember Zaragoza in the 90s and later Celta Vigo especially playing some great football. And Zaragazo this season has been no exception.
They are certainly capable of beating both Sevilla and Madrid.

I'm pretty sure Espanol will put up a fight against Barca but I doubt very much a team like Nastic will. From what I understand it's a team closely linked with Barca and their stadium is likely to be full of Barcelona supporters as well.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree with the Zaragoza bit. They played Barcelona very well in the Copa del Rey quarterfinals and were unlucky to go out after winning the first leg in the Camp Nou. They could easily beat both Sevilla and Real Madrid and should be motivated by wanting a few points to secure the UEFA Cup spot and being mathematically alive fighting for the Champions League. They are right now 7 points behind Valencia for fourth (last CL spot) and 5 ahead of Villarreal who are in 7th (last non-UEFA spot if Espanyol are invited to the UEFA Cup by UEFA who will decide soon). The Champions League isn't realistic but two losses could put them out of the UEFA Cup.

Interestingly enough, if Sevilla beat Zaragoza in their first match that could give Villarreal, their final opponent, extra motivation because it would make it possible for them to qualify for Europe or even seal a European bid with a win over Sevilla.

As far as Gimnastic goes, I think beating Barcelona is absolutely huge for them. They would rather have Barcelona win the league, but I think beating your big brother type motivation will dominate. They aren't going to be like Espanyol but will be motivated IMO. Nastic are also relegated and this is their last match in the Primera so that will give extra motivation. Of course they are terrible and Barcelona are excellent so it should be a comfortable win for the blaugrana no matter how motivated they are.

[New001]

[ QUOTE ]
Ridiculously tight league right now.

Real Madrid and Barcelona have 69 points, Sevilla 67, Valencia are still barely in it with 65.

Remaining matches:

Real Madrid
Deportivo home 54.03, 19.42, 26.08
Zaragoza away 39.84, 33.58, 26.08
Mallorca at home 51.36, 23.05, 24.92

Barcelona
Getafe home 53.90, 20.57, 24.87
Espanyol at home 58.20, 18.36, 22.12
Nastic away 21.46, 53.74, 23.93
note that these last 2 are both Catalan teams.

Sevilla
Zaragoza at home 47.62, 26.61, 25.11
Mallorca away 31.65, 41.24, 26.71
Villarreal at home 52.37, 22.22, 24.70

Valencia
Villarreal at home 48.10, 24.82, 26.66
Levante away 28.67, 42.52, 28.58
Real Sociedad at home 52.82, 20.05, 26.73

Sevilla's best chance is for Barcelona to lose to Espanyol or draw both Espanyol or Getafe and have Zaragoza get a result over Real Madrid.

New001 could you run all of these using your system? I'd be curious what it says the probabilities are.

[/ QUOTE ]
To explain those numbers, the first number is the percent chance of the home team winning, the second is for the away team, and the third is for a draw.

Barcelona are quite clearly the favorites. Valencia are essentially dead. Hope that helps, and I can get you average goals scored in each of these games if you want if it looks like goal differential might be important (though I guess Spain goes to head-to-head first?)

[JaredL]

I'm working on getting all of the scenarios to get probabilities of winning the league using what you've done. Here are the tiebreakers:

All 4 - Real Madrid
Any 3 involving Real Madrid - Real Madrid
Barcelona, Sevilla, Valencia - Sevilla
Real Madrid - Barcelona - Real Madrid
Real Madrid - Sevilla - Sevilla barring a [censored] of goals from Real Madrid
Real Madrid - Valencia - Real Madrid
Barcelona - Sevilla - Barcelona
Barcelona - Valencia - Valencia
Sevilla - Valencia - Sevilla

[New001]

I'd love to see the breakdown for winning the league from here on out. Thanks for doing that.

[JaredL]

I suspect that there is a small error somewhere, but it's going to be very close.

New's numbers didn't quite add up to 1 because of rounding. To fix this I made a tiny adjustment to all them by adding a tiny bit. This shouldn't affect anything I just wanted to have the check so that I could sum things and get 1 later.

The first thing I did was calculate the probability that each team has to get each possible number of points in their next 3. These numbers are:


Each team's sums to one, so that looks good.

I then used the tiebreakers to determine what needs to happen for each team to win. For example, Real Madrid win if they get 9. If they get 7 they need for Barcelona to get exactly 7 or for Barcelona to get < 7 and Sevilla to get < 9. Using the chart I posted above, if you've done the scenarios properly you can then get the probability of winning the league by adding the probabilities of each of the scenarios happening.

When I summed them all I got 1.003094 so it's likely that I double counted one scenario and one team's count is off by 3 tenths of one percent.

Here's what I got:
Barcelona - 48.52%
Real Madrid - 39.98%
Sevilla - 10.09%
Valencia - 1.72%

Before looking at the schedules I would have put Sevilla at a few percent. The schedules are actually favorable. If Sevilla win out then they have over a 50% chance to win according to the numbers. If they two wins and a draw that chance drops to 17%.

[New001]

Good work, thanks for posting that. I want to see Real Madrid win because I like their team this year and Capello doesn't deserve a bad rap, though if not them then definitely Sevilla. Good luck.

[reo]

Clip of Ronaldinho being sent off . . .

http://www.d1g.com/video/show/1039718

It's a shame that they'll be losing him for the next match considering there's only 2 games left.

Edmilson will be suspended for the next match as well for yellow cards.

It's getting interesting . . .

[JaredL]

Valencia has been eliminated. With Sevilla left to play their match, here are the updated percentages assuming that New001's probabilities won't change with these results:
Real Madrid - 44.83
Barcelona - 50.77
Sevilla - 4.54

Again for some reason, possibly rounding error but I'm not sure, these don't quite add up to 1. They add up to 1.001515 so some team may be over by a tenth of a percent. I checked it three or four times and couldn't find the error.

edit: Still working out some bugs with the spreadsheet, will update shortly.

[shoxbb6]

these percentages don't reflect that barcelona wont have ronaldhino or edmilsom do they? That should definitely drop barca's chances down...

[JaredL]

[ QUOTE ]
these percentages don't reflect that barcelona wont have ronaldhino or edmilsom do they? That should definitely drop barca's chances down...

[/ QUOTE ]

Right. Not sure if New's secret formula takes that into account.

BTW I discovered that the errors I had were just a stupid mistake I was making. The percentages above should be:
Real Madrid - 44.83
Barcelona - 50.62%
Sevilla - 4.54%

How much do you think losing those guys should change the probabilities of the results? Assuming the system was correct before, I think the true probabilities now should be the above with a couple higher each for draw and lose and 4 or so less for win. Maybe it increases the draw likelihood more than loss however.