I mentioned in one of the threads on the main forum that I have been playing with data on the league positions of teams over the last 15 years. One of the things I have done is to calculate each team's average final league table position across those 15 seasons (i.e. top of the Premier League = 1, bottom of the Premier League = 20, top of the Championship = 21, top of League 1 = 45 etc.) and then I have ranked the teams according to those average figures.
I don't know if anyone will want to play along, but for a bit of fun, and without thinking about it too much (i.e. without going back and looking at any past league tables)...
1) Which six teams fill the top six positions in the15-year average league standings?
2) Which 20 teams fill the top 20 positions (i.e. form the 15-year average Premier League)?
3) What is Argyle's ranking in the 15-year average league standings table?
4) Which 4 teams finish immediately above or immediately below Argyle in the table (8 teams in total)?
I think that Answer 1 is pretty obvious - there is a very clear difference in mean-league position for the top six compared with every other team. I suspect that there will be a lot more variation in suggestions for the other 14 teams in the top 20 (Answer 2). Answer 3 is, of course, disappointing and Answer 4 is somewhat galling because it could be argued that this set of teams are the ones that we might be included with in a 'the likes of...' statement.
Note that if a team drops out of the league I count their position as 93rd and don't (yet) look at where they actually finished below League 2 (this biases the average standing for teams that have spent anytime out of the top four tiers a bit high).
Remember - this is for the last 15 seasons, so back to 2008-2009 and including last season.
I don't know if anyone will want to play along, but for a bit of fun, and without thinking about it too much (i.e. without going back and looking at any past league tables)...
1) Which six teams fill the top six positions in the15-year average league standings?
2) Which 20 teams fill the top 20 positions (i.e. form the 15-year average Premier League)?
3) What is Argyle's ranking in the 15-year average league standings table?
4) Which 4 teams finish immediately above or immediately below Argyle in the table (8 teams in total)?
I think that Answer 1 is pretty obvious - there is a very clear difference in mean-league position for the top six compared with every other team. I suspect that there will be a lot more variation in suggestions for the other 14 teams in the top 20 (Answer 2). Answer 3 is, of course, disappointing and Answer 4 is somewhat galling because it could be argued that this set of teams are the ones that we might be included with in a 'the likes of...' statement.
Note that if a team drops out of the league I count their position as 93rd and don't (yet) look at where they actually finished below League 2 (this biases the average standing for teams that have spent anytime out of the top four tiers a bit high).
Remember - this is for the last 15 seasons, so back to 2008-2009 and including last season.
