There’s been a bit of this chat in recent match threads, but in the past it’s been nice to have a separate thread to discuss the implications of results in other games as the final weeks of the season unfold. Might be a bit late for us now, but better late than never.
A couple of posts from the match thread to kick it off:
FWIW, after last night’s loss, FiveThirtyEight have now dropped us from 58 to 25% chance of making the six, and Adelaide up to 91%. Us, Nix, Bulls, Jets and CCM are effectively left playing off for 5th and 6th with Nix and Bulls mostly likely to go through.
I almost don’t want to ask this, but if we had won last night what % chance would we be? Assume something like 90%?
2 games tonight - Although I think Wellington will surpass us, ideally they lose to Perth tonight at Kogarah (apparently free to public for anyone interested in going who can tolerate a rainy Jubilee), and sad to say, but also need to hope WSW at least take points off CCM.
With how hot and cold we’ve been all season, I lured myself into a false sense of security when he belted the Mariners on the weekend. Saw ourselves in 4th, and then after a couple of seconds of reassurance that all would be well and dandy, I realized we’re ahead on games with teams that aren’t as inconsistent as us.
After watching us pull a Mariners last night, and lose in the last 5 minutes of the match, that we should have won comfortably - let’s face it Adelaide aren’t that good, but neither are we. I’ve come to the conclusion that the season is all but done and dusted for us. I highly doubt we’ll sneak into the 6 (without some serious luck and points dropping from the teams below us, and maybe a good old fashioned, conspiracy theorists wet dream in having the APL/FFA/powers that be sneak us into the finals…).
I’m looking forward to us going over to Vietnam, and the sense of optimism that comes with a Champions League campaign, only for that to disappear 45 minutes into our first game when we get belted by the Japanese and South Korean teams with much more skilful, youthful and tactically adept players.
So in essence, bring on the off-season, the goo feasting, and the transfer season with that wonderful feeling of trawling through twitter, transfermarket, as we look for world class players who will come and bring us back to the summit of the league.
Unfortunately it doesn’t do what if scenarios. But how’s this for a sliver of hope. At the moment we are on 31 pts with two games to play, and here is their predicted final table:
Pos.
Team
GD
Pts
4
Ade
3
39
5
Nix
-14
37
6
Bulls
-2
36
7
Jets
7
34
8
SFC
3
34
It has us in 8th with 34 pts, meaning that in the average scenario they only expect us to get 3 pts from our remaining two games. But in this scenario, 37 is enough to qualify. So you could put it this way, if we win our last two games and everyone else performs as expected then we will still qualify.
Nice. Also would be good if WU pull away from Victory so Victory have little to play for in our 2nd last game (from memory 1st and 2nd get a decent advantage this year in finals). Brisbane will also only be playing for pride so that could help us.
As @b0b_444 said, you can’t work it out for sure, but doing the maths, their number would have to have been between 69%–88% (depending on what they had as the chances of making the finals with a draw).
But I wouldn’t put a whole lot of faith in their predictions. I’ve been watching it all season, and we’ve been (clearly) rated as the second-best team in the comp the whole time. They currently have Western Utd as the 8th-best team, despite them sitting second on the table.
I think it’s because they tie the current ratings strongly to previous seasons’ results, which probably makes a lot of sense in the major leagues, but not so much in a salary capped comp (even if the cap hasn’t necessarily been our issue…).
So WSW up 1-0 at half time against CCM, Perth holding Wellington to a draw. Perth’s xG is 0.00 lol (I have WSW game on in the background and seems fairly boring).
Wellington are now all but out of our reach, so think we can basically forget about them unless there is some calamity where they get stuck in NZ and can’t return to Oz after they play their home games.
CCM dropping points is good for us of course. Wellington play CCM at home on Sunday so think it’s safe for us to want Wellington to win that one to further damage CCM’s chances of overtaking us.
Macarthur vs Brisbane on Friday - have to hope Brisbane get something out of that.
Yeah I don’t even care anymore. Whole season’s a write-off. ACL and I’m done until new stadium I think.
Maybe this whole running a league competently thing isn’t as easy as the owners imagined? Was there anything this farcical administratively under the last say 5/6 years of Lowy FFA?
Hey if we miss the finals on goal-difference, can we sue the referee and/or match commissioner for the clear economic cost of their failure to fulfil their duties? They would’ve approved the submitted team sheet.
It sounds like it’s still the fault of Sydney FC but they acknowledge that if the match commissioner picked it up it wouldn’t have happened a second time (and the penalty takes that into consideration).
It wouldn’t have happened the first time if they picked it up. You simply field an U23 kid on the bench instead, or you take two players off the bench, ahead of the game.
This is basically 50% of the practical job that this person is paid to do.