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It was the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli who first told the world that there are three kinds of lies - "lies, damned lies, and statistics". Well, actually, it wasn't. Disraeli was who Mark Twain claimed said it first, but there's no evidence to back that up - the phrase doesn't appear in print until ten years after Disraeli died in 1881. So that's another lie then.

I thought of all that when I heard on Friday night that former Wimbledon striker Jon Goodman had invented the "Performance League", billed as a thought provoking example of "sabermetrics", analysing detailed data to produce forecasts. Goodman puts 3,000 different statistics from every Premier League match into his melting pot. He said Arsenal will win the League, Manchester City won't even make the top six let alone the Champions League places, and Sunderland will get relegated alongside Blackpool and West Ham.

Doesn't look so clever this morning, does he? Sunderland were first to undermine his argument when their record signing Asamoah Gyan finally came good and scored twice to sink Stoke. Then Andy Carroll conjured up a classic centre forward's header for the only goal for Newcastle while Arsenal had one of those days when they seem to hit the post a million times. And City's 2-0 win at West Brom moved them to level points with the Gunners while opening up an eight point gap on Spurs in seventh place.

What Goodman can't build into his analytical system, and nobody ever will, is the consequences of the mixture of human heroics and frailty which creates the drama that makes the Premier League so compelling. For instance Mario Balotelli, Manchester City's moody new Italian, suddenly struck form with his first two League goals then got himself sent off so will miss Wednesday night's Manchester Derby (City are 2.8 to win it).

Then there are the refereeing mistakes which have astonishing consequences. Sunderland's win was owed partly to Martin Atkinson failing to see Lee Cattermole play basketball on the line to keep out a Kenwyne Jones header. Stoke, forecast to finish in the top ten under the stats system, are left outside the bottom three only on goal difference. They are 4.1 a top ten finish and 6.6 to go down. Meanwhile West Ham were denied a late penalty for their first away win of the season in a 2-2 draw at Birmingham because Michael Oliver couldn't spot a shirt pull from five yards.

And how do you know when great players will suddenly recapture their lost form? Could the statistics have told you that the real Fernando Torres would finally show up for Liverpool yesterday to get both brilliant goals in a 2-0 win that has suddenly made Chelsea look vulnerable? Maybe they could because Goodman's stats have Roy Hodgson's team down to finish fourth - you can still back them at 4.9 to do it.

Of course the idea of using mathematics to analyse sport is not new. And both ProZone and Opta have built tidy businesses from distilling the bare facts about each game they study. But that still can't replace the individual feel for a game that helps a top manager to make the right selections and decisions.

How could the scientists explain what Ian Holloway has done for Blackpool? Cold hard logic says they are still 1.7 favourites to go back down, but a stirring performance against Everton in a 2-2 draw lifted them to 14 points and you can't buy the belief in their ability to pass the ball that Holloway has instilled into a group of underpaid players who were largely thrown together in the first week of the campaign.

Spirit, or lack of it, can work both ways. Goodman has Aston Villa down to finish in the top six, but Betfair's punters are laying that as long as 10.5. A team that stayed virtually unchanged under Martin O'Neill are now picking up all sorts of injuries since Gerard Houllier decided he needed to run them hard to get them fitter. And letting in a late goal in the 1-1 draw at Fulham means they have now taken just three points from five games.

Facts also don't explain how Tottenham can go in a few days from destroying Inter Milan to losing 4-2 at Bolton. The only other time they'd followed a Champions League game with an away trip they won 2-1 at Stoke.

I suspect that if on-line betting had existed in Disraeli's days he'd have used the Betfair Contrarian for his tips, probably making a tidy profit doing it. And that isn't a lie!


By Ralph Ellis

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