Pack Habits of European Wolves

On Thursday last I saw a Tweet (unfortunately I’ve lost sight of it now) that was bemoaning a very specific flaw with the draw for the UEFA Europa league. The writer was unhappy that Wolfsburg of Germany, Wolves of England and Wolfsberg of Austria were all in different groups. What are the chances, eh?  Well, we can work it out.

The task is made a lot easier in that the group stage draw is seeded with four pots of twelve teams.  The ultimate Wolverine combination was technically possible because the three teams were in pots 1, 3 and 4 respectively. Sadly, Woolongong Wolves of New South Wales, Australia were not present in pot 2. Maybe the Europa League will eventually go the way of the Eurovision Song Contest and open that door one day. We can but hope.

We don’t need to concern ourselves with the actual draw order, we can just think about the possible outcomes. Wolfsburg are bound to be in a different group from all of the other pot 1 teams. It doesn’t matter to us whether it turned out to be group A, B or whatever. Likewise, the outcomes from pot 2 make no difference. There is no Wolfie interest in that pot. We care less about pot 2 than Boris Johnson cares about Remainers, and that’s saying something.

WOLFSBURG And a pot 2 team	Any other Pot 1 Team Any Pot 2 Team	Any other Pot 1 Team Any Pot 2 Team
Any other Pot 1 Team Any Pot 2 Team	Any other Pot 1 Team Any Pot 2 Team	Any other Pot 1 Team Any Pot 2 Team
Any other Pot 1 Team Any Pot 2 Team	Any other Pot 1 Team Any Pot 2 Team	Any other Pot 1 Team Any Pot 2 Team
Any other Pot 1 Team Any Pot 2 Team	Any other Pot 1 Team Any Pot 2 Team	Any other Pot 1 Team Any Pot 2 Team

So, Wolfsburg have to be somewhere, and we don’t care who they are with or what any of the others are doing. We are therefore looking ONLY at one twelfth of all the possible outcomes at this point, shown here in yellow. The white zones have another team from Pot 1.

For the outcomes of the third pot, we are only interested in where Wolves end up. As a WBA fan, even I’m only interested for blogging purposes. Assuming the draw is fair, they have an equal chance of ending up in any of the twelve groups.

So the yellow area … is divided into 12 equal pieces. Only one of these would have Wolves from Pot 3, shown here as Orange. They’d want Old Gold but they are pretentious like that.

WOLFSBURG And a pot 2 team

On the right, the Orange area would represent Wolfsburg plus any pot 2 team plus Wolves. The Yellow areas are Wolfsburg plus any pot 2 team plus any one of the other 11 pot 3 teams, all of equal probability.  So we are down to one-twelfth of one-twelfth of all the possible outcomes.

Hopefully it is now straightforward to see that the desired presence of Wolfsburg to join the other two in effect divides the orange area into twelve once more.  Only that twelfth of the twelfth of the original twelfth is now of interest, shown here as red but magnified to a different scale at the risk of confusing you.

The rest of the orange is Wolfsberg/anyone/Wolves/anyone.  All the combinations where Wolfsberg and Wolfsburg are together, but with no Wolves, would be somewhere over in the yellow zone. Likewise there would be some permutations in the white areas there which had thrown Wolves and Wolfsburg together, but without Wolfsberg. Try working out the chances using the same method.

Anyhow, it’s clear that the perfect packing of European Wolves would only happen in a twelfth of a twelfth of a twelfth of all possible draw outcomes. This is 1 in (12 x 12 x 12) or 1 in 1728, or as a percentage, around 0.058%. In round figures about one in 2000. Howl low is that? (sorry) This is low, but still higher than the chances of being killed by a wolf while the UK is winning the Eurovision Song Contest and much less than winning the lottery.

Thanks (or should that be fangs) for your interest!

Police Nick the Win at Blackfield and Langley

Hopperational Details
Date & Venue	Saturday 17 August 2019 at Gang Warily
Result	Blackfield & Langley 3 Metropolitan Police 4
Competition	Southern Premier League South
Hopstats	Ground 701 on the lifetime list. I had originally planned a simple coin-toss to decide between here and Radcliffe today, but the latter’s 10am pitch inspection was too late for me to travel realistically. The M25/M3/M27 combo did its best to thwart me with a longer-than-expected journey but I was safely installed, with programme, in the main stand at kick-off time.
Context
Blackfield & Langley had a second successive promotion at the end of last season, and have started well with two wins from two games. Met Police missed out on promotion to Step 2 at the super-playoff stage last season and have one point from their first two games.
In one sentence
The late winner will hurt the home team, who failed to manage the last phase of the game having built a 3-1 lead.
So what?
Still too early in the season to make any sensible comment. Therefore, unlike MotD and Sky and their ilk, I will not take up any more of your valuable time with speculative punditry.
Match Report
Let me start by saying that this is a very friendly, welcoming club. It has climbed the leagues in recent years and has the space to develop further if they can establish themselves at this level. It has good facilities and a very decent playing surface.  The stacks and vents in the background are from the Fawley Oil Refinery. The home side took the lead on 11 mins through Hisham Kasimu. He ran powerfully and directly from the right flank, eased past the keeper and found the net. The equaliser came from the penalty spot just before the half-hour mark. I was at the other end so can’t comment on the decision that there had been a push. Jack Mazzone was the taker. Blackfield & Langley restored their lead after 36 mins with a goal from Joshua Harfield.  The first-half had been played at a good tempo, with direct running and a few bruising tackles. It was only five minutes into the second half before we had a two-goal margin. A very neat placed header did the job, and unfortunately it has gone into the annals as an own goal by Jeremy Arthur. I suspect most people thought that the result was now more or less decided.  Met Police had other ideas. On the hour, a floated free-kick drew the home keeper out of position and the visitors pulled a goal back with a looping header by sub Hani Berchiche back into the far corner. With fifteen minutes to go, a loudly disputed freekick was hoisted into the area and this time Oliver Robinson was in the right place to head home and level the match. By this time there was a certain amount of dissent and frustration being shown and had there been sin bins at this level we would have needed revolving doors. I exchanged tweets with the home team to the effect that this was great stuff for the passing neutral and the visitors might yet get a fourth.  So it proved only seconds later as the game entered stoppage time.  It was an excellent low left-foot shot from just outside the box from another sub, Bilal Sayoud, and a worthy winning goal. Acknowledgement: League Website for checking the goalscorers
Other Pix
Blackfield & Langley are in green.  "Take our picture!", they said. Well, would be rude not to! Hello Malcolm in the background getting better photos as usual!
Goalkeeper Top Colour Stats
Today, Orange loses to Yellow and there are no clean sheets.  No change in rank order but the prediction success rate continues to regress back towards 50%.  The table is based on the last 202 games watched. Pre-match Prediction based on Keeper Top Colour: Prediction: Home Win Was the prediction correct? No % of correct predictions so far 53% (30 from 57) Based on conventional 3pts for a win, 1pt for a draw, but also -1pt for a goal conceded (GC) and +5pts for a clean sheet (CS).  Colours ranked on a points per game (PPG) basis. The odd decimal places were caused either by half-and-half tops or sub keepers in a different colour.  The Fire Cracker colour was confirmed with the help of the social media team at Dulux UK.  All of this arises from a comment attributed to Petr Cech that orange is the best colour for a goalkeeper because it changes the behaviour of other players around the box. P W D L GC CS Pts PPG Red 11.5 6.5 1.0 4.0 11.0 4.5 32.0 2.783 Grey 53.5 25.0 12.0 16.5 84.5 16.0 82.5 1.542 Blue 49.1 22.0 8.0 19.1 78.0 14.0 66.0 1.344 Green 110.0 55.0 12.0 43.0 191.0 25.0 111.0 1.009 Fire Cracker 3.0 1.0 0.0 2.0 6.0 1.0 2.0 0.667 Purple 22.0 8.0 5.0 9.0 45.0 6.0 14.0 0.636 Maroon 5.0 2.0 1.0 2.0 9.0 1.0 3.0 0.600 Orange 60.5 21.0 13.0 26.5 106.5 11.0 24.5 0.405 Radioactive Bile 24.0 9.0 1.0 14.0 51.0 4.0 -3.0 -0.125 Black 6.5 2.5 3.0 1.0 15.0 0.5 -2.0 -0.308 Yellow 39.0 10.0 9.0 20.0 88.0 7.0 -14.0 -0.359 Pink 18.0 5.0 5.0 8.0 37.0 1.0 -12.0 -0.667 White 1.9 0.0 0.0 1.9 4.0 0.0 -4.0 -2.105
What Next?
Follow @GrahamYapp on Twitter! Atherton Collieries, Horsham and Radcliffe are my remaining Step 3 grounds and of course I am waiting for a chance to get in at Tottenham Hotspur’s new stadium. Then I will turn my attention to 19 remaining Step 4 venues.