GHF Contests
Jul 31st, 2023 by goonerholicsforever
Pangloss goes to the front
by North Bank Ned and TTG
A week of dramatic improvement in the scores of all, but none more impactfully than that of Pangloss, who has relentlessly driven his way to the head of the pack.
Yet, it is tight at the top. Four points separate Pangloss and bt8, who drops to second, and 10 points cover the top five. BtM moves up to joint third from sixth, level pegging with Dr F Jnr. They push Poosker back to fifth.
That drops TTG into sixth at the head of a chasing pack comprising Scruz, steadily recovering from his MatchWeek 3 stumble, and Ollie, who is just steadily improving.
At the other end of the table, CER returns the wooden spoon to C100, but Bath has put some daylight between himself and both of them.
The Chavs and the Spammers are the flies in the ointment for most players this week.
After the ‘Lull
By North Bank Ned and TTG
The GHF Predictathon returns from its first interlull break, with all but three players improving their scores.
bt8 returns to the head of the field, opening up his lead over the chasing pack to 32 points. Pangloss continues his inexorable rise, moving into second and edging Poosker into third. Dr F Jnr rises two places to fourth, with TTG holding steady in fifth while BtM eases back into sixth.
In the middle of the pack, Scruz, Ollie, Trev and OM advance a place or two. C100 was the star improver of the week to move out of last place. It must be the M&S sandwiches.
The Red Mancs and Forest are the teams most messing up predictions.
Tight at the top as the pack settles down
By North Bank Ned and TTG
We reach the first interlull, the Predicathon’s first water station, if you will, with the pace slacking off in Match Week 4.
Every player’s score fell from last week, largely thanks to the universe of teams significantly screwing up predictions expanding from the Spammesr and the Barcodes to take in the red Mancs, Forest, the neighbours and I don’t never want to go to (Burnley for those unfamiliar with the poetry of John Cooper Clarke).
So Leaderboard positions for Match Week 4 turned on whose scores worsened the least.
Poosker kept his lead but bt8 narrowed it from 32 points to four, with BtM tracking both just 12 points behind. Pangloss easied into fourth ahead of TTG, who remains fifth, with Dr F. Jnr dropping to sixth.
There is no change at the bottom. Bath, CER and C100 continue to play the long game with 34 match weeks still to go.
We have a new leader
By North Bank Ned & TTG
We have our first change of lead. A dramatic surge takes Poosker to the front after Match Week 3. bt8 is left the meat in a familial sandwich as BtM slides effortlessly into third, just two points behind.
Everyone improved their score this week, except for Scruz, who plunged into the bottom half of the table, no doubt only temporarily.
At the bottom, C100’s cunning plan suffered a setback. Despite a significant improvement in his score, he was four points light of overhauling Bath and meanwhile Sancho Panza, who recorded the biggest points improvement of the week, had soared off the bottom to joint 15th with Osaka Matt.
West Ham being in second place was the fly in the ointment for many this week; no player is predicting a finish higher than 10th for the Moyes’s mob. Newcastle at 13th isn’t helping many causes, either.
Bt8 and 21CG Sustain Their Early Lead
By North Bank Ned & TTG
As to be expected, the Leaderboard for the GHF PL Predictathon has changed quite a bit after Match Week 2. All but three players’ points score improved,
A quick reminder: the red dot is the current week’s score; the grey dot is the previous week’s.
Bath appears to have only one dot because his score changed by only two points, so his grey dot is masked by his bigger red one.
At the top, bt8 extended his lead over 21CG, but the Man To Beat, TTG, has crept into third, pushing Scruz down into fourth by a whisker, with Poosker easing into fifth.
C100’s cunning plan took effect as he moved off the bottom and started what will, no doubt, be a relentless climb up the rankings.
Others apart from C100 and TTG who improved their points score by at least 100 points this week were Poosker, Dr F, Ollie, Pangloss and your humble game administrator.
The Red Mancs and the mob at the Bus Stop are the two sides weighing most heavily on most players’ predictions.
Annnnnnnnnd…they’re off!
By North Bank Ned & TTG
We have our first Leaderboard of the GHF 2023-24 PL Predicathon—although I would wager that it will bear as little resemblance to the final, winning Leaderboard as the final Premier League table does to that after the first round of games.
The red dots show each player’s score; the grey dots are their previous week’s performance (in this case, zero, as the game hadn’t started)—the lower your score, the better.
bt8, 21CG and Scruz are the early pacemakers, but remember, this is a Predicathon, not a Predictasprint. Plenty of canny old hands are biding their time in the middle of the pack.
Villa’s heavy defeat, leaving it bottom on goal difference, weighs heavily on this week’s scores. Liverpool, Palace and Bournemouth are also confounding the seers.
How wise is this crowd?
By North Bank Ned & TTG
First, thank you to so many for signing up for the inaugural GHF PL Predication. We have 20 players, which should make for a robust competition. The lists are now closed.
Second, we have collectively raised, subject to audit, nearly £600 for Bob Wilson’s Willow Foundation. Well done, you.
Victorian polymath Sir Francis Galton was the first to publicly note the phenomenon we now call the wisdom of crowds after he calculated that the mean of 800 guesses about the dressed weight of an ox at a country fair was spot on. Following (distantly) in those footprints, the monks have been flicking away at their abacuses to derive the Predictathon crowd’s view on the final table.
Sadly, the wisdom of our crowd is that the oily blue Mancs will retain their title, but it will be a damn close run thing. Not one player expects City to end up outside the top two, but a quartet predicts we will fall short of last season’s second place.
The Red Mancs are favoured to finish third by a distance but well ahead of the Scousers and the Saudis-on-the-Tyne. They will be duking it out for the fourth Champions League place (although both may be winners as there are prospectively five CL places for English clubs under the CL’s new, expanded format). Poch is expected to return mid-week evening football to the Bus Stop, while Villa and Brighton will contend for the pleasure of Thursday night trips to hard-to-pronounce places with too many vowels.
The neighbours will be in splendid isolation in ninth, not just for sanitary reasons. On the other side of London, Brentford and Fulham will be wrestling for the final spot in the top half.
Palace, Burnley and the Hammers (Moyes-less if the tin-tack crowd is correct) will fill the lower half of mid-table without being overly troubled by relegation scares.
That dog fight will be fiercest between Everton, Wolves, Forest and Bournemouth as they scrap to avoid joining Sheffield United and Luton in the drop. The Blades and the Hatters are , both seen as nailed on to return whence they came.
The Bar Crowd’s predictions:
- Manchester City
- Arsenal
- Manchester United
- Liverpool
- Newcastle United
- Chelsea
- Aston Villa
- Brighton & Hove Albion
- Tottenham Hotspur
- Brentford
- Fulham
- Crystal Palace
- Burnley
- West Ham United
- Everton
- Wolverhampton Wanderers
- Nottingham Forest
- AFC Bournemouth
- Sheffield United
- Luton Town
Will you beat the crowd?
Enjoy the new season playing the Goonerholicsforever Prediction Contest, in aid of the Willow Foundation!
Can you harness your inner Mystic Meg and see the final Premier League table for the 23-24 season? Who is going to win the FA Cup? Or the League Cup? And what’s your bet on the first manager to get the tin tack this season? You can do all of this by entering the GHF Prediction Contest for 23-24.
The purpose of the contest is twofold. Firstly, it is to increase your enjoyment of the upcoming season by providing a degree of light-hearted competitive rivalry as the season progresses. Secondly, it will enable us to support the Willow Foundation with a further source of charitable funding.
To make the administration of the contest as simple as possible (and to avoid any connection with VAR!) the following rules have been established:
1. The object of the contest is to predict the final 2023-24 Premier League table.
2. The winner will be the player whose predictions are closest to the table after the final match of the season has been played.
3. This will be determined by a points score using the Difference Squared system. The lowest total score wins (see below for how the scoring works). The reward for winning is a full year’s bragging rights as the bar’s top know-it-all.
4. We shall post updates and a leaderboard in the drinks throughout the season so players can follow their progress. However, the final table at the end of the season determines the contest’s winner, just like the PL itself.
5. If more than one player gets the same score, the tiebreaker will be the most correct predictions. The second tiebreaker will be the most predictions out by one place, then two, and so on.
predictathon23-24_entry_blank
6. Download the entry blank above. Email your completed entry form to ghfpredict@yahoo.com. North Bank Ned, who is administering the contest, must receive your completed entry no later than one hour before the new season kicks off, i.e., by 1900 UK time on Friday, August 11. No changes to entries or new players are permitted after that deadline.
7. To participate in the contest, players are honour-bound to donate to the Willow Foundation (link here) at least £10 for the League Position Contest, and £5 in total for the three predictions on the entry blank (first manager to get the tin tack, and the winners of the two domestic cups). Every entrant must join both parts of the contest to participate. So the total entry fee is £15. If you want to send an extra donation to Willow this will be most welcome, but will not guarantee you a higher placing!
8. TTG will confirm with Willow that players are in good standing by the end of Match Week 1. Players who have not donated by then will have 100 points added to Match Week 2, with a further 100 points added for every week of delinquency. If players have not donated their entry fee to Willow by the end of Match Week 4, they will be removed from the competition.
9. In the event of any disputes, TTG’s decision will be final (right or wrong!).
Scoring System
This game will use Difference Squared scoring. This is how it works:
Players’ predictions for each club are awarded points equal to the square of the difference between the club’s predicted and actual place. For example, if a team were predicted to be in sixth place and ended up fourth, the points scored would be 4, i.e., the difference between sixth and fourth is two places, and two times two is four; if a team was predicted to be in fifth place and ended up 15th, the points scored would be 100, i.e., the difference between fifth and 15th is ten places, and ten squared is 100. The worse a prediction, the more the system, by design, penalises it.
Each week, each player’s 20 club scores are then summed. The “winner” of the week is the player with the lowest total that week, but the player with the lowest total relative to the final league table is the winner of the whole contest.
Enjoy what we hope will be a very happy season for all Gooners and your involvement in what we hope will be a fun contest. Good luck!
TTG & North Bank Ned
