Sunday, April 23, 2006

Predictability

Long term readers of this blog may remember possibly my first real rant - why the predictability of Chelsea's dominance is bad for the excitement of football. I made a similar point in a much more recent piece, where I pointed out that we don't regard the best team losing as an anomally but something to be celebrated, to support my claim that a match isn't an imperfect procedure to identify the better team, but a pure procedure to decide who win. (As such, when someone like Mourinho says 'the best team lost' he may be right, but the answer is 'so?' or even 'good').

Anyway, it seemed to me fairly obvious that unpredictability brings excitement. We like the title race to go down to the wire. Once it's decided, we turn our attention to things that aren't, like 4th or relegation. Still, I'm delighted to have found some research that backs up my claims. Thanks to Nick Lees for mentioning that to me at brunch today.

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