Hepper's Lepers 1 - 2 Marex Trading
It is well recognised that Daniel Drake is a disappointment. The lack of disrespect was magnified hugely this Thursday when he turned up sporting the type of hair that you would expect from a woolly mammoth, or a northern pop / rock band. To compound the misery the rest of the Lepers were all sporting newly shorn scalps. You could audibly detect the thoughts in their head, the words of Jason Donavan reverberating: “I look handsome, I look smart, I am a walking work of art, Such a dazzling coat of colours, How I love my coat of many colours”. In conclusion Drake was a disgrace.
Once the Lepers had stopped admiring their new haircuts the game was ready to begin. The Lepers were playing the basement boys so little resistance was expected. However, after a 9-6 battle on the Lepers’ fortress-like bouncy castle, a walkover was not anticipated. And so it was to prove.
After last weeks 2-1 defeat to Manc (Drake scored, just for the records, or at least i think he did), the Rhino decided a technical, scientific analysis was appropriate in addressing the recent Leper slump in form. Firstly a pie chart of Lepers scorers shows the contributions by big names such as Drake, Ames, Harby, Harvey and 'Forfeit'.
This clearly shows that in fact Drake is not a disgrace, despite what whoever wrote the italicised bit above thinks. Look at the size of his blue wedge.
Secondly a PCA analysis was performed on the dataset using Canocco, the results are shown below:
Arrows close together represent things which generally happen concurrently, the longer the arrow, the better the relationship.
For example, when Drake scores, Harvey usually scores too. And when 'Forfeit' scores, no one else scores (except one occasion when we got a 2 goal forfeited advantage, but i digress). Also sample plots (or matches) closely related are found nearby, obviously, so we can assume thatthe jumble of games all under one point along the 'forfeited' axis are the forfeited games, unfortunately we are not able to make the numbers out.
So to clearthings up, Forfeited goals were removed from the next analysis below:
This clearly show that a lot of the later matches (above 60 ish) are closely related to when the opposition score, i.e. we have been losing a bit recently. Also it shows that when the opposition score, Jerzak and chesney are most likely to score - these are obviously our big-game players! Spike, Ames and Webb meanwhile generally only like to score when the going is easy! Hoskins, Stringer, Turner, Eley and Cornwall can all be lumped into one group who scored occasionally during the early leper years, as shown by short arrows and association of ealry matches. And Drake is shown to score lots, the numbers near his arrow are probably the ones where he scored hat-tricks. There is also a nice grouping of Harvey, Fjortoft and Drake, showing similar scoring patterns, with Harby Ames and Jerzak closely associated. In other words, we are your regular Leper scorers. I will start doing some analysis of other variables including actual result, sin-bins and (because sheen will be feeling left out) clean sheets.
Ok, further stats for those who love it. This lovely graph almost proves the old Leper adage, Bouncy Castle = Win, if it wasnt for that one loss to Lebowski...What else can i tell you from this? not much really. If Chesney scores, we lose. If Hayes scores we win. Basically the further down your name appears, the more you scoring is associated with us winning. What else? If someone from one team gets sin-binned, someone from the oppo is likely to be too. And sin-bins and red cards = draws and loses, although i havent included last weeks result. And if we score an og, we lose or draw. Thats about it. Below shows leper goals tallies. Amesy was ahead of Drake for a good part of the early Leperhood, but then his knees went and Drakes non-stop shooting started to pay dividends. It also shows that for the last 15-20 games, nearly all our goals are coming from only one man.