Do football writers not understand arithmetic?
They never take proper account of games in hand.
The BBC talks about Celtic’s victory tonight, and how they’re three points clear, two goals ahead on goal difference, and have scored one more goal than Rangers. They describe it as a pendulum swing towards Celtic.
Nonsense. If I support a team in Glasgow, I support Celtic, partly because I want someone else than Rangers to win, but, frankly, at this stage all Celtic have done is make it a contest that Rangers can lose.
Suppose Rangers win 1-0 against Hearts on Sunday: at that point, they’ll be level on points and goals scored with Celtic, and one goal behind on goal difference. If they win 2-0 or 3-1, they’ll be ahead. And as it happens, Rangers tend to beat Hearts by 2 goals.
This is why I’m annoyed at random snapshots of league tables that don’t explain that, OK, team A may be behind team B by 8 points, but they have 3 games in hand and expect to win all of their games, so you’d have to consider team A to effectively be ahead of team B, and for any dropping of points to be a news event - not the act of gaining points that were effectively overdue.
Pah. That’s what you get when you combine an armchair sportsman and an amateur statistician.