死獌狗
2021-07-23 00:50:18
Do you want the good news or the bad news first, Manchester United fans?
I’m going to assume you like to finish with a positive, so we’ll get the bad news out of the way.
The squad that finished second last season is projected to win eight fewer points in the next one, which gives them only a one in 80 chance of winning the Premier League title for the first time since 2013 and a likely finishing position of fourth, behind Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea.
Says who? Says Real Analytics, a team of computer science and mathematics professors who have become football’s favourite soothsayers.
They were probably the first forecasting firm to spot Leicester would be champions in 2016 and they backed that up by predicting Chelsea would win in 2017, by seven points, and that Arsenal would finish outside the top four for the first time in 20 years.
Having spent the best part of 20 years working with the betting industry and professional gambling syndicates, the men behind Real Analytics next turned their brainpower to every club’s biggest head-scratcher: player recruitment.
And here is the good news.
By signing Jadon Sancho, which is only a formal announcement away, Manchester United have already added four points to their expected points total (from 65.8 to 70.2), improving their chances of a top-four finish in 2021-22 by 50 per cent (40.4 per cent to 63.3 per cent) and their hopes of a 21st league title by 250 per cent.
OK, the latter statistic is just an improvement from a 1.2 per cent chance to a 4.2 per cent one, or one in 25, but signing the 21-year-old Londoner from Borussia Dortmund is clearly a step in the right direction.
But do you know what would really move the needle at Old Trafford? I suspect you do, but for those who have not been paying close attention, the answer is a truly dynamic defensive midfielder to replace the “McFred” axis of Fred and Scott McTominay. And Real Analytics know who it is.
“We’ve run the numbers on Eduardo Camavinga and we were quite shocked, actually, because he makes a massive difference, which is rare for a player so young,” says Ian McHale, a professor of sports analytics at the University of Liverpool and Real Analytics’ co-founder.
If you add the 18-year-old Frenchman’s performance profile to United’s 2020-21 squad, send it to the Google Cloud Platform and run a million simulations of next season, Camavinga earns them almost six extra points on his own (from 65.8 to 71.7), improves the top-four finish forecast to nearly 70 per cent and lifts their title hopes to 6.4 per cent.