I wonder if that sort of thing was helpful or distracting for Dowie - or just confusing - in practice? What could he do about it? Just try to win each game? If so, why bother?
Or did he evaluate each game against his points average?
But what would it tell you? You still want to win if you're average, above average, or below average. And the scatter of results tends to be a bit irregular.
If we'd won at Norwich in 1976, and still beaten Leeds subsequently, we would have averaged exactly 4 wins, 2 draws and 1 defeat every 7 games, very impressive for us, and almost enough for the title (think goal average/difference would still have done us unless we overturned it with a heavy win at Norwich).
But it came in two gluts, if I remember right.
No defeats in the first 10 games, was it = 5-5-0? And only one in the last 15 = 13-1-1? That really was Championship form = 18-6-1.
But of the 17 games in between, we won only 6, and suffered all the defeats but 1.
Very mid-table = 6-5-6.
Surely Arsenal must have had a rather similar dodgy patch at the beginning or in the middle of 1970-1 because they needed a final run in of 14 wins and 1 draw in their last 15 games to snatch the title in the final game.
Pushing it a bit.
Maybe Dowie means that football is all statistics, all numbers, and if so, I think he's right. The more good statistics you get, the better you are. And it applies to skill as much as to goals and points.
So if you're down about today, that might cheer you up! Or it might not. It might also cheer you up to recall that we drew and lost our opening two games in 1966-67. Improved a bit afterwards!
And only equalised in the last minute away to Colchester in the League Cup in the same glorious season. But we'd have never known - and never missed it - if we'd gone down to a small Club (almost) as usual in the first round (we are also a small Club of course, I realise that).
The replay glossed over that near miss with a 5-0 win and setting us on the road to Wembley. We scored a lot of goals in that League Cup campaign. Wasn't it 6 against Colchester, 2 against Swansea, 4 Leicester, 2 Carlisle, 7 Birmingham, 3 West Brom (have I left someone out?). 24 goals in 8 games
Striker problems in those days, too!
I tend to think long term these days. If we've got what it takes, talent will out. If we haven't, we can probably massage the statistics to show that someone won promotion with fewer points at some stage of the season. And kid ourselves, until we sign a few more 'hopefuls'. Worth bearing in mind that Jim Gregory built THREE great sides with - what? - 5 promotions, a near miss for the title, and 3 Cup Finals. We've only managed 2 other promotions in our entire league history, no Cup finals, and nowhere near the top tier apart from Gregory.
And it was only really a few months from when he took over as Chairman until he'd transformed the team.
They say you can prove anything with statistics, but it's a laughable lie. Try proving that Chelsea won the title last season! Or even that Chelsea are a football club ;D.
Good throught provoking post mate
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