There is the small matter of a match tonight and quite an important one at that, so I won't spend too much time on what I'm about to spend some time on, because some of you will think that someone has hacked my account and started posting as me, just to wind me up, but they haven't, this is just me, passing on some information, which if I'm honest, I hadn't thought about looking at until late last night.

Before we get to my overly confident statement, I want to point you to this post about the match tonight. You are not getting another one from me until we start the match post later.

Sunbathing at Christmas

Anyway, to the fairly bold title of my post today. You see, I'm a big fan of stats and whatever you might think, when you look back, the statistics usually draw you a very clear picture so I quite like to use them to predict the future.

Think of it as global warming - rubbish right, there is more snow on the ground since the 60's and it's bloody cold - but you try convincing a scientist that it isn't happening and he'll tell you that what is happening is just a blip and that in twenty years we'll be sunbathing on Christmas Day. Okay, slight exaggeration., but you get my point.

Like for like League Table

I got two emails yesterday. One from 1874AVFC and the other from B6_Bob - one telling me they could prove with facts that we were doing better than last season and the other sent an attachment with a spreadsheet full of data covering every season for the past ten. I'm not going to tell you who sent what, because I don't want you all knowing who the geek is and I say that with great respect, as I found the spreadsheet very impressive, but a geek nonetheless you are 1874AVFC.

Anyway, rather than take what I am sent as gospel and run with it, late last night, I printed off our results from this season and our results from last season and tallied them up. This season, as you know, we are on 35 points. So, I looked back at the exact same results last season and added up the points.

The smart ones will know straight away that we have played three promoted teams away from home this season, so all I have done is replace those with the three relegated teams from last season as it seemed the fairest way to get a total figure based on last years result and well, you know the result, because I've given it away in the title of the post - we are, based on the numbers I so love, doing better than last season on a like for like basis.

The numbers don't lie. We had, based on these games last season, 33 points. This season we have 35 points. We have two more points than we did last season. We are doing better, based on the same games. We might be doing worse after the same amount of games, but on a like for like basis we are doing better.

For the record; the matches against Blues was replaced with West Brom, the match against Burnley was replaced with Middlesbrough and the match against Wolves was replaced with Newcastle. I should also say that I did this quickly, I have double checked, but you know I could be wrong.

Back to the here and now

Numbers don't lie but this isn't a reason to get above our station. We might be doing better than last season but if all teams above us are also doing better than last season by two points, it is all for nothing. We also played these teams at different times. We played during good spells for them and bad spells for us and as we are so often told, there are no easy games in this league and the league table doesn't lie.

But, it does offer hope and as a fan of the numbers, I will, from Sunday onwards, look at what we got last season and after each match, in the stats section that we are adding to the post-mortem post, will add what we got last season and show it as a going forward, going backward or standing still.

But, there is a match later. Post will be going up later this afternoon; but, something positive to talk about today. Bet you didn't expect that!