Thursday, January 29, 2009

Why do Man U get more penalties?

Celtic 11 - Dundee United 10.

Odd scoreline but this was actually just the penalty shootout. You can view all 14 minutes of it here. I was watching some tepid premier league match in comparison testing a couple of strategies. It got me thinking about what is the biggest shoot out. According to the article here it seems to be 16-17 with all but the last penalty scored. It's quite amusing seeing goalkeepers take penalties but, by accident or not, the Celtic goalkeeper scored the best of the lot IMHO.

To answer an age old question, yes top teams do get awarded more penalties. I did a study quite a few years ago to confirm this. You will also be interested to know that lower teams concede more. While it feels like a conspiracy, it's generally not. Putting aside the stats, it just turns out that teams at either extreme are more likely to be attacking or defending deep and a penalty is therefore more likely as a result. That's likely to disappoint the conspiracy theorists.