fast zombies shoot!
So the England Zombies are looking more like Fast Zombies again. If I’ve bored you by talking up James Milner, I’d like to take this opportunity to claim my bragging rights. Here’s something interesting; back at the weekend, in the depths of self-loathing, the Obscurer published a table showing the teams with various statistics, including shots on goal. It struck me that England were looking rather good on that, and that the top four looked mostly like a plausible semi-final line up. So I’ve put together a spreadsheet ranking the teams by shots on target/matches played.
(oh, for fucksake – it’s fucking google spreadsheets. wordpress.com, get a clue. here.)
Data source here. Having fifa.com in my browser history makes me feel dirty for some reason.
That puts England 5th in the world – quarter finals again – but ahead of all the three possible opponents in the second round, Germany (7 on target/game vs. 7.333 – Google Spreadsheets is lax about sig figs), Ghana, and Serbia, and well ahead of the Netherlands and Italy. Further, out of the top four, Spain aren’t looking a cert to qualify out of their group, and they have an even worse tradition of World Cup choking than we do. This may be daft, sunshine and beer optimism; but it’s daft, sunshine and beer optimism with data.
Update: Well, would you look at that.
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Alternate Seat of TYR 
June 23, 2010 at 6:57 pm
I agree with the underlying prediction that England have much more of a chance than they’re being credit for but a) I worry that the England shots on goal are being skewed by Lampard and b) doesn’t your final paragraph slightly undermine the underlying model?