Interesting read re. Lawro and his predictions

[Jimpav]

How good are Lawro's predictions?

22 May 2013 Updated 10:02
By Ben Carter - Radio 4's More or Less

Over the course of the Premier League season, BBC Sport football pundit Mark Lawrenson has pitted his predicting wits against the likes of Hulk Hogan,Goran Ivanisevic and Lethal Bizzle.
After predicting a total of 379 results (he did not make a prediction before the rearranged Chelsea v Reading game on 22 August), the final table according to Lawro is below.

The last column on the right shows how many places higher or lower each team finished in this table compared to the actual Premier League standings.
According to the predictions, Sir Alex Ferguson would have bowed out by leading his Manchester United side through an unbeaten Premier League season with a record 96 points.
QPR fans would have been rejoicing at finishing in eighth position with 56 points (31 more than they actually accrued), whereas poor Swansea City would have been relegated.
Nonetheless, Lawro's overall record is quite impressive. If you had made bets based on his predictions this season, you would actually have made more money than if you had staked your cash on the results calculated as most likely by the bookmakers.
The ex-Liverpool defender turned BBC football expert correctly predicted 200 of the 379 results (win, lose or draw), giving a 52.77% success rate. The bookmakers successfully predicted 199 correct results (ie the home win, draw and away win result with the shortest odds), giving a success rate of 52.36%.

If you had put £1 on the shortest odds offered by the bookies in each of the 380 games (ie the result they thought most likely), then you would have lost £28.91 over the course of the season. If you had put £1 on all 379 results Lawro predicted, you would have made £18.60.
What would have happened if you had applied a fixed formula to your predictions though?
One simple method would have been to predict a home win for every match as this is, on average, the most likely result during the course of a season. This result occurred 43.42% of the time (165 times out of 380), so it would not have beaten Lawro.
You could add a level of sophistication, by predicting a home win for each of the teams except when they are facing one of the top five. So when the top five were playing away against sides in sixth to 20th positions, you would predict an away win. When two top five sides play each other,you predict a home win.

This would have given the correct result 50.53% of the time, which still means Lawro would have come out on top.

However, the former Liverpool and Republic of Ireland defender (external) still has some way to go to please all of his followers.
Julian Adamson contacted BBC Sport to say he and some friends found Lawro's predictions so predictable that they played a game called 'Predicting Lawro's Predictions'.
Julian argued that Lawro used only three results for most of his predictions: 1-1, 2-1 and 2-0. And the statistics do largely bear this out. Lawro only predicted that a side would score three goals in 17 of his 758 predictions (2.24%), whereas this actually happened 120 times (15.78%).
And he did not predict that a side would score four goals or more in any of the 379 games. In reality, this happened 43 times out of the 760 individual scores (5.66%).
Lawro does not really go for away wins. He predicted that eight teams (Aston Villa, Fulham, Norwich, Reading, Southampton, Swansea, West Brom and West Ham) would not win ANY of their away fixtures this season. In fact, Villa, Swansea and West Brom all won more away games (five) than sixth-placed Everton (four).
He predicted that Fulham and West Brom would lose EVERY away game (scoring only four and six goals respectively), and drew the ire of Southampton fans by predicting they would lose 15 straight games at one stage of the season (external).
Lawrenson says: "It's meant to be a bit of fun, although I've lost count of the number of times a fan has stopped me outside a ground to say 'your predictions are rubbish'.
"I respond by saying 'if I could successfully predict all the results, do you really think I'd be here? I'd be on a yacht in the Caribbean drinking a gin and tonic'."
He admits he does not usually employ a strategy for predicting results, preferring to use "gut instinct". Saying that, he was not surprised by some of our findings.
"I probably only go for away wins for the top half dozen teams, because teams below them don't win too many away games. And perhaps I don't predict drubbings because I don't want to upset fans of the losing side.

"The first 10 weeks of the season are probably the trickiest, because you don't have too much idea about form at that stage.
"You've also got to remember that I do the predictions on a Thursday, to go up on the website on a Friday, which means I don't know all the injury news at the time. So I'm delighted to hear I've beaten the bookies, because in my experience they don't get too many things wrong."
Additional reporting by Simon Austin
Related to this story

[grandad]

Why were his predictions so very consistently wrong for Us, Swansea & QPR. Surely as the season unfolded he must of realised that the Hahas were doomed.
In spite of him "beating " the bookies I still think he is rubbish. It´s good for a laugh I suppose.

[HatterDon]

Have a look at where he stands in Logicalman's picking pool. He's been better than 90 percent of us.

[Jimpav]

Have a look at where he stands in Logicalman's picking pool. He's been better than 90 percent of us.

He's no doubt accurate and better than the bookies but in doing so he has played the long game - ie . Man U to win or draw every game and us to not win a single away game. More often than not this is correct but the QPR thing left me scratching my head.

[WhiteJC]

Lawro's Predictions 2012/13 Season

Lawro	Result
Fulham 2-1 Norwich	Fulham 5-0 Norwich
Man Utd 3-0 Fulham	Man Utd 3-2 Fulham
West Ham 2-1 Fulham	West Ham 3-0 Fulham
Fulham 2-1 West Brom	Fulham 3-0 West Brom
Wigan 2-1 Fulham	Wigan 1-2 Fulham
Fulham 0-2 Man City	Fulham 1-2 Man City
Southampton 2-0 Fulham	Southampton 2-2 Fulham
Fulham 2-1 Aston Villa	Fulham 1-0 Aston Villa
Reading 2-1 Fulham	Reading 3-3 Fulham
Fulham 1-2 Everton	Fulham 2-2 Everton
Arsenal 2-0 Fulham	Arsenal 3-3 Fulham
Fulham 1-1 Sunderland	Fulham 1-3 Sunderland
Stoke 2-0 Fulham	Stoke 1-0 Fulham
Chelsea 2-0 Fulham	Chelsea 0-0 Fulham
Fulham 1-1 Spurs	Fulham 0-3 Spurs
Fulham 2-1 Newcastle	Fulham 2-1 Newcastle
QPA 2-0 Fulham	QPA 2-1 Fulham
Liverpool 2-0 Fulham	Liverpool 4-0 Fulham
Fulham 2-0 Southampton	Fulham 1-1 Southampton
Fulham 2-0 Swansea	Fulham 1-2 Swansea
West Brom 2-0 Fulham	West Brom 1-2 Fulham
Fulham 2-0 Blackpool	Fulham 1-1 Blackpool
Fulham 1-1 Wigan	Fulham 1-1 Wigan
Man City 3-0 Fulham	Man City 2-0 Fulham
Man Utd 2-0 Fulham  (FA Cup)	Man Utd 4-1 Fulham
Fulham 1-1 West Ham	Fulham 3-1 West Ham
Fulham 1-2 Man Utd	Fulham 0-1 Man Utd
Norwich 1-1 Fulham	Norwich 0-0 Fulham
Fulham 2-1 Stoke	Fulham 1-0 Stoke
Sunderland 2-1 Fulham	Sunderland 2-2 Fulham
Spurs 2-0 Fulham	Spurs 0-1 Fulham
Fulham 2-0 QPR	Fulham 3-2 QPR
Newcastle 2-0 Fulham	Newcastle 1-0 Fulham
Aston Villa 2-1 Fulham	Aston Villa 1-1 Fulham
Fulham x-x Chelsea	Fulham 0-3 Chelsea
Fulham 1-2 Arsenal	Fulham 0-1 Arsenal
Everton 2-0 Fulham	Everton 1-0 Fulham
Fulham 2-0 Reading	Fulham 2-4 Reading
Fulham 2-1 Liverpool	Fulham 1-3 Liverpool
Swansea 2-0 Fulham	Swansea 0-3 Fulham