And also the last 25,20,15, 10 matches. The top 3 teams are Barnsley, Norwich and Watford - they just rotate places amongst each other.
Because it gives a picture of current form. Cardiff will be a lot lower in the form table over 6 games than they would be over a period that covered McCarthy's first 7 games or so. Brentford's last 10 games have been poor, after going 20 unbeaten. The more games you use, it becomes less of a form guide, and more of a guide of how good teams are. Over 6 games, we're 5th in the form table, behind Watford, Norwich, Bournemouth and Millwall. Reading 9th, Brentford 13th and Swansea 23rd.
So why not 4 games? Or 7? Genuine question. I'm not a massive gambler so form isn't really something I look at in massive detail, aside from a cursory glance to look at all the green W's!
Good question, I don't know, but 6 seems to be a standard when giving form tables. As with all data, it's all about how you interpret it. For example, when thinking about Saturday's game, should we be concerned at not winning any of our last three home games, or confident because we've only lost one out of god knows how many?
I’m definitely not a gambler, but from a maths v football perspective you need to find a sweet spot to calculate form. Just looking at the last game would obviously be skewed by the quality of the opposition, so you need to increase the number of games to level out the influence of the opposition. But increase it too much and you start measuring how well your team were playing 2 months ago etc. To smarten the maths, you could start weighting the outcomes of the last 6 games by looking at the form of the opposition. But all that done, it’s still football, so you could never predict the 2nd bottom team spoiling the 5th placed teams twelve games unbeaten run. in short, form only gives you a nod, it doesn’t predict anything concrete.
