Goals per match

My name is Wim Koevoets. I wrote this book to explain why the Poisson distribution can give a reasonable description of uncertainty about goals in matches and to point out its use for comparing competing teams with each other.If you search for Poisson and football on internet, you will find that people use the Poisson distribution for predicting the outcomes of future matches. Perhaps less well known is that you can also use the Poisson distribution to describe the relative performance of teams during a season.

For comments or questions, please contact me hereThis is a short book about modelling the number of goals in an association football match with the Poisson distribution. The Poisson distribution is a way of modelling the distribution of uncertainty across the possible number of goals in matches. From this book you can learn why and how the Poisson distribution relates to the possibility that a team in possession of the ball scores a goal.

You can also learn about the first known use of the Poisson distribution for a statistical analysis of goals in matches. In addition, you can check how a simple Poisson distribution describes the distribution of goals across matches in the premier leagues of England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France. The interactive elements may work on large screens only. The last chapter shows how you can use the Poisson distribution to describe the relative strengths of teams during a season of association football.

If you would like to cite this work, please use:

Koevoets, W., 2019, Goals per match, available at www.goals-per-match.net

Goals per match

Table of Contents

1 Introduction

2 Association football

3 Uncertain goals per match

4 Applications

5 Differences between matches