Can't help but feel that Romania have blown it in Euro 2016 to some extent.

They gave an excellent account of themselves against France and were level but lost, they were in front against Switzerland and were pegged back to draw, and now they've lost to Albania.

They could have easily gone through in this group as a best third side and instead they've finished bottom.

Albania 56% chance of going through

totally deserved albanian win... they started slow but from about 25 minutes they were the better side.... romania never looked like getting back in to it.

I reckon they might sneak in

They would definitely have accepted that before the group matches were played

(I'm not going to ask how you got to 56% )

Yep. Germany must now beat us by a margin of four clear goals for us to finish behind Albania. We haven't been beaten by a margin of that size in a game since the infamous friendly against Holland in 2012, and even then that was when half the players on the field were from the Irish league because everyone else was injured!

So a brilliant result for NI

They’ll be wanting Turkey to draw with the Czech Republic, Sweden and RO Ireland to draw in their perspective games. England hammering Slovakia and Wales drawing or beating Russia would also help them.

Unfortunately it was beyond my brain power!

Saw an interesting table with various percentage chance of teams with various points and various goal differences going through in third place..l 3 points and -2 gd, comes out as 56%...

How do you do percentage chances of something happening when we're talking about team skill though?

It'd be like saying- the chances of San Marino beating Germany is 33%, because they have a 33% chance of a draw, a 33% chance of a win and a 33% chance to lose, when really their chances are much lower because San Marino are a crap team and Germany are a great team, so the percentage values are sort of meaningless.

It's the statistical likelihood of a team qualifying from a group with a certain number of points and goal,difference..... Got nothing to do with the performance on the pitch or who that particular team is.

I know, it just doesn't make any sense to me. May as well be a random number.

Now look what you have done, I was going to say such complimentary things about Nova21 having found this clever table and you've gone and spoilt it with your scepticism and doubts.

I do that, apologies

I just think that applying maths in situations like this has no real value. It's like if you got the two Wimbledon finalists and a mathematician came along and said "They each have a 50% chance of winning". It might be true statistically, but it doesn't really have any value, since who wins depends on who plays better. Applying maths in situations where skill is not a factor makes far more sense, such as randomly flipping a coin, but sport not so much for me.

It isn't like that, but I'm a bit too tired to write more.

This is not to do with the performance or past results of the teams etc
This does not take into account skill levels, random events that occur to enable a team to acquire the points etc...
It is a statistical likelihood of a team who gets a certain number of points and finishes in third place, qualifying for the next round, when 66.6% of the third place teams qualify and 33.3% of third palced teams don't...

Good debut for Albania - a win and 2 decent performances in defeat.

I think the problem is Ænima is trying to understand it, while I am just grateful I don't need to and I can put all my trust in your table and blame you if it goes wrong. It's a perfect set-up really

I know it doesn't take that into account, that's exactly my point. Skill is everything in sport so assigning mathematical values to it is sort of meaningless.

For those third place finishes to get through, they have to rely on results in other games. Results that will be decided by team skill and performance.

But mathematicians don't do that do they! Or have you never bet on a sports event? Because i'd be amazed if you got odds of Evens on Djokovic winning a 1st round match against the world number 400.

So as history shows that 56% of teams in this exact format of competition that finish 3rd with 3 points and -2 goal difference make the next round then that's a reasonable approximation surely. You can get 6/4 on Albania making next round so the bookies obviously think Albania's chances are lower than 56%

That's the exact point I'm making. If you only used maths, you'd say someone has a 50% chance of winning, but it's meaningless.

For example, how was this figured out? On the assumption that every team has a 33.3r% chance of either winning drawing or losing, and thus figuring out the chances of Albania getting to the next round, based on that? And where does goal difference sit in all this?

If you look at my post above where I was figuring out what results would be good for Albania, it is results like England beating Slovakia by a lot of goals and Wales drawing or beating Russia.

How would this formula fit in there? Would it simply say England has a 33.3r% chance of either winning, drawing or losing to Slovakia? And what about England beating Slovakia by a lot of goals? I don’t see how you can calculate things like that mathematically.

Seems I should have watched this game instead of the borefest that was France vs Switzerland!! NiteOwl knows his shizz!