The ‘What The Premier League Table Would Look Like If All Shots That Hit The Post Had Gone In’ Table Is Quite Interesting

By Chris Wright

Such is my wont of an afternoon, I was just perusing the Internet and stumbled across OptaJoe’s ‘What The Premier League Table Would Look Like If All Shots That Hit The Post (And Stayed Out) Had Actually Gone In’ table from last week – which I felt was worth sharing as it makes for fairly interesting reading…

Strikes me as a bit of a kick in the nads for fans of certain sides, with West Ham flirting perilously with mid-table anonimity and Arsenal insurmountable at the summit after 35 games  – with Robin Van Persie no doubt enjoying a 40-odd goal season to boot.

Any thoughts peeps?

Posted in Miscellaneous

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28 Comments

  1. kct says:

    Great bit of analysis. I’m a frustrated gooner so I hope this spreads like the plague.

  2. Dennis says:

    If you’re hitting the post and bar you’re just not a good enough marksman.

  3. Steve says:

    @kct, it can spread mate, but at the end of the year you still won’t have won anything in the real world.

  4. I Don't says:

    What a pointless table.

    You do know hitting the post isn’t on target, no matter how many times those shots that hit the post hit the same post, they’re still not going in, you have to have a shot on target to have a chance. Why not have a table for ‘If shots caught by the Goalkeeper went in’ or ‘If shots blocked by defenders went in’.

    I’m just glad United weren’t top of this stupid list, proves we are actually good at shooting.

  5. oats says:

    its not a pointless table.its just ab observation. u can create those other tables n share them with us. n dnt wory. this wont change th fact tht u won the league

  6. Ben says:

    This list is stupid and anyone who thinks it’s fairly interesting is an IDIOT who doesn’t like IN THE REAL WORLD!!!

    Or, alternatively, it’s actually a fascinating insight into just how arbitrary football results are. We can talk about transfer budgets and tactics til the cows come home, but if the goals were a couple of inches bigger each way, we’d have Arsene Wenger up for a knighthood and Newcastle heading back down to the Championship. You don’t think that’s interesting? Well that’s your problem.

  7. Pete says:

    Am I mistaken that the second most interesting piece of information here (other than Arsenal being 12 clear, obviously) is that Newcastle would be in the relegation zone with just a -7 GD?

  8. Domhuaille says:

    Hitting the post depends on where you hit it. If it’s off the crossbar or uprights, then it will rebound into play unless it hits either side of the bar or post, if to the right of the lefthand post it might rebound in, if to the left of the righthand post, the same thing, if the bottom of the crossbar, maybe in, hitting a nywhere else is almost assuredly not entering the net.
    There should be a table for penalty shots that were saved or missed and how they influenced the result of that game and the table at the end of the season.
    Regardless, a team that wins more games and earns more points, even if they hit the post once every game, wins the League and any other competition they enter…..c’est la vie.

  9. alex says:

    This just shows that Arsenal are poor finishers…. thats about it.

  10. MrMac says:

    As a Chelsea fan this is kind of nervously ironic laughter kind of sad.
    An Abysmal form drop and abysmal season – n o matter how you twist or turn things and add what if’s…

    We we’re just destined to be 2nd.
    Period.

    Not that it is bad per say but… everyone knows the ambitions.

  11. jamie says:

    This is about as pointless an exercise as a “What The Premier League Table Would Look Like If Every Corner Counted As A Goal” Table. It has no relevance to the real competition. Hitting the post is about as ‘unlucky’ as shanking it ten yards wide… it still didn’t go in.

  12. AT says:

    A TABLE OF ALL PENS SCORED OR ALL PENS MISSED WOULD BE VERY INTERESTING

  13. kct says:

    United deserve the championship; without a shadow! Arsenal didn’t buy a proper goalkeeper and bought 2 donkey centrehalfs instead. Ultimately we weren’t mature enough. This table is meant as a bit of a laugh. I personally think it’s more useful than penalties scored/missed, since with penalties you always run into that grey area of, should it’ve been a penalty, or why wasn’t it given. Anyone questioning the table’s usefulness however, on a light-hearted website like pies, is truly missing the point; especially the people typing in caplock!

  14. dnpma says:

    well twelve points is quite a bit isnt it… and if you might want to look at it that way hitting the post or the crossbar is as near as it gets to scoring, given that the goalkeeper is probably already beaten by the time the ball hits the woodwork.
    of course it doesnt change anything if you look at the real world table – but it should put some gooners bitterness into perspective. we dont need much, most definitely NO new manager. just a bit of luck.

  15. Topo says:

    Arse need strikers. No world class strikers since henry.

  16. Pete says:

    Everyone seems to be forgetting that hitting the post is not just an insular event and can have a massive bearing on the rest of the game, i.e real world: if Man U are leading two nil at half time and go on to win 4-0 at full time but Tottenham hit the post just before half time, we are assuming the only difference would be that Man U would win 4-1 not 4-0 whereas there is every chance Spurs would come out fighting in the second half and maybe go on to win the game. So unless the table is called “What The Premier League Table Would Look Like If All Shots That Hit The Post Had Gone In (and the goal had not have affected the course of the game at all other than the score)” then its fairly inaccurate. Good fun though!

  17. dmoney says:

    saying that this table is pointless because it has no effect on the actual result of the league is one of the most dumbass observations you could make. OBVIOUSLY it has no effect on the actual league standings, that’s why there’s a big “IF” in the title… but that’s besides the point anyway; what the table DOES reflect is that given a minimal increase in EVERY team’s shooting accuracy, it’s arsenal who would have won by a longshot. that’s quite interesting information if you ask me since it reinforces the fact that arsenal create a shitload of chances but cant ever seem to finish enough of them.

    of course as Pete pointed out on 5/11, this is all considering that the goals that would’ve been scored wouldn’t have affected the rest of the game’s outcome…

  18. Spook says:

    HITTING THE POST ISN’T ON TARGET!!!!

    Are people really dumb, if a shot that hits a CERTAIN part of the post rebounded away from the goal(ie didn’t go in the goal) then no matter how many times you repeat the exact same shot it will NEVER (do you understand what never means) go in.

    This leagues should be called ‘the league for bitter fans who can’t accept their shooting is shit’.

    Why not have a table based on ‘if shots that went 10 yards over the crossbar went in’, it has exactly the same logic, ie the shots were NEVER on target and NEVER going in.

  19. Tater Tot says:

    da ignance on dis comment thread is ridikyoolus

  20. louis says:

    How i wish the ball that hit the bars entered the net, then my darling club , LFC will be in champions league next session but we have startd planning ahead to clinch our 19th Premiership title next season. who can stop liverpool.

  21. […] “if all shots off the bars had gone in” table. – whoateallthepies.tv […]

  22. […] with that, but forget the ‘collapse’ for a minute, what I mean is literally. I found this table & article on ‘Who Ate All the Pies’ a week or so ago and could barely believe my eyes. I knew we were […]

  23. mac says:

    Terrific piece of analysis. Fuckin’ useless, but terrific.

  24. Jack says:

    its all a bit of fun, i love how people are getting so bent out of shape with all this IF, NEVER, IDIOTS etc. the only idiots here are those getting upset over a made up table! SPOOK, good luck in life mate, i hope no one ever directs a joke your way! judging by your attitude, your one of these ‘life long united fans’, who couldn’t even tell me where the stadium was.

  25. David says:

    Yay for soccer!

  26. Dave says:

    You should rename this to ‘what the table would look like if Howard Webb had not refereed a premiership game’ the results would be the same.

  27. […] The ‘What The Premier League Table Would Look Like If All Shots That Hit The Post Had Gone In’ T… […]

  28. Tal says:

    Can you do the same analysis this season?
    I wonder how LFC would do this year with all those posts and bars…

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