Football fixture forecasting. Are you any good?

Football fixture forecasting is something I have expressed an interest in recently. Actually, this blog contains a forecasting category, that you might be interested in.

In my last post, I mentioned a crowdfunding project that I am trying to get off the ground. This prroject aims to investigate football fixture forecasting, utilising methodologies such as Artificial Neural Networks and algorithms based on Darwin’s prnciples of natural evolution (survival of the fittest).

Doing research for this project, I looked around a few football forums and found that there is a brisk business in football forecasting competitions (usually just for fun).

For example:

• FootballForums.net have a Football Forum thread, which can be accessed here.
• Total Football Forum also has a prediction thread.

I mention these now, as they might be of interest as the new season approaches.

Of course, one of football’s most well known pundits (Mark Lawrenson) makes predictions every week (on Radio Five Live I believe) and these are tracked at various web sites including MyFootballFacts.com. This site does a great job of showing the actual league tables and what would have happended if all Lawro’s predictions had come true. It’s interesting to see the fairly signisficant differences league table based on actual resuts. I guess it is no that surprising that there are large differences as, if Lawro, was an excellent preditor all the time, the bookies would be bankrupt.

I think I am also right in saying that Lawro tries to predict the actual score. This has got to be difficult. If I ever get my project off the ground, I think I’ll just try to predict whether the home team will Win, Lose or Draw.