Which coach has had the most luck when coaching against another team? And who is your truest bogey team?

I may be posting something I shouldn't here, but Al gracefully gave me a little additional bit of OLMEC data from the back-end for a quick bit of data work, namely the historical results table.

However I also had leftover data from looking into whether max additional goalkeeper skills should be reduced from 5 to 3, AND I could combine the data, which let me look into who prays to the OLMEC altar the best.

Unfortunately access to this data set isn't going to suddenly turn me into Alon. Also note this is JUST for seasons 1-32 because I got the data sets at different times. Note also the estimation of luck isn't perfect. But it's close enough for some decent analysis, and all the errors are shared across games!

I also noticed there are also columns with IDs for each coach. Now I don't have the coach database table so I can't match names to numbers but I do get team names so it's pretty easy to put two and two together, and I was able to answer the question.

Note the more times you play against each other the larger the outcome could be - this isn't averaged.

In first place is Martyn Hathaway's Bridgwater Town over Derek Purvis' Marine FC. Bridgwater averages an amazing additional 1.2 goals a game over Marine, though most of this is explained by the fact Bridgwater has traditionally been favoured against Marine, and Bridgwater will score an extra couple additional goals than expected, making a 3-0 win 4-0, for instance. However, even when Derek is favoured Marine can't catch a break against Martyn, for instance an FA Cup first round match in season 15 where Marine were favoured by more than a goal, drew 1-1, and then lost the replay on the road 5-1.

It was second place which really caught my eye.

Over 32 seasons, Kendal scored 32 more goals against AFC Wimbledon than math would suggest. Not only that, Kendal has significantly out-performed expectations against the Dons. For instance, a season 9 match stats would suggest a 1-1 draw on average, but Kendal won 6-0. Wimbledon has actually been favoured in 2/3rds of the games, but it's Kendal which outperforms Wimbledon just slightly less than 2/3rds of the time. In fact, in 1 out of every 3 games played between the two teams, Kendal outperforms Wimbledon by a full goal. Wimbledon have only upset Kendal 3 times over the 69 matches but Kendal have 11 upsets!

In third is Burton over Bedford Town with 24 additional goals over only 39 games, putting this higher on average than Ian's remarkable run, but still not high enough in my little ranking.

So which team was your team's bogey team in the first 32 seasons? (Note this is a little different because I've removed coach versus coach from the analysis.)

There's two ways of looking at this - overall and average, so I've presented both (if there's no average team in parentheses, that means they are one and the same.) Some teams are represented a bit more in the overall since overall has a chance of being larger if more games have been played against two teams...

Think about who your bogey team is before you look. Does it match your expectation? My bogey team makes sense to me - Burton's always an oddly hard game...

Team → Bogey Team (Average Bogey Team)
AFC Fylde → Kendal Town
AFC Rushden and Diamonds → Burton Albion
AFC Wimbledon → Kendal Town (Rainworth Miners Welfare (!))
Bedford Town → Burton Albion
Boston United → Kendal Town (Mossley AFC)
Bridgwater Town → Droylsden
Burton Albion → Welling United
Carlton Town → Burton Albion (Bridgwater Town)
Chasetown → Swindon Supermarine (Kendal Town)
Chippenham Town → Mossley AFC (Shepshed Dynamo)
Clevedon Town → AFC Wimbledon
Droylsden FC → Forest Green Rovers
Evesham United → Droylsden FC
FC United of Manchester → Luton Town (Ilkeston Town)
Forest Green Rovers → Evesham United (Hyde FC)
Goole AFC → Hyde FC
Halifax Town → York City (Hyde FC)
Harrogate Railway → AFC Wimbledon (Welling United)
Hyde FC → Clevedon Town (Evesham United)
Ilkeston Town → Burton Albion (Kingstonian)
Kendal Town → Hyde FC (Clevedon Town)
Kingstonian → Luton Town (Carlton Town)
Luton Town → AFC Wimbledon (Droylsden)
Marine FC → Mossley AFC (Clevedon Town)
Mossley AFC → AFC Fylde (Harrogate Railway)
Rainworth Miners Welfare → Burton Albion
Shepshed Dynamo → Kendal Town (Tonbridge Angels)
Swindon Supermarine → Evesham United (Droyslden FC)
Tonbridge Angels → Bridgwater Town
Welling United → Mossley AFC (AFC Fylde)
Worksop Town → Forest Green Rovers
York City → Welling United