Will it be 1-1 again? FC Edmonton bucks the odds by playing to same tie scoreline five times in a row

FCE: More goal celebrations needed.

Imagine you walked into a Vegas casino, with the intent of putting a few bucks on a longshot. You go to the window, and tell the agent that you want to bet on one team playing five consecutive draws.

Chances are the possible would be good. Odds would be multiplied week after week.

But, “a-ha,” you say. “I’m not going to be on five draws, but that each of the games will have the same scoreline; they’ll all finish 1-1!”

Now, 1-1 is one of the most common scorelines of all in soccer (more on that later). But, still, to see it repeated five times, against five different opponents, is a longshot of longshots. Some of the opponents would be better, some would be worse. Some would have a higher-than-average goals-per-game standard, some would be below the league average. The opponents would be variables, not constants. Yet, to see a team play them all to 1-1 draws over the course of five consecutive weeks, home games and road games, is mind boggling.

But that’s what FC Edmonton has done. If Minnesota United FC comes into Clarke Stadium Sunday and earns a 1-1 road draw, it will mark the Eddies’ sixth 1-1 draw in a row.

The Eddies are undefeated in six; before the five 1-1 draws, they got a 1-0 win over San Antonio. So, in six games, the Eddies have neatly divided six goals.

Coach Colin Miller understands that where the club needs to improve is its finishing. In last week’s draw with Fort Lauderdale, the Eddies had what was recorded as 18 really solid attacks into the opposing half. From those attacks, the result was one goal.

And that rate of finishing is below average.

“We just have to be more clinical,” said Miller after the Eddies trained Thursday at Clarke Stadium. “Statistically, for every eight attempts you make, you score one. So, out of the attempts we had we should score more than one goal. I would be more concerned if we weren’t creating chances.”

FCE forward Michael Cox’s status for the Sunday’s game is unknown. He took a knock on the knee in a collision with Strikers’ keeper Richard Sanchez. Fullback Edson Edward continues to work back from injury that’s kept him out of the last two games. Centre back Mallan Roberts, who missed last week’s game, is also working his way back.

Now, back to the odds. According to soccer analyst Chris Anderson, co-author of The Numbers Game, 1-1 is the most common final score in soccer. The results of his study of the four big European leagues can be found on Soccer By the Numbers (CLICK HERE). According to Anderson’s research, a 1-1 draw occurs anywhere between 10.6 and 13.25 per cent of all games. So, while it’s the “most common” scoreline, that doesn’t mean “frequent.”

So, all things being equal, imagine if Edmonton was a baseball hitter. Getting five 1-1 ties in a row would be the same as a hitter whose average is somewhere between .106 and .133 getting five consecutive hits, against differing pitchers of varying abilities (as Edmonton did not have a common opponent in those draws).

Here is where I will get really into numbers (and, any mathematicians or statisticians out there, please free to challenge me on this or to correct me).

The rule goes something like this: Probability = (P1 x P2 x P3 x P4 X P5).

So, based on Anderson’s research, let’s say that a 1-1 draw happens 12 per cent of the time, a happy medium between 10.6 and 13.25.

So, the probability of five 1-1 ties in a row is like this: .12 x .12 x .12 x .12 x .12.

That is equal to .0000248832.

So the chances are about 2.5 out of every 100,000. Or, 40,000 to one.

So, if Vegas was simply using math and not betting patterns, home-team favourites, etc, if you bet five bucks on the Eddies to play to five 1-1 draws in a row, you should win $200,000.