What makes a football team good?

[SniffTheGlove]

Hi, it's been a while since I last posted here as life got in the way seriously.

Anyway, I am looking to rebuild my systems as I still collect data every day from football-data.co.uk (since 2005) and I have just purchased a new programming language to convert my data collection software and also my prediction software to be faster etc..

One of the first things I am looking at is What makes a Football Team good?, ie how to discern this from football data statistics only!

The obvious ones I can think off are...

Goals Ratio: For/Against from last game, last 4 games and current season.

Win Ratio: Number of matches won at home or away from last game, last 4 games and current season.
Draw Ratio: Number of matches drawn at home or away from last game, last 4 games and current season.
Lose Ratio: Number of matches lost at home or away from last game, last 4 games and current season.

League Position

Fulltime over Halftime results

Distance? Do teams who travel a long way have a disadvantage?

These are the main datasets one can work out from the football-data.co.uk database, though for distance data this is my own database table I have created for the location of every teams home stadium. I store the Long/Lat of the stadium and work out the distance using the Great Circle equation.

How do you all workout what makes a team good/bad from data when working on your own predictions etc.

[Matthew]

Hi,

Define good....

Is this profitable? More likely to win a given fixture irrespective of odds on offer? Consistent? Always value? Good at upsetting the odds? Good away from home?