Weak Team Research Articles

Rebounds in football: A systematic investigation of characteristics of goals scored after rebounded balls in English Premier League seasons 2012/2013 to 2018/2019

The literature on systematic aspects of goal scoring in football is rich, while little is known about random influences. This study focuses on an unsystematic element of goal scoring, namely rebounds, where a shot that bounces back from another player or the goal creates contested opportunities. Aspects including causes, match situation, player positioning and pitch zones were investigated for 554 rebound goals from seven seasons (2012/2013–2018/2019) of the English Premier League. Rebounds were predominantly caused by short distance and defensive errors, with goalkeepers playing a crucial role. Interestingly, the superiority of home teams and stronger teams to score significantly more goals than away teams and weaker teams can also be observed for rebound goals. Rebound goals are particularly prevalent in zones close to the goal, more prevalent after corners than non-rebound goals and associated with a high number of players in the penalty box. Overall, high similarities exist between rebound and non-rebound goals, while differences in match situations and spatial patterns suggest unique characteristics of rebound goals. These results are in line with the notion of systematicity and randomness concurrently contributing to success in football. More research appears useful to further disentangle the influence of both factors.

Analysis of attacking corner kick strategies in the Chinese Women’s Super League 2019

To determine the effective attacking patterns of corner kicks in women’s football, this study used associate rule to analyse the corner kicks in the Chinese Women’s Super League 2019. A total of 343 corner kicks from 56 matches were studied to examine the effective characteristics of corner kicks and strategies of strong and weak teams using associate rule analysis. In total, 17 goals were scored via corner kicks, accounting for 9.4% of the total goals (180) of the Women’s Super League in 2019. The result of associate rule analysis showed that the pattern of indirect, outside the box and eight attackers was more likely to create shots when a strong team (top 4 teams) faced a weak team (bottom 4 teams; Lift: 2.9). When a weak team faced a strong team, it was easier to create a shot by delivering the corner kick through an outswing ball directly to the near post (Lift: 6.091). These findings can help coaches to understand the key successful patterns of corner kicks in women’s football and choose a more effective attacking strategy of corner kicks according to the quality of both teams.

Competitive Balance In NBA After Play-In Tournament and New Draft Rule

Sports leagues place significant importance on maintaining competitive balance, as it impacts demand and revenues. In the case of the NBA, efforts have been made to address tanking, a consequence of the reverse order player draft, in order to foster more competitive league, increase demand, and strengthen its economic position. The NBA implemented changes to the draft lottery rule and introduced the play-in tournament with the goal of improving the win rates of underperforming teams. This research aims to assess the impact of these modifications by examining NBA results through a quantitative study and utilising independent samples t-test. The findings indicate that weaker teams have achieved a higher number of wins since the implementation of the regulations. However, most of the results did not reach statistical significance, suggesting that the new regulations have not yet proven to be effective. It is important to note that the impact of these regulations may become more evident over time. Therefore, the study suggests that conducting further research in subsequent seasons would be valuable in order to obtain more reliable results. By doing so, a deeper understanding of the effectiveness of the regulations and their potential long-term implications can be gained.

Tactical factors that influence shooting success in the Chinese Football Association Super League

This study aimed to investigate the tactical factors influencing shooting success in the Chinese Football Association Super League (CSL). The data set comprised 5914 shooting actions collected from all 240 matches in the CSL 2018 season, featuring 16 different teams. The variables assessed included pass number (PN), playing minute (M), match status (MS), final passing area (FPA), regaining possession position (RPP), offense category (OC), and shooting position (SP). To distinguish the attacking patterns of teams of varying strengths, all 16 teams were clustered into two groups based on two contextual factors: their starting season budgets and their rankings at the end of the season. Firstly, a descriptive analysis was conducted, followed by the application of a binomial-logit model ( p < 0.05). The Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) method was employed to evaluate the factors impacting shooting success. The results revealed that: (1) Match status ( p = 0.0412), regaining possession position ( p = 0.0002), and shooting position ( p = 0.0001) play important roles in shooting success for all teams. (2) For strong teams, the offense category ( p = 0.0031) and the final passing area ( p = 0.0027) also have an important influence on shooting success. (3) The tactics of the weak teams should focus especially on the final passing area ( p = 0.0388) before shooting at the goal. These findings can provide guidance for coaches in developing more effective scoring strategies or defensive tactics and tailoring them appropriately to the strengths and weaknesses of their respective teams.

How workplace identities and team management practices affect distributed team auditors' willingness to speak up

AbstractDistributed, rather than co‐located, teams increasingly perform audit work, raising regulator concerns that distributed team communication issues may affect audit quality. We investigate upward communication (i.e., raising issues to supervisors), a key communication dimension related to audit quality. In Study 1, we survey 69 senior auditors to establish that distributed team upward communication suffers. Furthermore, distributed team auditors identify less with their teams and struggle to know when and how to speak up. Because both are linked to inhibited upward communication, we next experimentally test firm practices with the potential to attenuate these problems. Study 2, an experiment with 128 staff auditors and interns, reveals that making auditors' professional identities salient improves upward communication on co‐located teams with strong team identities but not on distributed teams with weak team identities. Study 3, an experiment with 58 staff auditors, replicates a key Study 2 finding with a design that makes no reference to team identity strength. Specifically, in the presence of a salient professional identity, upward communication is significantly higher for co‐located relative to distributed team auditors. Study 4, an experiment with 69 staff auditors, focuses solely on distributed teams. It indicates that several distributed team management practices, including one‐on‐one and standing daily meetings, encourage upward communication. Finally, Study 5, informal interviews with eight audit seniors, corroborates key survey and experimental findings. Combined, our results provide insights into why distributed team communication suffers, refine audit voice theory, and provide regulators, practitioners, and researchers with multiple paths to improve audit quality.

The effects of broadcast on a team's market and on competitive balance from the perspective of fans maximizing utility

AbstractWe examine the decision of fans to attend the game or watch the exact televised match to address whether broadcast lowers revenue collected at the gate and worsens competitive balance. In most cases, broadcasts lower attendance and collection at the gate but do not necessarily worsen competitive balance. Weaker teams can benefit from broadcast revenue and catch up with their stronger counterpart. However, teams that make more money from broadcasts and a broad fan base can gain more advantages from broadcasts and worsen competitive balance.

The Importance of Crowd Support and Team Quality to Home Advantage in Brazilian Soccer League First Division.

Our aims in the present study were to analyze home advantage (HA) and number of goals scored in consideration of the presence or absence of crowd support and the influence of team quality during the last 11 seasons of the Brazilian Soccer League first division. We analyzed data from 4162 matches played in the Brazilian Soccer League in seasons 2012-2022 (3563 matches with an audience and 599 matches without an audience). We calculated HA by comparing the number of points won at home as a percentage of the total number of points gained, and we also recorded the number of goals scored by home and away teams. For analyses, we divided the teams based on home and away matches, with and without crowds, and we classified teams into three ability groups, based on the points scoring percentage of the team at the end of the season. There was a HA in all seasons analyzed (i.e., home teams won more than 50% of the total points won at home); but in matches in empty stadiums, the HA was reduced significantly, compared to matches with crowd support (66.6% with crowd vs. 57.2% without crowd, p < 0.05). The number of goals in all seasons was higher for home teams than for away teams; however, away teams scored more goals in empty stadiums than in stadiums with crowd support (p < 0.05). The HA was greater in matches with crowd support than in matches without crowd support (p < 0.01), independent of the team's ability level; but, top teams scored more goals than weaker teams (p < 0.01). In conclusion, in the Brazilian Soccer League, the HA and number of goals scored were affected by the presence or absent of an audience in the stadiums. While top teams scored more goals than weaker teams, the HA was lower without than with crowds, independent of team quality.

The influence of team feature vectors on NBA championship team prediction

Predicate National Basketball Association championship has always been the focus of people's attention. This paper makes an in-depth analysis of the prediction of the 2021-2022 National Basketball Association championship team. Select 22 possible influencing factors as feature vectors, such as 3-pointers, rebounds, and steals. SVM, KNN, and three different grouping methods were used to predict performance, including accuracy, recall, and F1-score. The result shows that the grouping method of a solid team and a weak team has a remarkable effect. Then principal component analysis was used to visualize the grouping methods of the four categories in two and three dimensions. The results showed that the champion team did not have significant characteristics. However, it was found that the teams were divided into two clusters, so the hypothesis was proposed: whether the league ball style changed with the year. Further verification found that the two clusters were not significantly related to the year. The conclusion is that under this method, the teams entering the playoffs can be selected with high accuracy, that is, the strong and weak teams in the experiment, but the characteristics of the champion team are not evident and difficult to predict.

Offsetting Unequal Competition Through RL-Assisted Incentive Schemes

This article investigates the dynamics of competition among organizations with unequal expertise. Multiagent reinforcement learning (MARL) has been used to simulate and understand the impact of various incentive schemes designed to offset such inequality. We design Touch-Mark, a game based on well-known multiagent particle environment, where two teams (weak and strong) with unequal but changing skill levels compete against each other. For training such a game, we propose a novel controller-assisted MARL algorithm C-MADDPG, which empowers each agent with an ensemble of policies along with a supervised controller that by selectively partitioning the sample space and triggers intelligent role division among the teammates. Using C-MADDPG as an underlying framework, we propose an incentive scheme for the weak team such that the final rewards of both teams become the same. We find that despite the incentive, the final reward of the weak team falls short of the strong team. On inspecting, we realize that an overall incentive scheme for the weak team does not incentivize the weaker agents within that team to learn and improve. To offset this, we now specially incentivize the weaker player to learn and, as a result, observe that the weak team beyond an initial phase performs at par with the stronger team. The final goal of this article has been to formulate a dynamic incentive scheme that continuously balances the reward of the two teams. This is achieved by devising an incentive scheme enriched with an RL agent, which takes minimum information from the environment.

A Multiphase Semistatic Training Method for Swarm Confrontation Using Multiagent Deep Reinforcement Learning.

In this paper, we propose a multiphase semistatic training method for swarm confrontation using multi-agent deep reinforcement learning. In particular, we build a swarm confrontation game, the 3V3 tank fight, based on the Unity platform and train the agents by a MDRL algorithm called MA-POCA, coming with the ML-Agent toolkit. By multiphase learning, we split the traditional single training phase into multiple consecutive training phases, where the performance level of the strong team for each phase increases in an incremental way. On the other hand, by semistatic learning, the strong team in all phases will stop learning when fighting against the weak team, which reduces the possibility that the weak team keeps being defeated and learns nothing at all. Comprehensive experiments prove that, in contrast to the traditional single-phase training method, the multiphase semistatic training method proposed in this paper can significantly increase the training efficiency, shedding lights on how the weak could learn from the strong with less time and computational cost.

Magic ramie rope for the tug-of-war game

The tug of war is a sport known for strength, however a weaker team can also win the game by a suitable team co-operation. A mathematical model is established, showing that the team co-operation or rhythmical frequency plays an important role in victory. A team can win even the rope is pulled to the opposite direction depending upon the rhythmical frequency. A criterion for rhythmical frequency is obtain to guarantee victory when the strength is almost same for both teams. Additionally the rope pulling can be also used for moving a heavy weight object, the principle might be used for building the great pyramids in ancient Egypt. Finally magic ramie ropes with special thermoplastic properties and controllable frequency are discussed.

Turiyam Set and Its Mathematical Distinction From Other Sets

Recently, many researchers paid attention towards exploration of dark data sets. In this process, a problem is addressed while characterization of dark data sets and its representation. One of the suitable examples is cricket data analysis where a match among two team’s likes India-Pakistan does not depends on win, draw or loss. There are many matches where Pakistan (or India) losses the match from any weak team in case India (or Pakistan) get out from the Tournament. These types of hidden or dark uncertainty can be represented via Human quantum Turiyam cognition in four dimensional rather than three-dimensional unconscious set. To understand these types of problems current paper tried to explore the Turiyam set with an illustrative and its distinction from other available sets.

The evaluation of playing styles integrating with contextual variables in professional soccer.

PurposePlaying styles play a key role in winning soccer matches, but the technical and physical styles of play between home and away match considering team quality in the Chinese Soccer Super League (CSL) remain unclear. The aim of this study was to explore the technical and physical styles of play between home and away matches integrating with team quality in the CSL.Materials and methodsThe study sample consists of 480 performance records from 240 matches during the 2019 competitive season in the CSL. These match events were collected using a semi-automatic computerized video tracking system, Amisco Pro®. A k-means cluster analysis was used to evaluate team quality and then using principal component analysis (PCA) to identify the playing styles between home and away matches according to team quality. Differences between home and away matches in terms of playing styles were analyzed using a linear mixed model.ResultsOur study found that PC1 presented a positive correlation with physical-related variables such as HIRD, HIRE, HSRD, and HSRE while PC2 was positively associated with the passing-related variables such as Pass, FPass, PassAcc, and FPAcc. Therefore, PC1 typically represents intense-play styles while PC2 represents possession-play styles at home and away matches, respectively. In addition, strong teams preferred to utilize intensity play whereas medium and weak teams utilized possession play whenever playing at home or away matches. Furthermore, the first five teams in the final overall ranking in the CSL presented a compensated technical-physical playing style whereas the last five teams showed inferior performance in terms of intensity and possession play.ConclusionIntensity or possession play was associated with the final overall ranking in the CSL, and playing styles that combine these two factors could be more liable to win the competition. Our study provides a detailed explanation for the impact of playing styles on match performances whereby coaches can adjust and combine different playing styles for ultimate success.

Better Offensive Strategy in Basketball: A Two-Point or a Three-Point Shot?

To better understand and explore the development trend of the offensive strategies of the world’s top basketball leagues, this study took NBA shooting data in the regular seasons from 2009/2010 to 2018/2019 as the samples and analysed the relationships between the shooting score ratio and game win probability, and the practical application of offensive strategies in games. The results showed that (1) increasing the number and the percentage of three-point offenses in the game can improve the probability of winning. However, too many two-point shots can affect the team’s winning probability to a certain extent. (2) The strong teams in the NBA focused more on the outside offense, while the weak teams focused more on the inside offense. (3) Statistical data further showed that whether a team’s opponent is strong or weak, taking the offensive strategy that tends toward the outside shot can lead to a higher game win probability than the offensive strategy that tends toward the inside offense.

Within-subject variation of technical performance in elite Brazilian professional soccer players: the environmental stress, match location, and opposition’s ranking influences

ABSTRACT Recent research identified that the behaviour of players and teams varies depending on the match context affecting the players’ technical performance. Due to the high context variability of a soccer game, understanding the characteristics of technical performance in soccer can enable coaches to make better decisions. The present study aimed to evaluate the effects of environmental stress, match location, and opposition’s ranking on technical performance variation of elite soccer players from strong and weak teams from the Brasileirão Serie A (Brazilian First Division National Championship). Fourteen match actions were chosen as dependent variables in the analysis. Values of each action of each player per match were established. We compared the means of these values from the Top 4 and Bottom 4 teams across different match contexts (environment heat stress, match location, and opposition’s ranking). We calculated all comparisons using linear mixed models. The results showed better technical performance under low or medium environmental heat stress at home and against weak opposition (p < 0.05). Therefore, match context affects elite Brazilian soccer players’ technical performance from the first division championship.

Sabotage in dynamic tournaments with heterogeneous contestants: Evidence from European football

This paper analyses how sabotage, measured as the number of fouls and yellow and red cards, is affected by the relative performance of and asymmetries between teams, determined based on score margin and the odds gap between one team and its opponent. By applying detailed controls for within-match dynamics and differences in team quality, we first observe that badly losing favourites are more willing than losing underdogs to increase their unsporting behaviour in heterogeneous contests. There are more yellow cards and fouls as the game progresses. We further find that most sabotage (yellow cards) can be observed when the (absolute) goal difference is equal to 1. Teams decrease their level of sabotage (fouls) by increasing the number of goals of lead or trail. In addition, weaker teams have an incentive to engage in more unfair and destructive strategies, such as committing more fouls, including those penalized with yellow cards. However, the incidence of red cards is not influenced by the score margin or strength gap.

The Development of Transformative Agency of Teachers in Teaching Research Activities in China.

Teaching research activities (TRA) in China are practical and reflective research of teachers on teaching. These required activities are meant to ensure quality education and facilitate the professional development of teachers. However, in TRA, teachers encounter many challenges such as low efficiency and weak team collaboration. These problems make it hard to achieve the expected outcomes. W Primary School reformed its activities using Change Laboratory, a formative intervention approach to workplace learning and development based on activity theory. The data collected included seven recorded meetings in the Change Laboratory. The conversations in the meetings were then transcribed into texts. A deductive method of content analysis was used to code the data, focusing on categorizing comments of teachers about the transformative agency. The findings showed the following: (1) There were five types of transformative agencies, namely, resisting, criticizing, explicating, envisioning, and committing to actions. Resisting and criticizing were represented less frequently, and taking action did not emerge as a type of transformative agency. (2) The comments about transformative agency about tools were more frequent than comments about other elements in the activity system. (3) There were some differences in the expression of transformative agency across participants. At the end of this study, the implications for the development of TRA are discussed.

Communication patterns in engineering enterprise social networks: an exploratory analysis using short text topic modelling

Abstract Enterprise social network messaging sites are becoming increasingly popular for team communication in engineering and product design. These digital communication platforms capture detailed messages between members of the design team and are an appealing data set for researchers who seek to better understand communication in design. This exploratory study investigates whether we can use enterprise social network messages to model communication patterns throughout the product design process. We apply short text topic modelling (STTM) to a data set comprising 250,000 messages sent by 32 teams enrolled in a 3-month intensive product design course. Many researchers describe the engineering design process as a series of convergent and divergent thinking stages, such as the popular double diamond model, and we use this theory as a case study in this work. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of STTM results reveals several trends, such as it is indeed possible to see evidence of cyclical convergence and divergence of topics in team communication; within the convergence–divergence pattern, strong teams have fewer topics in their topic models than weaker teams; and teams show characteristics of product, project, course, and other themes within each topic. We provide evidence that the analysis of enterprise social networking messages, with advanced topic modelling techniques, can uncover insights into design processes and can identify the communication patterns of successful teams.

Barriers and Facilitators of Implementing WHO Safe Surgery Checklist: A Cross-sectional Study in Public Hospitals of Iran

Background: The implementation of WHO safe surgery checklist (SSC) was proposed by the Ministry of Health and Medical Education in the operation rooms of Iranian hospitals in 2011, but was canceled after several years due to some challenges in implementation. Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the barriers and facilitators of the effective implementation of the SSC. Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed in public hospitals of Tabriz city in 2019. The study population consisted of operation room working staff, and the purposive sampling was used. The research tool was a researcher-made questionnaire designed through literature review and included three parts of demographic variables, barriers, and facilitating factors. Data were analyzed with SPSS-22. Results: The mean of barriers to implementation of the SSC was 3.03 out of 5. The most important barrier to implementing the checklist was the weakness in team working (3.18), while checklist barriers were the least important (2.98). The mean score of facilitating factors was 3.46. Among the facilitators, the highest score was for team working facilitators with a score of 3.47 and the lowest score was for the facilitators associated with the checklist with a score of 3.37. Conclusions: This is one of the first studies that explored the barriers and facilitators of SSC implementation in Iranian hospitals. We identified weak team working as the most important barrier to implementing the checklist. These results help policymakers and hospital managers to implement the checklist more effectively.

Using Convolutional Neural Network and Candlestick Representation to Predict Sports Match Outcomes

The interdisciplinary nature of sports and the presence of various systemic and non-systemic factors introduce challenges in predicting sports match outcomes using a single disciplinary approach. In contrast to previous studies that use sports performance metrics and statistical models, this study is the first to apply a deep learning approach in financial time series modeling to predict sports match outcomes. The proposed approach has two main components: a convolutional neural network (CNN) classifier for implicit pattern recognition and a logistic regression model for match outcome judgment. First, the raw data used in the prediction are derived from the betting market odds and actual scores of each game, which are transformed into sports candlesticks. Second, CNN is used to classify the candlesticks time series on a graphical basis. To this end, the original 1D time series are encoded into 2D matrix images using Gramian angular field and are then fed into the CNN classifier. In this way, the winning probability of each matchup team can be derived based on historically implied behavioral patterns. Third, to further consider the differences between strong and weak teams, the CNN classifier adjusts the probability of winning the match by using the logistic regression model and then makes a final judgment regarding the match outcome. We empirically test this approach using 18,944 National Football League game data spanning 32 years and find that using the individual historical data of each team in the CNN classifier for pattern recognition is better than using the data of all teams. The CNN in conjunction with the logistic regression judgment model outperforms the CNN in conjunction with SVM, Naïve Bayes, Adaboost, J48, and random forest, and its accuracy surpasses that of betting market prediction.