TRUEFA

After Five Games - Blackburn are biggest movers

With five (or for some teams four) games played here is an update on how you are seeing the season so far.

We are starting to see some movement around with some teams seemingly hard done by so far - most notably Blackburn who are six places below where they should be according to the fans. It looks like their penalty turned down against West Ham is one of the reasons for this. On the other side of that though West Ham were given the ‘half-time’ goal by you guys which makes up for it a bit.

Wigan are the biggest fallers moving down five places with two points less that in the official table.

At the bottom Portsmouth are still there but you guys have been kind enough to award them a point which was last weekend against Bolton. Can they kick on from that?

The top of the table is pretty much the same, slightly tighter in the TRUEFA table. Maybe this reflects the dominant wins we have been seeing so far from the ‘big’ teams.

Overall we are starting to see some trends, but it is of course early days. Some great games coming up this weekend hopefully so keep watching and keep voting!

16 Games And No Draws

As the title says 16 games and no draws, the first time that has happened since the 19th Century, wow. That doesn’t mean there has been no controversy though!

Birmingham got a late winner last night via the penalty spot, was it a valid penalty? Thats up to you to decide. Games such as these may not seem important now but if Pompey get relegated by a point that penalty decision could come back to haunt them, who knows.

Liverpool and Spurs looked good last night, looking like another roller-coaster season for Liverpool perhaps.

And what about Burnley - brilliant stuff from Owen Coyles boys. Was that a fair result? Please be honest in voting on that game - you can’t award a goal to United bacause someone ‘should’ have scored a penalty. I don’t think anyone can argue with the Burnley goal either, what a beauty.

The Big Kick Off

So there it was - the first weekend of the new season. From the TRUEFA point of view we were happy with it: hundreds of fans have downloaded the app; votes have been coming in; there was a bit of controversy; and all the software and servers seem ok :-)

From the football point of view it was an interesting weekend too. We got an idea how the season will pan out, or did we? Villa without Barry, United without Ronaldo, a motivated Drogba, Man City and whoever it was they signed, etc etc. Personally (and don’t take this as any kind of bias) I liked the look of Arsenal (obviously), Wigan, Birmingham and Sunderland - although I fear for Pompey. Why? They all looked nicely organised and got stuck in but can they all keep it up to stay up. Big teams grinding  out results was a bit meh.

Statistically it was an unusual weekend with no draws and only half the games were within one goal. But of those five close games two of them were a bit controversial. Should the Chelsea equaliser have been a free-kick in the first place and should Liverpool have had one of the two penalties they claimed for late in the game? You decide.

It is, of course, early in the life of TRUEFA but to give some guidance on how to vote consider the example from the Bristol City Vs Crystal Palace game on Saturday. The game ended 1-0 to City but Palace had a goal ruled out even though the ball actually hit the back of the net (You Tube it, it’s amazing). In TRUEFA land that would, I would think, end up being voted as a 1-1 draw. Of course most games are not so black and white but the basic principle applies - be truthful.

Happy voting

Barry

PS. Voting on matches is open for 3 weeks at the moment but this will tighten as the season goes on and by Christmas (maybe before) voting will stop before either team involved plays again.

PPS. In the interests of fairness I will go on record now and tell you all I have Fulham leanings, had a season ticket around the Keegan era, but I try to be clinically impartial.

Launch Press Release

We are getting excited now with the start of the season just a couple of days away. With that in mind we have put together a press pack, click on the links below to download either the press release as a PDF, or a ZIP file containing the press release and four lovely screenshots of the app.

Press Release (PDF)

Press Pack (ZIP)

Please check back with us when the action gets under way on Saturday.

The Old Charity Shield

They call it the community shield these days of course, and that’s not all that has changed - nowadays the players seem to be taking it seriously and getting stuck in to each other. Or maybe that was just a Man U Chelsea thing.

As you know the game finished 2-2 but not without a bit of controversy. At TRUEFA we think football matches swing on small decisions every now and again that have big implications and that was the case today. At 1-1 Chelsea’s Ballack elbowed Evra in the face but the referee played an advantage. The advantage was quickly lost and directly from that Chelsea scored. The Man Utd players were furious not just at the decision to play advantage but because the referee had stopped the game previously in a similar situation. So should that goal have stood? And if it had how would the rest of the game have panned out?

Not being a league game you can’t vote on what the result should have been but we look forward to more of these kind of incidents during the league season to see what you all think.

Introducing TRUEFA

Have you ever thought that you and the ref must have been watching different games?

Have you looked at the score at the final whistle and shaken your head and thought ‘that’s just wrong’?

Have you ever wished you could record match results as they should have been? The real score if it weren’t for that stupid offside or that penalty that was outside the box?

Now you can!

TRUEFA allows football fans to vote on every English Premier League game after the real result is known. When the voting closes the true result is announced and the TRUEFA league table is updated accordingly. Over the course of the season the TRUEFA league table and the real league table could end up looking quite different!

We can all recount dozens of incidents when our team has been ‘robbed’ but probably never thought of the cumulative effect of this. Here are some stats:

In season 08/09 there were 97 matches drawn, and another 149 matches settled by a single goal. Only in 134 matches (35% of the 380 matches) was there a clear winner by more than a single goal. That’s almost 500 points that were awarded on the slimmest of margins. Obviously not all of those matches were settled by dubious decisions - but quite a few were.

So armed with those stats TRUEFA is putting out the call to Premier League fans all over the world to come together and put the record straight.

To get involved download our iPhone App - click here for more information

Launch Date - 8 August

TRUEFA.com is getting ready for launch. We have decided to go for a launch date of August 8 which is one week before the Premier League season starts.

FAQ

What do I get from TRUEFA?

TRUEFA brings you the English Premier League table as it should be. Fans vote on what the score SHOULD have been in every game of the season and over time this builds the league table which may look very different to the real table.

How can I contribute?

You can vote using the TRUEFA iPhone app - there are two versions of this: the full app allows you to vote on all games; and the free app only allows you to vote on your team’s home matches.

Why would I do that?

So you are at the game and referee Mike Riley rules out a goal for your team for offside. You think it looked onside and even though you realise Mr Riley is in charge and he’s never wrong you think the game should have finished 2-1 instead of 1-1. So you get on to TRUEFA and vote - if the majority agree with you you have got your team a couple of points.

Contact Us

We love to hear from people who are using the service, and value all feedback - good or bad.

To contact us please email web at truefa dot com or send a direct message through twitter to @truefa

Cheers.

First things first

We have decided to use tumblr for the TRUEFA blog, we have used tumblr in the past and it is hassle-free and easy to template. We’ll get some proper content on here soon enough.