Oracle Cloud Analysis Drives Two Premier League Awards

Bournemouth’s 2022-23 Premier League season was memorable not only because the team fought back from the bottom-three relegation zone as late as April to finish a respectable 15th, but also because they were involved in the two most improbable comebacks of the season—on both the winning and losing ends.

Trailing 2-0 in first-half stoppage time in their September 3, 2022, match against Nottingham Forest, Bournemouth went on to score in the 51st, 63rd, and 87th minutes to claim victory. Then in a November 5, 2022, match, Leeds United executed the second most improbable comeback of the season when they came back from a 3-1 deficit against Bournemouth in the 48th minute to score in the 60th, 68th, and 84th minutes and go on to victory.

Why were those the most improbable comebacks of all the 380 matches in the 2022-23 Premier League season? Because the math says they were.

Most Improbable Comeback is one of two end-of-season awards the Premier League announced on May 30, each one based on a data analysis performed using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). The other award is for Most Powerful Goal, given to West Ham United midfielder Saïd Benrahma (more on that below).

An OCI Data Science analysis calculated that in their September 3 match against Nottingham Forest, Bournemouth at one time had the highest probability of losing the match of any team during the season that would later go on to victory—an 88.3% chance of losing and only a 2.4% win probability at the lowest point in the match. The data science team determined that Bournemouth was the winner after crunching more than 1.2 billion rows of third-party data, totaling more than 10 billion data points from all 380 matches during the season. In finishing second in this category, Leeds overcame an 87.4% probability of losing its November 5 match against Bournemouth.

For the other Premier League end-of-season award, Most Powerful Goal, an OCI Data Science analysis revealed that Benrahma’s laser strike against Crystal Palace on November 6, 2022—at an average velocity of 66.59-mph (107.17-kph)—was slightly more powerful than the 65.74-mph (105.80-kpm) long-range strike by Bournemouth midfielder Philip Billing in the team’s comeback against Nottingham Forest on September 23.

That OCI analysis measured the average velocity from the time the ball was struck to the time it crossed the goal line. Two requirements for the Most Powerful Goal award are that the strike was from outside the 18-yard box and wasn’t deflected.

Learn more about how the Premier League is working with Oracle to give fans a deeper understanding of the play on the pitch.