Blasts from the Past.....Newcastle 4-4 Arsenal.

An extraordinary graph with Newcastle's EP spending over 80 minutes at 0.08 or below before leapfrogging Arsenal's EP for the last 7 minutes.This game more than any illustrates that the current EP merely takes you to the current position in the game and the size of that EP is an expression of what happens afterwards ON AVERAGE.

Diaby's 50th minute red card certainly made Newcastle favourites to score more than Arsenal in the remainder of the match ,but the four goal cushion should have been sufficient to enable the Gunners to hang onto the points.The dismissal advanced Newcastle's EP from 0.001 to 0.01 and Arsenal would have won the game from that position 794 times out of 800 and draw it on 5 other occasions.They'd have lost just once.
Countless Geordie fans had already made this mental calculation for themselves and left the ground at half time.

Even when Barton converted a 68th minute penalty the EP barely moved and Best's 75th minute second still saw the respective Newcastle and Arsenal EP at 0.07 and 2.879.

Crucially the clock was now favouring the 10 men visitors and just 5 minutes after Best's strike Newcastle's EP had halved,but Barton's second penalty suddenly made the impossible merely improbable.It had taken 82 breathless minutes to return each teams EP to the values they'd had after Walcott had opened the scoring after a minute.

Tiote's strike was worth just under an EP of 1 (almost 3 and a half times the worth all thee previous goals and the sending off combined) and propelled the home side to marginal EP favourites,but Arsenal held out to ensure that this game wasn't the 1 in 800 when a team gives up a 4-0 half time lead.

Eight goals in total and everyone of them integral to the final result,Tiote's strike claiming the EP plaudits.