When one team is dominating another, they get multiple attempts to score for a single possession event (powerful shots on target are commonly redirected by the

When one team is dominating another, they get multiple attempts to score for a single possession event (powerful shots on target are commonly redirected by the keeper which allows the attacking team another chance from a corner or rebound), and their probability of scoring from any shot increases because their control of play allows them to take more certain shots. And of course, brief possession in a teams own half does not really translate into any kind of scoring chance for them. Of course I'm not sure that those factors are enough to completely sink the model, but there certainly are such factors in play. > The issue (not well articulated in TFA) is that when both Poisson variables are expected to have low counts, it's difficult to distinguish slightly-different per-possession probabilities. I take this to mean that in a match up between broadly comparable teams, the outcome will be indistinguishable from chance, which most fans would accept as completely fine (and possibly even preferable). I still find it hard to reconcile this with the dominance of a few teams over quite long periods of time in international soccer, even in the presence of relatively low scores although I suppose I would have to do some actual number crunching to tell whether this was relevant or not.