England would not win the forthcoming football World Cup even if they had 50 attempts, according to a simulator built by a regional publisher.

Reach’s central data journalism unit, based in Manchester, has run the prediction programme as part of its pre-tournament coverage, as well as a separate predictor game for fans to play on its websites.

The simulator relies on betting odds to predict the winners of first round group games, while World Football Elo ratings, a system used to rank men’s national football teams, was used to determine the likely winners of subsequent knockout matches.

But, despite running the programme 50 times, the simulator failed to predict England as a winner, even though teams such as Colombia, Denmark, Serbia and Switzerland triumphed at least once on the tournament run-through.

So we've built a probabilistic World Cup simulator based on betting odds (first round) and Elo ratings (subsequent rounds). Just simulated 50 World Cups. Brazil won 12, Germany and Spain 8 apiece. England didn't win any of them. pic.twitter.com/wDVqbg9jyZ

— David Ottewell (@davidottewell) June 5, 2018

A predictor game, also produced by the unit, allows readers to guess the score for every single game of the tournament, which begins in Russia next Friday.

The game has so far been picked up by 13 of Reach’s regional titles – including the Manchester Evening News, the Newcastle Chronicle, the Leicester Mercury, Leeds Live and Devon Live – and follows on from several other predictor games which have been produced by the unit for English domestic football leagues in recent years.

Reach sport data journalist David Dubas-Fisher told HTFP: “The new one works in a similar way to our league predictors, in that it takes readers through every match of the tournament. We found this makes people think about the fixtures which can lead to people predicting different outcomes compared to when you just ask them where each team will finish in a league.

“This will probably become more apparent as we update the gadget as the tournament progresses. In order to work out the final group standings in the same way as FIFA, we now ask readers to make a score prediction for the group games, which is something we didn’t do in the English league predictors.

“Readers then go through the knockout stages just picking a winner for each match. Once the readers have chosen their World Cup winner they can share their prediction on social media.

“We’ve also introduced a link-up with BetFair where we show readers how much a £10 bet on their chosen tournament winner would win for them, and then provide a link to BetFair for them to place a bet.”

There will be no repeat of England’s 1966 World Cup win, according to the simulator

David added: “Some of the titles have used the predictor multiple times in various World Cup related stories. The predictor is one of a number of World Cup themed projects we have coming up.

“We still have our old gadgets such as the ever-poplar team selector and player ratings which our titles will be able to use throughout the World Cup.

“We’re also working on a project that will tell readers who they should be supporting based on how important a number of different factors are to them.

“We have a World Cup simulator which uses betting odds and Elo ratings, and one which matches readers to specific players at the tournament.”