The opening of the Premier League season is a fresh start, meeting or exceeding expectations is still possible, all of the silverware is up for grabs and for Arsenal there is a new coach with fresh tactics to look forward to.
Most weeks (I’ll shoot to get this posted every week, but sometimes life gets in the way) I will be posting the odds for the coming week and the updated end of season odds, and with that let’s get started now with week one.
Arsenal vs Manchester City
Unai Emery was given a tough task to start the season hosting the defending Champions in the opener and facing cross London rivals Chelsea in the second weekend.
Arsenal are the clear underdogs in this match, but the model suggests that getting a point is a real possibility and an outcome that I am sure most fans would be happy to take (me included).
The rest of the Week One odds look like this:
All of the other top six contenders are big favorites to win to kick off the season but they also got much easier draws to start the season. There is a good chance that Arsenal start the season with a deficit to their top four rivals to overcome.
If you are interested in the detailed odds (like the ones for Arsenal vs Manchester City) I provide these for every match on my Patreon page here.
Finishing Odds
Using the same match odds that I simulated, I also ran 10,000 simulations of the season as whole. I put a few tables together to show the results in an easily understood (hopefully) visual format.
Simulated Odds
Team | Title | Top 4 | Relegation | Avg Sim Pts | xG Dif |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Team | Title | Top 4 | Relegation | Avg Sim Pts | xG Dif |
Manchester City | 61.2% | 97.7% | 0.0% | 84.35 | 45.89 |
Liverpool | 21.5% | 87.9% | 0.0% | 78.18 | 34.64 |
Tottenham Hotspur | 12.2% | 76.1% | 0.0% | 74.64 | 30.56 |
Chelsea | 4.9% | 56.7% | 0.0% | 70.41 | 24.13 |
Arsenal | 3.9% | 52.8% | 0.0% | 69.85 | 24.08 |
Manchester United | 2.0% | 33.8% | 0.0% | 66.29 | 17.28 |
Leicester City | 0.0% | 1.6% | 3.1% | 51.58 | -2.87 |
Southampton | 0.0% | 0.9% | 5.7% | 49.09 | -6.03 |
Everton | 0.0% | 0.7% | 5.8% | 48.82 | -6.48 |
Crystal Palace | 0.0% | 0.6% | 6.0% | 48.68 | -6.85 |
West Ham United | 0.0% | 0.5% | 8.2% | 47.68 | -7.97 |
Newcastle United | 0.0% | 0.2% | 14.4% | 44.99 | -12.62 |
Wolverhampton Wanderers | 0.0% | 0.3% | 13.8% | 44.92 | -11.02 |
Burnley | 0.0% | 0.2% | 17.8% | 43.83 | -13.64 |
Watford | 0.0% | 0.1% | 20.4% | 43.02 | -13.91 |
Brighton & Hove Albion | 0.0% | 0.1% | 20.4% | 42.94 | -13.94 |
Bournemouth | 0.0% | 0.1% | 21.1% | 42.89 | -14.71 |
Fullham | 0.0% | 0.1% | 33.0% | 40.12 | -18.12 |
Cardiff City | 0.0% | 0.0% | 39.3% | 38.58 | -19.76 |
Huddersfield Town | 0.0% | 0.0% | 71.3% | 32.66 | -28.68 |
This table shows the chances of a team’s finishing the season in each of the 20 places in the table:
This chart, a “box and whisker” plot, shows the range of probable points for each team in the league based on the simulations. Gray represents the lower half of the midrange of possible points (25-50%), yellow the upper half (50-75%) with the black bars representing the 10th Percentile and 90th Percentile:
Unsurprisingly Manchester City are the big favorites to repeat as Champions with Liverpool the next closest team. The battle for third through sixth is going to be an interesting one to watch with Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United all essentially at the same level.
The bottom half of the table is very tight and making a call for the three teams is going to be tough. The bottom half teams have also all seemed to have really bough well in the transfer market and should be better than last year.
If you are interested in the methodology of the model, or for any of the work I do here, you can find that on my personal blog. And the updates that were made for this coming year.