Arsenal continue #Project24 hosting Watford. Liverpool look to keep their lead at the top of the table with a rematch of the midweek match up against Chelsea in the blockbuster match of the weekend. The other top teams all are big favorites in their matches.
Arsenal vs Watford
Arsenal are heavy favorites but this could be a tricky match up. Watford have a really good defense and play a very direct attack that could be the perfect tactical profile to trouble Arsenal.
On top of the troubles that Watford offer, Arsenal have not played well even with four straight League wins. Looking at the shots for and against Arsenal were fortunate to have 12 points from those performances. This is what my simulation would have for Arsenal based on the shots from each match:
Things haven’t really clicked at all for Arsenal. The biggest concern for me is that Mesut Özil has been marginalized in the Emery system and getting the balance of the team right has been very tough.
There are four more matches in #project24 before the slate gets more difficult, it is time to get things moving in the right direction.
Liverpool vs Chelsea
This will be a big match for Liverpool’s title odds. The are the favorites and they are defending 1.6 expected points here with a gap of 1.8 to title favorites Manchester City. A win here would keep them at the top of the table and close the gap (assuming a City win) to just one point and loss could really damage the chances of a real title race (Chelsea could jump in but as of right now they have a big gap in expected points to over come).
The Rest of the matches:
If you are interested in the detailed odds (like the ones for Arsenal vs Watford) 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 | 65.3% | 99.4% | 0.0% | 88.65 | 61.73 |
Liverpool | 25.4% | 95.8% | 0.0% | 83.52 | 37.25 |
Chelsea | 11.4% | 89.1% | 0.0% | 79.62 | 39.84 |
Tottenham Hotspur | 3.1% | 69.4% | 0.0% | 75.13 | 20.82 |
Arsenal | 0.6% | 35.2% | 0.0% | 70.11 | 10.75 |
Manchester United | 0.2% | 16.5% | 0.0% | 66.08 | 12.76 |
Everton | 0.0% | 0.8% | 0.0% | 55.19 | 2.21 |
Leicester City | 0.0% | 0.5% | 0.1% | 54.08 | 4.38 |
Bournemouth | 0.0% | 0.5% | 0.2% | 53.6 | 9.74 |
Watford | 0.0% | 0.4% | 0.1% | 53.22 | 3.53 |
Wolverhampton Wanderers | 0.0% | 0.1% | 0.7% | 49.81 | 11.52 |
West Ham United | 0.0% | 0.0% | 2.6% | 45.8 | -5.51 |
Southampton | 0.0% | 0.0% | 3.8% | 44.34 | 97.39 |
Crystal Palace | 0.0% | 0.0% | 5.7% | 43.17 | -10.29 |
Brighton & Hove Albion | 0.0% | 0.0% | 8.6% | 41.4 | -22.97 |
Newcastle United | 0.0% | 0.0% | 28.5% | 36.38 | -116.53 |
Burnley | 0.0% | 0.0% | 44.1% | 33.92 | -27.36 |
Fulham | 0.0% | 0.0% | 53.7% | 32.28 | -28.04 |
Huddersfield Town | 0.0% | 0.0% | 62.1% | 30.89 | -25.06 |
Cardiff City | 0.0% | 0.0% | 74.2% | 28.87 | -28.77 |
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 mid-range of possible points (25-50%), yellow the upper half (50-75%) with the black bars representing the 10th Percentile and 90th Percentile:
After six matches there is the beginning of separation into a few groups. There is the top two fighting for the title, the rest of the top six fighting for the last two spots. An actual midtable of teams followed by six teams that are in trouble in the relegation fight.
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.