Premier League Projections and Power Rankings, Week 8: City Surge

Manchester City won convincingly away to West Ham United. That's not too surprising. But check this stat. In seven previous matches, West Ham had allowed only 13 shots on target from inside the box. City managed 10 in this match alone. It's been (iiiit's been!) my feeling all year that City are the one club in the Premier League with the talent to really run away with the league. So far obviously they aren't, but the projected table gets kinder and kinder to City every week.

Tottenham Hotspur were unable to do much at home to West Ham last week, but they took down a solid win this week. Three shots in the box on target, all from close or central positions, just one allowed. Three shots outside the box on target as well, again to just one for Aston Villa. I had projected a roughly 50% chance of Spurs dropping points in this match, so a solid win is a very nice outcome. I think some of the hand wringing after the game might have failed to take into account how difficult it is to play away against mid-table opposition. Arsenal, who have been pretty much amazing for two months, were held to a draw in a similar match away to West Bromwich Albion.

Let's take a look at the numbers.

Power Rankings and Projections

Do remember that because of rounding, not all the numbers necessarily add up quite right.

• Expected Goals methodology
• Season Simulation methodology

• I'm not 100% sure why Chelsea dropped slightly after winning big home to Cardiff City. One issue here is the immense dimension of Manchester City's victory, and further Arsenal beat the snot out of Norwich with a SiBoT advantage of six to one. So even though Chelsea got a good win, they only had a four-three SiBoT advantage over the BlueRed BirdsDragons at home. With all four of the top teams in the table collecting three points, Chelsea's slightly shaky performance in the underlying stats leads to them losing a tiny bit in expectation.
• The Eto'o-Hazard equalizer was bullshit anyway.
• Manchester United, right? They were home to Southampton. Southampton are good of course, but this is, at least in theory, Old Trafford and all that. Southampton got the equalizer off a set piece late, but they had fought the Red Devils evenly through the match up to that point. 6 SiBoT / 1 SoBoT for United, 5/2 for the Saints. Each side had three close/central SiBoT. At some point, United need to start winning games and winning them by good margins. Right now, they're not playing any better than Swansea or Southampton.
• Tip for advice giving. Try to pick the club that has a home match against Sunderland. Swansea City won easily. While this was not a complicated pick, I still think that the Swans have been playing excellent football (certainly by the underlying stats they have) and remain good bets to roll off a steak of wins in the next month or two.
• Fulham are lucky. They have won three matches this season, and in those matches they have scored six goals from nine shots on target, seven from inside the box. While Martin Jol's job is probably safe for a little while, they still have the same problems they've had all season. I'm not buying in to this winning streak.
• This is getting close to the end for Palace. They, well, they aren't good.