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Premier League Projections, Week 26: Better for Spurs, Arsenal at risk, Liverpool survive

Another midweek set of matches, and the projected table stays mostly in place. A victory for Spurs improves their odds of making top four by 50%, but it's still not a likely outcome.

Michael Steele

In previous articles, I have spent some of this section of the article either writing up the current stat tables in the Premier League or offering some hot stat takes, avant la lettre, on the matches. Now I've doing that separately.

If you want to see the stats that make up the majority of my projections, see the EPL Advanced Statistics page, which I will be updating after every week of matches. If you want my hot stat takes, including why I think Newcastle are not in crisis, that's over here.

The main changes in the table this week are the overtakings of Chelsea by Manchester City and Arsenal by Liverpool. The latter means that the path for Spurs to the top four has shifted. I project it to be slightly more likely that Spurs overtake Arsenal than Liverpool. The former I have at a roughly 10% likelihood, and the latter roughly 7%. (You may note that this adds up to more than 15%, Spurs' projected top four chances. This is because there's a 2-3% chance that Spurs overtake both the Gunners and the Reds.)

So it's not a two-team race anymore. Arsenal are back in the mix for falling out of the top four, at least as much as a club with a 90% chance of success can be.

Team+ Ratings: A Graph

A few people have asked for a Team+ delta column in the projected table. I think there's already enough data in there, but here's a graphical representation of Team+ change week to week in the season. I have marked the most important inflection point of the season, the unpleasantness at the Lane against Liverpool. And you can see how under Sherwood, Spurs have been winning matches while putting together below average shot difference numbers, which leads to the slow decline in the ratings since December.

Teamplus_season

Projections and Power Rankings

Because of rounding, not all the numbers necessarily add up quite right.

Club W D L Pts GD Team+ Top4% ΔT4 Rel% ΔRel Title% ΔTitle 5th
Manchester City 25 6 7 82 +57 160 99% -0 0% 0 44% +4 1%
Chelsea 24 9 5 81 +38 144 97% -1 0% 0 31% -5 2%
Liverpool 24 7 7 78 +48 159 93% +0 0% 0 15% +4 6%
Arsenal 23 8 7 77 +29 134 89% -3 0% 0 10% -2 9%
Tottenham Hotspur 21 7 10 70 +8 114 15% +5 0% 0 0% +0 47%
Everton 18 12 8 66 +16 121 6% -0 0% 0 0% 0 27%
Manchester United 17 10 11 62 +15 123 0.5% -0.5 0% 0 0% 0 7%
Southampton 15 12 11 57 +10 111 0% +0 0% 0 0% 0 1%
Newcastle United 15 8 15 53 -6 98 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0%
Swansea City 11 10 17 43 -5 96 0% 0 2% +0 0% 0 0%
Aston Villa 11 10 17 42 -12 85 0% 0 4% +1 0% 0 0%
Hull City 10 11 17 42 -8 86 0% 0 5% +2 0% 0 0%
West Bromwich Albion 8 16 14 41 -8 93 0% 0 8% -1 0% 0 0%
Stoke City 9 13 16 40 -20 71 0% 0 12% -0 0% 0 0%
Crystal Palace 11 6 21 39 -23 75 0% 0 18% -1 0% 0 0%
West Ham United 9 11 18 38 -14 67 0% 0 17% -14 0% 0 0%
Norwich City 9 10 19 37 -27 72 0% 0 36% +10 0% 0 0%
Sunderland 9 9 20 36 -22 72 0% 0 36% -0 0% 0 0%
Fulham 9 5 24 32 -40 64 0% 0 80% +3 0% 0 0%
Cardiff City 7 10 21 32 -35 55 0% 0 82% +2 0% 0 0%

  • West Bromwich Albion just don't look like a relegation side to me, at all. They hung with Chelsea just two weeks after sticking with Liverpool, and while they've come away with only two points from their last three matches, I think the wins will come. As you can see in the advanced stats tables, West Brom have actually taken more shots from the danger zone than they've allowed. No club in the last five years has been relegated with a positive DZ difference.
  • We're going to be having a lot of postponed and re-scheduled fixtures over the next several weeks, between Cup competitions and the weather. I want to make a plea that games in hand not be treated as either 0 points or 3 points. Probablistically, most matches have an average points haul between 1-2.5 points. It's a better heuristic to count matches that "should" be won as two points rather than three. Counting on victories as givens, in a land where Fulham was one Sascha Riether brain fart from drawing with Liverpool, is not good analysis.