Losing five of every nine games might be the road to success !
Sep 14, 2021
A little over a month ago and before the Premier League got underway I wrote a small piece about the points required to reach each position in the top flight and highlighted how tough it was going to be to break into the Big 4 cartel, suggesting that oods of circa 3.0 for Liverpool, Chelsea and the two Manchester clubs to fill the top 4 places was value . (See below).
We are only four games in, but they already occupy the top 3 positions , with City in 5th place and the Sky Blues are top for "expected" numbers , so the cream is on the rise and it is now a top priced 1.91 for the quartet to finish top 4.
It is so tough to beat any of the four, they have lost one game between them , which was City's opening day 1-0 loss to Tottenham, but the truth is that Spurs could /should have been three down inside 10 minutes and that is what you need to do, dodge a lot of bullets and take what few scraps come your way just to beat one of the elite teams, ONCE. We are also talking about Tottenham, a massive club in terms of income and standing, for the rest of the EPL it is far tougher. For many it is about survival and reaching that 38-40 point tagert, or, for the more ambitious, the 50 points which might take you to top ten and I suspect a dozen owners would snatch your hand off if you offered them 10th place this morning.
I was looking at the last five seasons yesterday and every team that finished between 10th and 17th place, so we are talking about 40 teams, all of whom survived, lost between 13-21 games (three teams lost 21 games which is over 55% and stayed up) and it took me a while to get my head around that as it feels like such an enormous number of losses, but such is the quality of opposition and difficulty of taking three points .
I think it is one of the big adjustments that promoted teams have to make, teams like Palace and Burnley who are old survival hands,know what they need to do, that defeats are inevitable and they can more easily accept them and move on. Promoted teams are used to winning and to then view losing 5/9 games as a "success" and without panic setting in, is incredibly difficult.
Good luck !
Premier League 21/22
Points requirement:
We have 26 seasons of data since the Premier League switched to a 20 team format in 1995 . Below are the average number of points earned by the team finishing in each respective position, followed by the minimum-maximum points those teams collected. For example, the average number of points picked up by the 5th placed team was 69, but they could have finished in that position with as few as 56 or as many as 75 points.
1. 87 pts 75-100
2. 80 pts 68-97
3. 74 pts 65-83
4. 69 pts 60-79
5. 65 pts 56-75
6. 61 pts 55-69
7. 58 pts 53-64
8. 54 pts 46-61
9. 52 pts 46-59
10. 50 pts 44-59
11. 48 pts 44-55
12. 46 pts 42-52
13. 44 pts 40-50
14. 43 pts 38-48
15. 42 pts 38-47
16. 40 pts 36-45
17. 38 pts 34-44
18. 35 pts 28-42
19. 32 pts 26-39
20. 26 pts 11-34
It is all small margins really ,38 - 40 points is regarded as the target to stay up and you would have to be very unlucky to be relegated with that number, but 10 points more , which is only 0.26 pts pg would give you a real chance of finishing top 10.
The problem is that 42% of the points on offer have been won by the top six (30%) finishers and it has traditionally been very tough to pick up points against the "Big 6" (City, United. Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham). However, signs that things are getting closer, or rather that it is becoming a Big 4 financially and that the two North London giants are getting caught by the pack, or at least getting cast adrift by the bigger spending power of the other four. The Gunners have not finished top 4 since 2015-16 and this will be their fifth season without Champions League football after playing in it for 19 straight seasons prior to that, they have been 8th in each of the last two campaigns and this will be their first season without European football since 1995 ! Tottenham have finished 6th and 7th in the last two seasons and have the "honour" of playing Europa Conference League in 21-22. Spurs are always included in the Big 6, but they have not won the league since 1961, the FA Cup since 1991 and the League Cup just once this millenium, their only title in more than two decades. Tottenham have actually only played in the Champions League on five occasions and finished top 4 in the Premier League "just" six times, a lot of 5th and 6th place finishes too in the last 15 years, but their record not only pales, it shrivels in comparison to the other five and their Big 6 tag has a bit of a smoke and mirrors feel to it.
Arsenal and Tottenham are "names" and have more income than all bar, what I am now calling the Big 4 and you can make a case for both to have massively underachieved in recent campaigns and it is difficult to see either bridging the gap. You can argue that both have built "new" stadiums and Spurs were not helped in that regard by COVID, but the Emirates is now 15 years old, so that is old news and both keep a very tight hold on the purse strings and of the top ten PL transfer fees ever paid, only one player went to Arsenal and none to Tottenham where Daniel Levy is notoriously reluctant to spend big money.
The Big 4 all look set to be stronger this season than last, three have made, or are in the process of completing a marquee signing and Liverpool get Virgil van Dijk back which is like having a new superstar defender and the addition of Ibrahima Konate looks to have finally addressed all the CB issues which plagued them last season. The group have filled the top 4 spots in each of the last two seasons and it is really difficult to see anyone else putting up the 70+ points required to break into this elite club and the odds of 3.0 (Betfair) for United/City/ Liverpool/Chelsea to finish top 4 in any order seem too big.
Glossary:
ITB= inside the box attempts, Goal of the month competitions usually feature several long range contenders and we always remember those 30 yard bullets into the top corner, but only 12.87% of Premier League goals over the last three seasons have been scored from outside the box , good coaches are known to encourage players to look for better scoring opportunities and it is usually only supporters urging "shoooooot" everytime the goal is within sight, even if there are 20 players between ball and net .
XG= expected goals.
XGF= expected goals for.
XGA = expected goals against.
XGD = expected goal difference.
XP = expected points.
BC = big scoring chance.
We don't just sell football betting tips, as you can see there is an extensive analysis behind our asian handicap selections. Subscribing to our sports betting advice service need not break the bank. Learn more by visiting our subscriptions page.
Sport:
Competition: