A disappointing weekend for Arsenal, a great weekend for City, and a disaster for Liverpool
Looking at how the weekend's results move around the title odds
It is early November. Nobody wins the title in early November. You can lose it - but nobody wins it. - Pep Guardiola
Pep is correct here; it is almost impossible to win the title in November, but you can use up most of the margin of error that each team has in the ever-completive Premier League title race.
Even though we are just over a quarter of the way through the season, there are still big weekends in November that can have massive ramifications on the title, and it very well could be that we just finished one up.
This weekend saw Arsenal draw away against Sunderland while Manchester City won at home against Liverpool and Chelsea are staying in the conversation with a big win against Wolves.
Let’s take a look at how things have changed with these big results.
Sunderland vs Arsenal
This was a match of 1st vs 4th, but the odds coming into the match did not reflect the teams’ places in the table. My model (and the betting odds for that matter) didn’t and still don’t really believe that Sunderland are nearly as good as the points that they have won this season.
This was a match where Arsenal were expected to come away with 2.26 points on average.
Arsenal well behind after a poor first half but fought back to take the lead in the second half or to get a massive gut punch to draw the match.
Looking at the xG and funny enough from the chances, Arsenal would be expected to win about 2.2 points from this performance.
Cold comfort but pretty decent calibration I guess of the teams from expected.
This is a match that overall see’s Arsenal drop points from what was expected, but it doesn’t really change the perception of the team’s quality overall.
Chelsea vs Wolves
Chelsea have been a tough team to figure out and a big part of that is that they have been largely without their best player for most of the season.
Cole Palmer has only been able to feature in four matches this season, playing just two full 90s (one vs Crystal Palace, one vs Bayern) and hasn’t featured since September. As Arsenal fans, we can relate to how a team struggles when you take out one of the talismanic figures.
He is due back potentially in December and if they can keep within touching distance, they might have the chance to be a dark horse in the title race.
This weekend they showed that they still have plenty of quality and that they can beat up bad teams. Wolves look like they are in a downward spiral to the Championship, but you still need to go and give these teams no hope and that is what Chelsea did here in a very comprehensive dismantling.
Chelsea were favored to win here (2.1 expected points), but took care of business in a convincing fashion that will help them look a bit better going forward. They are still inconsistent and a bit of a mystery but it’s too early to fully count them out.
Manchester City vs Liverpool
This was the marquee matchup of the weekend, and it had loser leaves in a precarious position for the title race level stakes.
The scoreline looks like this was a Manchester City romp but it wasn’t really that big of a difference overall between the teams.
Half of Manchester City’s expected goals here came from the early (and soft but in my opinion correctly called penalty). After that Manchester City created no big chances and scored from goals that were 0.056, 0.022, and 0.027 xG each.
Liverpool had a goal that was controversially ruled out (it’s a subjective call but there are examples of similar goals allowed to stand, I think it is a stretch to say it hit what was required to be offside under the laws) and a number of good looks at goal that they did not convert.
This was a “ball goes in net game” and the narratives are going to be established off of that, even if in reality the margins between the teams were much finer than the score says here. Like Arsenal, that won’t be very comforting to Liverpool who are in a very tough position, they started the season with 5 straight wins and have proceeded to win just once and lost five in the next six matches.
Title Odds Change
This was a pretty big mover for the title weekend compared to most weekends.
Arsenal took a hit, but it really doesn’t look that bad for them. They started the weekend at 78.1% in my model to win the title and they are today at 75.9%
Manchester City had jumped Liverpool for second place and the closest chase to Arsenal back in the middle of October and they gained a few more points here with their win. They came into the weekend at 12.8% and improved to 17.8%.
This was a potential back breaker for Liverpool have had seen their odds slip significantly over the last two months. They were at a high of 62% after they had started the season 5-0 and had opened up a 5-point lead on Arsenal and an 8-point lead on Manchester City.
They hadn’t been convincing but there was still a story to tell that could gel and get better. That best case path didn’t happen, and while they have played okay at times, they have not played at the level required to win the Premier League.
There was a bit of optimism after they had one of their best performances of the season midweek against Real Madrid and they still had realistic hopes of getting back into the title race at 8.5% in my model. After this loss that puts them 8-points behind Arsenal that has shrunk to just 4.7%
Chelsea have never been fully in the conversation here with the season starting as a three-team race. That’s still mostly the case now and they are just hanging on at the edges of having any sort of chance.
This weekend helped bring them into actual realistic but still long shot odds at 1.3% to win the title from the previous not very realistic 0.4% odds at the start of the weekend.
They are just 6 points back and they have a situation coming out of the international break where they have another near lock on three points against Burnley, then a pivotal match against Arsenal, followed by another promoted team in Leeds.
Three wins there and maybe this looks very different.
This was a fun little exercise, if you want to see the full and latest simulations I keep this page updated regularly with the latest simulation.
With 25% of the season completed and we are in first with our entire forward line out injured for all or part of the first part of the season is pretty impressive. I am fascinated to see how we look fully fit. As is Arteta and the rest of the squad and dare I say, the other sides in the league and the fans