October will put Arsenal to the test
October will put Arsenal to the test
After an easy start to the season, Arsenal will face a stern test in October
Arsenal have had the 17th hardest schedule to start the season. They have played the 9th, 14th, 20th, 16th, 11th, 6th, and 12th best teams in the Premier League this season according to my team ratings.
They have come away from those matches with 18 points and played well in each of those matches (like I have said before the bigger worry about playing a good schedule is when you DON’T accumulate the points expected, playing well maybe doesn’t tell you a ton but it isn’t a worry). The other huge positive is that Arsenal came away from the start of the season with 8 more points than they did from the corresponding fixtures last season.
October will not be nearly as kind to Arsenal, starting this weekend.
The overall ranking of the teams faced is very feast or famine, Arsenal will face the 3rd, 2nd, 15th, (would have been 1st here if the City match wasn’t postponed) 17th, and 19th ranked teams. Overall Arsenal will have the 13th hardest October slate of matches (would have been 5th with the City match) but the level of difficulty will be turned up with Arsenal having to do this with at most 4 days rest with Europa League matches in every midweek spot between.
This leads to the question of what would be a good return from these matches?
Last year Arsenal picked up 9 points from these 5 fixtures. My simulation model projects 9.6 expected points from these with Arsenal.
The big wild cards will be the matches against Tottenham and Liverpool, Arsenal are going to be slight favorites against Spurs and slight underdogs against Liverpool. The other matches will have Arsenal as pretty big favorites.
My expectation is that I think 10 or more points would be a very good return from these matches and less than 9 would be a real disappointment.
Match 9 Odds
The Premier League is back to normal this week with a full complement of matches. There are a couple big Derby’s but only one is actually close on paper.
The weekend starts with Arsenal vs Tottenham (I hate these 4:30am kick-offs).
Arsenal are favorites but this is due to the match being played at the Emirates Stadium. The two teams are rated extremely close in my model right now even if Tottenham are a very unusual team statistically.
The second big Derby of the weekend is up in Manchester. This one is not close with the two teams but could be interesting to see if United can use their counterattack as effectively as they did against Arsenal.
Enjoy the weekend!
🤠 Yee-Haw