Quarter Season Checkup

The first quarter of the season is done, time to see how things look

Teams have played between 10 and 11 matches giving us a sample size that is decent enough to start looking at how they have performed, especially relative to expectations at the start of the season.

Arsenal:

Initial team rating: 122, 5th

Current team rating: 131, 3rd

Initial points projection: 68.7

Current points projection: 80.8

I hoped Arsenal would get off to a much better start than last season. The schedule was favorable and the team in the second half of last year was a solid top 4 type team until injuries caused them to run out of gas.

I did not expect this.

Arsenal have played like a team that would be on the edge of title contention, having been solidly the second-best team in the Premier League. The schedule has been a bit on the easier side having played just the 13th hardest schedule but that isn’t too different than other rivals, City (19th), Spurs (18th), Chelsea (20th).

Arsenal have put themselves in a very good spot to stay on top of the Premier League until the break for the world cup, and potentially start asking questions if something bigger can be dreamed about at a minimum, this could very well be the best points haul for an Arsenal team since 2007-08.

Manchester City:

Initial team rating: 159, 1st

Current team rating: 161, 1st

Initial points projection: 90.7

Current points projection: 90.1

Manchester City is a machine.

So for all the good things I wrote about Arsenal, it kind of doesn’t matter because Manchester City feels inevitable. They took the best team in the Premier League and fixed the only major hole in the team adding perhaps the best striker in the world. It is a squad that might be a little thin and could be stretched by the World Cup but I don’t doubt that this team of any team would stand pat in January if they are struck by injuries.

Tottenham:

Initial team rating: 130, 3rd

Current team rating: 126, 4th

Initial points projection: 73.5

Current points projection: 72.5

This Spurs team is hard to peg.

They have accumulated points and generally beat the teams that they are supposed to but they go about doing so in an entirely unconvincing manner.

They are being out shot, they are allowing more passes into their box than they have created, they are being significantly out possessed in the final third, and play a very ugly deep block style of soccer.

People keep saying that they are preserving energy or that they have something better that they will be able to reach, but at some point that usually presents itself before it just turns into wishful thinking. This is not a young team where natural progression would be expected, nor is a team that you would expect to still be implementing the Conte system. Even with all that, they have been roughly the 5th best team in the Premier League this season.

This looks like a team that has a ceiling of about the 3rd or 4th best team and that is probably the limit of their realistic expectations.

Chelsea:

Initial team rating: 130, 3rd

Current team rating: 125, 5th

Initial points projection: 73.7

Current points projection: 70.8

Chelsea have been a team in flux and it shows.

They have spent a ton of money remaking their team, and then fired their coach. I think Graham Potter was a good choice to try and make something from the parts but then has been hit with injuries that have really hurt the team. It is crazy to me that this team has spent so much money and still has so few options in midfield.

They have performed like the 7th best team over the first quarter of the season and that is certainly a disappointment for this team. I think that they will still bounce back but they very well could find themselves on the fringes of 4th rather than the top of the table like they expected.

Manchester United:

Initial team rating: 114, 6th

Current team rating: 113, 6th

Initial points projection: 62.4

Current points projection: 64.4

After a dreadful start Manchester United have actually righted the ship pretty well.

They are still far from a dominating team with just one victory where they had an xG difference greater than 1 (my rough rule of thumb for a clear win) but it was their most recent one against Tottenham. They do have the crtuch of having played the hardest schedule of any team so things will get a bit easier for them eventually.

Where they end up is still an tough question, I thought they were the clear 6th best team behind the Spurs/Chelsea/Arsenal tier of teams and ahead of the midtable teams, that might be changing slightly with Spurs and Chelsea underperforming expectations and Newcastle coming up behind them.

I will watch with some curiosity how things with Cristiano Ronaldo play out, he doesn’t seem like the type to just go quiet after being banished from the team.

Liverpool:

Initial team rating: 150, 2nd

Current team rating: 140, 2nd

Initial points projection: 86.0

Current points projection: 75.0

Liverpool are a still a good team but are being shown that the margin for error for teams not named Manchester City is very thing and unforgiving.

The attack is still good but the defense that was so good and really propelled their ability to hang with Manchester City has taken a big step back. They have also not been able to really batter teams and that has left them open to variance, so far this season they have just 3 matches where they have beat their opponents by more than 1 xG, outside of their huge win against Bournemouth they have just a +1.5 xG difference over their other nine matches.

They have played the third hardest schedule so far this season, so it is possible that things will get back to “normal” but it could also be a season where things don’t work out like we expect.

Newcastle United:

Initial team rating: 95, 10th

Current team rating: 113, 7th

Initial points projection: 49.2

Current points projection: 61.2

Newcastle are a team that is hard to peg based on previous performance because they have obviously had their financial situation drastically changed.

They haven’t done the massive spending spree of Chelsea or Manchester City before them where they lap the teams that they are up against but they have done well to bring in some very high quality players that have moved the needle on their overall talent level.

Looking at just this season they have been the third best team in the Premier League. They have consistently performed very well. with an xG difference greater than 1 in 7 of 11 matches this season. That is on par with Manchester City (7 of 10) and Arsenal (6 of 10).

My projection model has them with about a 10 percent chance of getting into the top four and that feels like it is a bit on the low side. If they could have turned a couple more of those draws into wins it would probably look much closer to their rank of third.