Arsenal
They really need to get fit because the Manchester City of old has remerged.
Aston Villa
5 games into this season I remember calculating that it was about a 1 in 500 shot for Villa to be the same strength as last season and yet have performed like they did (or worse) for those first 5 games. Sounds unlikely right – that’s a ‘p value’ of 0.002 for the hypothesis ‘are Villa worse this season?’. However, I believe that 1 in 500 is only really 1 in 500 in this sense if we singled out Aston Villa, started measuring from that point on and then found it was a 1 in 500 chance for luck to explain their performances. As this discussion of a freakish opening few games could have been about many different teams, 1 in 500 starts to become less significant.
Villa are still receiving attention for being bad to this day as it seems their raw xG and xG derived expected points totals are still not favourable. https://x.com/xGPhilosophy is currently saying they should be 15th ‘based on their xG performances.
xG is a fairly noisy metric and the midfield of the league is so tight that I suspect the gap between 7th and 15th isn’t very much. Expected points from xG may be even noisier than xG difference but that’s a topic for another time. As they have a similar squad to last season their xG numbers arguably deserve some regression to last season, so I think purveyors of xG expecting a Villa collapse are going to be wrong with this one. Using my own ratings (shots/passes/goals) they have now recovered from that strange start to sit as an above average league team.
Bournemouth
They lost most of their defence over the summer so there was a possibility they would struggle. This hasn’t come to fruition and they’re another strong mid table team to add to the mix.
Brentford
They lost Mbeumo, Wissa and Norgaard over summer – 3 fantastic performers who played nearly every minute last season. Things looked a little bleak for them early on but new players like Outtara/Henderson/Kayode seem to have settled in now and they’re a rock-solid Premier League side once again.
Brighton
I was thinking the other day a previous version of Brighton could have been well placed to take advantage of other teams struggles. Unfortunately, this year Brighton are looking exceedingly mid table. Chelsea and Liverpool have had troubles but in terms of a top 4 spot there are few stand out candidates to displace them.
Burnley
With no signs of their ability last season in the Championship to stop opponents scoring shots/big chances Burnley face an uphill battle with their relegation chance sitting right around 90%.
Chelsea
With Palmer back they’re going to be pretty decent but still comfortably below the level of a Premier League title contender.
Crystal Palace
The FA Cup champions are still good but maybe not quite as good as I’ve seen some xG numbers imply.
Everton
Another solid mid table side
Fulham
It would be great for them if Antonee Robinson can get back to full fitness. Regardless though – still a solid side.
Leeds
Leeds have received a lot of attention from me this season as I’ve strongly rated their chances of staying up. I currently have the Relegation betting markets as being the most wrong of any futures market. I have West Ham around 67% of going down and Leeds just 15% while betting markets rate it as West Ham 45%, Leeds 28%.
For the previous 2 championship seasons many analysts would have been surprised that Leeds did not cruise the title. They may have some issue with style over substance?
They have been much better home than away which is also something to keep an eye on. I wrote about this topic recently and found about 90% of the variability of half season home/away performances is down to chance (with the remaining 10% being something real). For Leeds this would mean they may be ~0.05 goals better per game at home than away (which is worth a few ticks in decimal odds, e.g. 1.97 vs. 1.94)
Liverpool
We were saying their performances were pretty ordinary when they were getting last minute winners in the last 5 games and yet they’ve been consistently even more ordinary since then.
Manchester City
Wow, this team is really starting to roll – Arsenal are going to be under so much pressure. Arsenal and City should be joint favs for the Champions League for me.
Manchester United
They’re mere just ok and that’s without Europe. As teams start getting knocked out of Europe in the second half of the season they will lose that slight advantage.
Newcastle
Again, I think they’re a decent above average side but Newcastle fans may have been dreaming bigger.
Nottingham Forest
I’ve flip-flopped a few times on where Forest stand. I think others may be in a similar position – are they on their way up to the top 10 again? Or are they fighting relegation?
Sunderland
Sunderland are bottom half in performance level but looking comfortably better than at least 3 teams and similar to a bunch of others is still a strong start to a new PL era for them.
Tottenham
Some dreadful home performances have captured headlines so far for Spurs who were one of the harder teams to predict coming into the season. Their performances have varied quite wildly (2nd highest variability in the league), but average it out and they are aren’t meeting league average standards so far.
West Ham
I think they’re poor and in big trouble (see what I said about Leeds above). One small point of contention may be how variable their performance level has been game to game (it’s the most of any team). The worst performance of any team this season may be their home match vs. Brentford but they also have 4 above average performances against Man United, Newcastle, Forest and Everton.
Wolverhampton Wanderers
I don’t have much to add to the discourse on Wolves. I suppose even if they continue to lose they will find some motivation in trying to avoid being called the worst PL team ever (points wise).
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