Premier League at the halfway stage............
Jan 06, 2022
Premier League 21/22
Burnley have played just 17 games, Chelsea and Manchester City 21, but everyone else between 18-20 games and it is fair to say we are at the halfway mark with 191 of the 380 games played and I would like to take the opportunity today to look at a few things in relation to what I wrote pre and very early season. Not sure what the purpose of that is as I start typing, beyond getting it clear in my own mind, but perhaps something will crop up as we progress ! If not, we have some notes we can refer back to and hopefully use.
Points requirement:
I wrote the following in early August..........
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 96
2. 80 pts 68-97 78
3. 74 pts 65-83 80
4. 69 pts 60-79 66
5. 65 pts 56-75 65
6. 61 pts 55-69 70
7. 58 pts 53-64 62
8. 54 pts 46-61 56
9. 52 pts 46-59 54
10. 50 pts 44-59 53
11. 48 pts 44-55 44
12. 46 pts 42-52 46
13. 44 pts 40-50 44
14. 43 pts 38-48 42
15. 42 pts 38-47 40
16. 40 pts 36-45 38
17. 38 pts 34-44 27
18. 35 pts 28-42 25
19. 32 pts 26-39 22
20. 26 pts 11-34 20
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.
Tottenham are 6th this morning and both they and Arsenal who are 4th are in Champions League contention, but are some way adrift of the top 3 and they have Manchester United , who have played at bottom half of the table form since Week 6, to at least partially thank for that. Spurs have picked up under Antonio Conte and the Gunners have some very talented youngsters who have all gelled together quickly, but it is going to be a long hard slog to 38 games and it would be a fantastic achievement for either team (or the Hammers ) to break into the top 4 . I have added the blue type numbers above this morning, they are the points total each team currently in that position is on course for, for example, West Ham United, currently in 5th are slap bang in the middle (which is why I chose them) of where they should be for a team finishing 5th, but also make the 4th and 6th criteria, I would argue that 3rd is very unlikely as both Chelsea and Liverpool are performing at upper third place levels (hope that makes sense ").
Crystal Palace are interesting as they are 11th, but at the very bottom of the band to stay there and are well within the range to finish as low as 17th and they are the team I forecast ( see below) to finish bottom (more of them later), I did get most of the other "strugglers" correct and looking at the current league table, it is going to be very difficult for more than one of Watford/Burnley/Newcastle/
Early season I spoke about some of this, the mindset and playing style required to survive .................
I recently took a look at the results of every club that finished between 10th and 17th place in the Premier League in the last five years, so we are talking about 40 teams, all of whom survived. They 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 worth revisiting and thinking a little about that.
I wrote a short article around that topic last month and speculated that it is one of the big adjustments that promoted teams have to make, old EPL 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 perhaps view losing 5 from 9 games as a "success" and without panic setting in, is incredibly difficult, especially when you are playing a third of your games against teams who view missing out on top 4 and a Champions League place as major failure and the rest are at least as hungry as you and all probably have bigger budgets as established clubs.
Of the three clubs who came up from the Championship last season only Brentford have thrived, with 12 points on board and with an xP placing of top 5, which will delight all involved at the analytics obsessed club (although they are about far more than just that). They do things differently, had clear ideas about what was needed to succeed in the top flight and recruited and adapted accordingly . I would be surprised if they had not also spoken to players at length about handling the inevitable setbacks, you do not have a "sleep coach" and then ignore the more obvious mental side(s) of the game.
I just think it is stunning how little City and Watford learned from previous Premier League campaigns and ill equipped both were for the season ahead.
Forecast points:
These were my pre-season forecasts................
This is more a ranking coming into the season, I am not going to tie myself down with these and will be drastically changing some, even after a game or two, but we have to start somewhere. This is mostly based on xP/ ITB/ BC numbers from last season, with some allowance for summer transfer business (on and off field) , age of squads and length of time together for core members, the return of crowds/ fewer way wins , second half of the season form etc. It is more of a power index or rating system if you like, but is in points format, hence the title.
Man City 87
Chelsea 82
Liverpool 73
Man Utd 73
Leicester 61
Arsenal 57
Leeds Utd 53
Tottenham 53
Brighton 50
West Ham 50
Aston Villa 50
Everton 49
Brentford 46
Wolves 43
Burnley 41
Southampton 40
Newcastle 40
Watford 35
Norwich City 34
Palace 27
There is almost twice as big a gap between the team(s) in 4th than Leicester in 5th, than that separating 7th and 13th and it would not take much for any of that mid table group to get into "best of the rest" contention.
Leicester City and Leeds United have underperformed, Crystal Palace over achieved, but I highlighted how little there was between those teams in "upper mid table" and that remains the case. I have seen City live twice, they did not impress on either occasion and were very reliant on a couple of players, especially Youri Tielemans and they looked a little "stale". Head coach Brendan Rodgers has never stayed anywhere longer than three years, and next month will be his third year anniversary at the King Power and I do wonder how long this relationship will last. They have kind of "evolved" but I would argue not in a good way, very few key long passes which used to be a feature ( almost none when Tielemans and Maddison are not on the pitch) less pressing and with far less intensity (last time I looked they were bottom for "sprints"). United looked very average when I saw them and we have been here before with Bielsa teams, he wants a small squad, but has run them into the ground in recent years, pick up a few injuries (United have had a lot) and you are buggered, buggered and exhausted ! The Argentine coach is a genius, but stubborn and this is already the longest he has stayed at any club side through his career.
On the opening day of the season I wrote .............
Roy Hodgson has left Palace and been replaced by Patrick Vieira, I think the intention is to play more offensively, but I am not sure he is the man for that and it is a big turnaround in staff for the Eagles, with a dozen or so contracts allowed to expire. Despite all those senior players being sent packing and some youthful talent coming in, it is still one of the older squads and none of the additions have top flight experience. Eze is still injured, Zaha is always on the verge of leaving and this is a club at the start of a major transition and one trying to do it in the toughest league in the world, with a coach with no experience of this kind of managerial pressure and coming off a poor season. Palace had the 3rd worst xP, the worst goal difference outside the bottom three and really rode their luck to win 12 games, in at least two of which they were absolutely battered, but took three points and they conceded a goal per game (exactly) after the break, a joint EPL high.
OK, well I did Vieira a disservice to some degree, as he has impressed to get this group together so quickly, but I think the comments above and doubts were valid, they have 23 points from 20 games and are on course for 44 points, last season they had ...................23 points from 20 points and ended the campaign with 44 ! They are better for xP this time round, but I have some issues, they have started to concede more frequently , 16 goals in nine starts , their only clean sheet in that sequence to Norwich City and they regularly field five starters in their 30's . I would argue they have over performed and credit to the head coach for that, but it might be tough to replicate that , or even the 44 points they managed last season in the second half of the campaign, but we will doubtless discuss them in the coming weeks.
Speaking of the age of the Palace starting eleven, during the summer I touched upon how well the younger squads had performed in the top two divisions, compared to their older counterparts ........
Youth :
I wrote during the off season about youth being the way to go and we can expect those younger squads to improve with another year under their belt..............
I was looking at the age make up of all squads in the top two tiers in terms of actual minutes played and there were some interesting numbers which appeared to suggest and not for the first time, that youth was the way to go.
This was especially true in the Championship, where for the second season running Barnsley and Brentford had the youngest squads and they finished 5th and 3rd with the Bees winning the playoffs (sorry, I am not going to let the chance to mention that pass any time soon !). The four youngest groups were, in order Barnsley (finished 5th), Brentford (3rd), Reading (7th) and Blackburn (15th), Rovers might have finished bottom half, but we spoke often of them being better than that and they were actually 5th for xP. If we extend that young end of the league a little further, the next three teams were Coventry (the only one of the promoted teams to survive), Swansea (4th) and Norwich (champions). The four oldest groups were Sheffield Wednesday (24th), Birmingham City (18th), Millwall (11th) and Wycombe 22nd), two were relegated and only one of the seven oldest made the top 10 .
In the Premier League, the four oldest groups were Crystal Palace (14th), Burnley (17th) , West Ham (6th) and Newcastle United (12th), the next four were in order Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool, Sheffield United and Wolves, you can make a case for all of that quartet having "terrible" seasons, albeit in some cases from a sky high level, but of that eight only the Hammers can be really happy with how 2020-21 played out.
The four youngest squads used were at Fulham (18th), Villa (11th) , Manchester United (2nd) and Brighton (16th). This might not be as cut and dried as Fulham were relegated ( stop cheering !) and Brighton struggled but the pair were 16th and 5th for xP respectively, Villa had their best season in a decade ( since 2010-11) and United were top 2 for only the second time in eight campaigns and also made the Europa League final. The 5th youngest team were Chelsea (4th) , who also made the FA Cup final and won the Champions League, champions Man City who also made the Champions League final, had the 7th youngest group.
The seven oldest squads in the top flight this season are ......
Burnley (18th)
West Ham (5th)
Man United (7th)
Newcastle (19th)
Watford (17th)
Palace (11th)
Everton (15th)
I guess Palace will be happy with their position and the Hammers have again bucked this trend ( see above), but the rest have to be hugely disappointed with 21-22 to date.
Youngest squads are ........
Leeds (16th)
Brentford (12th)
Arsenal (4th)
Tottenham ( 6th)
The four London clubs will doubtless be pleased with their positions and noteworthy that Spurs have gone from one of the oldest to 4th youngest although that has not been fully reflected in their starting 11.
Of the 35 youngest starting 11's in the EPL, 19 have been Arsenal (including the 17 absolute youngest and all with an average age of under 24.8 !) and 9 from Brentford . The Gunners have bought into youth big time and deserve any rewards they get and hard to see how this group is not going to continue to improve and possibly by quantum margins in the coming years. Hopefully they will stick together .
The 14 oldest have all been either Burnley (8 times) or Watford (6) .
Good luck !
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