Premier League ....... last season's xP and youth to the fore .......

Aug 12, 2021

xP for 20/21

Man City 85 pts

Chelsea 80

Liverpool 73

Man Utd 65

Leicester 62

Brighton 62

West Ham 60

Arsenal 59

Aston Villa 54

Leeds Utd 53

Tottenham 52

Everton 50

Wolves 46

Southampton 44

Fulham 39

Burnley 39

Newcastle 38

Palace 37

WBA 24

Sheffield Utd 22

The three relegated teams are in blue type. I don't keep my own xG, but average them from three sites with a slight adjustment for how I think xP should actually be calculated. I do however keep our own stats for ITB and BC's and have made allowance for those in the forecasts below.

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.

Good luck !