Premier League Title Winners: Two Horse Race
But the Reds’ Horse is Handicapped by the PGMOL and Man City’s Financial Irregularities
This has been a fascinating series of articles to research and write, especially as the Premier League games continue to be played, and the evolution of who should be considered rivals to Liverpool and Manchester City changes regularly. Before you carry on though, here’s the previous parts looking at Manchester United and Tottenham in part one.
Followed by Arsenal and Chelsea in part two, alongside some detailed analysis of our pressing this season, as well as some underlying numbers from our matches so far this season.
The main evolution has been the wasted time on Manchester United and Chelsea; in fairness though, the former finished third last season, and the latter spent over a billion pounds in just over a year so had to be included. Next has been the exclusion of Newcastle United, not only because of their vile owners but also their underlying numbers show nothing like the capability to challenge for the league title. In contrast, there’s Brighton, and rather than include them in this, there enough research to do a single club analysis, in podcast format. That will be out later this week.
That leaves us with two sides who have fought regularly for the Premier League trophy in the past five years, and are clearly the two best clubs in the division on a consistent basis. That is reflected in the Power Rankings Opta put together, as well as ClubELO:
Liverpool and Manchester City are currently the best sides in club football, and in fact, Guardiola’s team hit their highest rating of all time at the weekend (2093), compared to the Reds’ highest (2091) before they lost 3-0 to Watford after winning 28 of 29 matches in the league.
Premier League Predictions
Before looking at each team individually, let’s have a look at various methods of predicting who will win the league.
Monte Carlo simulation (10,000 simulations)
Pundits and fans’ opinions
Current odds
This was at the start of the season, as the majority of these will be, so keep that in mind. Did any of you think we had a higher than a 3.5% chance before it kicked off in August? I certainly did, but would only have given us a one in ten chance in all honesty.
Next up is 26 different pundits on the BBC, and the only person who didn’t think it would be Man City was Ellen White who tipped Arsenal instead. Nobody thought the Reds we capable, and in fact only one (Shay Given) thought we’d even finish second. The vast majority thought the only two horses were Man City and Arsenal, with three going for Man Utd to be runners up and one (Fara Williams) who went for Chelsea.
There was a slightly different view from Fox Sports, who instead predicted Liverpool to finish second.
After fighting on two fronts for years, the Reds don't have the Champions League to worry about this season. That wasn't by choice, obviously, but finishing fifth last season will help them this one, as the sole focus will be on not missing out on Europe's top club competition again.
Losing heart and soul captain Jordan Henderson to Saudi Pro League side Al-Ettifaq hurts. But Liverpool is improved overall thanks to the addition of World Cup-winning Argentinean midfielder Alexis Mac Allister from Brighton and playmaker Dominik Szoboszlai from Germany's RB Leipzig.
Looking at the consistently excellent When Saturday Comes magazine, they asked a fan from each team to predict the table and this is the result below.
Not only isn’t there much love for Tottenham in any of these predictions, but once again Liverpool were rated lower than Manchester United which even before the season started seemed ridiculous looking at the turbulent summer for ten Hag’s side as well as the lack of a sale so they seemed in a state of limbo even then.
Finally, look at the current odds below:
Man City’s average is around a 75% chance, which feels about right to me. The wisdom of crowds!
Liverpool’s chances range between 12.5% and 16%
Arsenal fill the rest of the gap, ranging from 12% to 8%.
Considering the fact Pep’s team still have a 100% record, it’s interesting that their odds have reduced compared to the Opta model, surely that has got to be the underestimation of the Reds’ chances correcting themselves after we’ve started so well, with a more difficult set of fixtures.
Liverpool
There’s thousands of words analysing our new signings on the Main Hub by Paul, and also the Transfer Hub by Mizgan, check out the various pieces for deep dives on each individual. This will just be a general overview rather than repeating the same points made in those article.
First impressions, we have made the signing of the summer and it’s not even close. Dominik Szoboszlai, aged just 22, looks like the best money spent by any club this past window based on his performances in the opening six games. The links came from nowhere, and suddenly the deal was done a couple of days later. Hard to spot any weakness in his game. For comparison, look at the radars below of each of our signings.
The most impressive part of the four signings is the sheer variety of attributes, Szoboszlai’s and Mac Allister’s attacking contributions are off-the-scale compared to the options we had last season. Gravenberch has an all round level of play in a variety of roles whereas Endo is a perfect back up for the defensive side of the game (even if he’s taking a while to settle). In fact, it is feasible, as we saw in the Wolves game with Szoboszlai, and in the majority of games this season from Mac Allister, that we have three players who can all play the three roles we need in a Klopp midfield. Throw in the elite level form of Curtis Jones since around March last season, and rather than being short and struggling, we have a huge level of quality to rotate in the middle of the park depending on the opposition. What a turnaround!
The rest of this article is for subscribers only, and includes a comparison between the two clubs’ best metrics this season in attack and defence; a look at Man City’s transfer business; and a final conclusion on what needs to happen for the Reds to win the coveted title this season.