Part 1: Introduction

My motivation for starting this blog is based on my feeling that league tables don’t tell the full picture during a season as they don’t take into account the teams played so far neither do they illustrate whether the fixtures were home or away.  Over the course of this season, I will be updating this blog to apply a simple model that I use to evaluate league standings based on the matches played.  I first started looking at league tables in this way about four years ago, by adapting the old theory that in order to win the league, a team needs to win all of their home games and draw all of their away games.

There are a few assumptions I have to make to keep this model as simple as possible.   Firstly, I assume that 90 points should be a target points total for a title challenge.  You can't control league position entirely yourself, so focussing on points makes more sense to me.  If a team earns 90 points this season and doesn’t win the league, it would just mean another team has done exceptionally well.

In order to achieve 90 points, I make the assumption that a team needs to win every home game (57 points) and their 7 'easiest'* away games (21 points), drawing the remaining 12 away games (12 points).  This means that a draw for Liverpool away at Old Trafford is a par** result for a title winning team, with a win there being 2-over-par, but a draw at home to Norwich is 2-under-par.  During the season (as with during a round of golf to use that analogy further) it is unlikely for you to play to par in every match (hole), but any dropped points need to be made up elsewhere.

* I assume the 7 'easiest' away games are against the teams that finished between 17th and 14th last season and the three promoted teams as I need to determine my par scores before the season starts (I appreciate this isn't ideal, but I have to start somewhere).

** If a team is on par after 38 games, they will hit 90 points, if they are over par after 38 games, they will have more than 90 points (unlike golf, in this model, over par is good, under par is bad).

During the season, I will be plotting the results to par of all of the top six teams from last season, to see how the fixtures played affects the league position.

To get things going, this is a graph to illustrate how all of the top six teams’ fixtures differ during the coming season.  It shows Chelsea and Tottenham should both accrue 47 points after 19 games (not taking into account any rearranged games that affect the order of fixtures), whereas Liverpool should only accrue 41 points if they are to be ‘on target’ for a league title.  In fact, it shows that after 20 games, Liverpool’s target number of points is eight fewer than Chelsea and Tottenham’s (42 compared to 50).  Therefore, in theory, if Liverpool are less than eight points behind either of these teams at this point in the season, they would in fact be ahead of them in relation to their target.  As a matter of interest, Man Utd’s, Arsenal’s and Man City’s 20 game targets are all 46 points.

It is quite interesting to look at how teams have performed in relation to their theoretical target in previous seasons.

This is a graph illustrating the top four teams in the Premier League during the 2008-9 season, the closest Benitez’s Liverpool came to the title:

I think the key thing it indicates is that Liverpool had three significant crashes in their points total, where they dropped points in relation to target in consecutive games.

The first is matches 14 and 15 (home games to Fulham and West Ham), which they bounced back from well with a win away at Blackburn.  The second is matches 21-23, where they drew to Stoke (A), Everton (H) and Wigan (A), which was followed with a home win to Chelsea and a 3-2 win away at Portsmouth.  The final one was matches 26 and 27, home to Man City and a 2-0 loss away at Middlesbrough.

Man Utd only had one of these crashes, which only lasted 2 games in matches 28 and 29.  This was when a loss away at Fulham followed Liverpool’s 4-1 win at Old Trafford.  Significantly, this occurred when they had a 12 point buffer over Liverpool.

The key lesson in this is that every team has bad results during the season, but limiting these to isolated games is the key to a successful title challenge.  This doesn't mean dropping points in consecutive games is bad, if the target result is achieved.  In matches 3 and 4, Man Utd lost to Liverpool at Anfield, then drew away at Chelsea, and although this was 5 potential points missed out on, in the model, they only dropped 1 point, which they more than made up in match 6 with a win away at Blackburn.

A summary of how each of the teams performed in their 3-point-target games and their 1-point-target games also seems to indicate a trait of a title winning team (although I would need to look at data from more than one season to test this further).

I’ve often heard people talk about the importance of winning against the big teams if you want to win the league.  However, Man Utd got zero points off Liverpool in 2008/9, 1 off Arsenal and 4 off Chelsea.  In the same season, Liverpool took 6 off Chelsea and Man Utd and 2 off Arsenal.

What the data above does seem to indicate, is the need to win more of the 'most winnable' games.  In 2008/9, Man Utd won 22 out of 26 of these, Liverpool only won 17.  The model isn't saying that drawing is desirable, just that it isn't that bad to draw away from home against the better teams.

Looking again at the fixtures for this season shows that Liverpool’s first eight away matches are all 1-point-target matches.  Although this means they have less opportunity to ‘make up’ dropped points in the second half of the season, it also means that falling off the pace slightly (in terms of absolute standings) shouldn’t be seen as disastrous to any title challenge.  In fact, it might just work in Liverpool’s favour, as they might have less pressure, and an (on paper) easier second half of the season.