How so? Most teams are on a downward trend as far as I can see, aiming for something around 80. And the APLT table is missing that number of par games played, which is pretty important. Most of the bigger teams are still to play each other and points are bound to be lost somewhere. Dunno about the methodology, but I suspect that it predicts that lower teams will have a better chance of gaining points against the bigger ones while playing away, which in APLT terms means quite a significant drop of points for the bigger teams.
There is almost always a downward trend, that's pretty much how the APLT works. Big teams play one another the same number of times every season, and at this stage, there are always more than half of those games remaining.
The methodology is vital, because that is all that the graph represents. If it has assumptions to begin with, then it is those assumptions which are telling, rather than the graph itself. Simply presenting your opinions in graphical form doesn't magically lend them any special regard, so without the methodology, that's a useless graphic. If you are right and it is assuming that lower teams will take more points than normal off the top four, then it's that assumption which we need to examine. Where is that coming from, and how reliable is it?
We're at (slightly) over a third of the way through the season, so one thing that might be worth looking at is tripling everyone's APLT totals so far and seeing what that gets us.
Man Utd would be on -6, Man City on -9, Arsenal and Liverpool on -15. That suggests a final total somewhere around:
Man Utd: 84+
Man City: 81+
Arsenal: 75+
Liverpool 75+
And if we try something similar with the trad table, we get this:
Man Utd: 81
Man City: 78
Arsenal: 78
Spurs: 72
(What neither table tells you is that title winners tend to go on good runs in the second half of the season, so the trad table at this stage is often conservative when it comes to the final points totals.)
You make a point about the APLT not revealing how many Par 1 games a side has left, so let's look at that.
Man Utd have played 5 Par 1s, scoring 7pts (1.4ppg) and 8 Par 3s, scoring 20pts (2.5ppg)
Sticking to that form would give them 16.8 from their Par 1s and 65 from their Par 3s. Or about 82 points.
So three different "models" all show that Man Utd should be on course for either 84, 81 or 82 points.
(And they aren't even anyone's favourites to win the league.)
Obviously, form can drop or improve, but the
trends so far don't seem to support such an unusually low total at the end of the season.
It's chances. There's an 81% chance that the champion will finish within the 75-85 margin. Basically, it's going to be a tight race where one slip up might decide the title outcome.
The final total of the league winner hasn't been as low as 79 since the turn of the century, I just don't see a dramatic enough shift in results to date to support that low a total at the end of the season. There isn't an "81% chance" of anything just because of an unsupported graph. According to that, the most likely outcome is 79, followed by 78 (!) and then 80 points. History suggests otherwise, and without further information, that's usually the safest guide.
It could be that there is a sound reasoning behind that graph, but without knowing what it is, it's not possible to judge, so all I can say is that to me, that seems an extreme conclusion. We'll find out by May, though.
