Topic: The Alternative Premier League Table 2013-14

[Prof]

[Nessy76]

Just for you...

Just looking at the next four games here.

Liverpool have:
Man U (home) - a very tough par 3
Swansea (away) - par 1
So'ton (home) - par 3
Sunderland (away) - par 3

10 points from those four games would represent an exceptionally strong start to the season. In the recent past I'd have expected us to beat Utd and then drop points at home to Saints and in the North East. Neither United nor Moyes have a particularly good record at Anfield, but I think most of us would realistically take a draw at this stage. Swansea will be keen to exact revenge after we gave them a thumping last season. Southampton have yet to really kick into gear, but there's a dangerous side in there, at least they are unlikely to park the bus.

Spurs have:
Arsenal away - par 1
Norwich home - par 3
Cardiff away - par 3
Chelsea home - par 3

Again, it's par 10 on paper, and no prizes for spotting the difficulty they'll have there, with two London derbies to contend with. Chelsea at White Hart Lane is probably the more daunting fixture these days, but a trip to the Emirates is never a comfortable away day for Spurs.

Arsenal have
Spurs home - par 3
Sunderland away - par 3
Stoke home - par 3
Swansea away - par 1

10 points again? With a home match against Stoke and aways to Sunderland and Swansea, direct comparions between us and them should be simple enough by the end of this run of games. Both sides have also already played Aston Villa.

Obviously with Spurs playing Arsenal one side will need to drop points.

[Frizzo]

Have to feel for Villa.

Getting us, arsenal and Chelsea for your first three games all within a week is extremely harsh. Probably deserved more than the 3 pts they got but also probably would've taken them before the season started.

[DanA]

If we're anywhere near par come November we're doing good bloody well and a he'll of a winning streak.

[edmundljs]

Have to feel for Villa.

Getting us, arsenal and Chelsea for your first three games all within a week is extremely harsh. Probably deserved more than the 3 pts they got but also probably would've taken them before the season started.

The beauty of it is that they would have expected the 3 points to come against us but they actually won it from our direct rival for 4th spot. It is all round good news for us!

[SweetSilverSevens]

Liverpool and Arsenal have a very very similar run of games during the first half of the season. Both have a relatively easy early run of fixtures before our clash together at the Emirates. Both only have one noticably tricky fixture each (Utd and Spurs H)... but other potential banana skin are in there. The rest of our big clashes are concentrated during November/December.

Spurs have a very different run of fixtures, but have a similar pattern. Except for an extra difficult fixture (Chelsea A) in their early run of games.

Apart from Utd, the rest of the big games for us - Arsenal/Everton/Spurs/City/Chelsea - are all away from home. So it'll be tough Nov/Dec period..... but on the bright side, all those fixture in the second half of the season will be at home.

[Prof]

[frikkibj]

I just checked and we have never gotten more than three par results in a row since the APLT started, let’s hope we can change that with at least a draw away at Swansea.

[Blinis]

Always nice to come here to keep cool about the situation, and taking into account the fact that Chelsea also had a difficult away game.

The Swansea game will be tough, I would not be too disappointed with one point, and neither would the APLT.

[riismeister]

Were'e off the charts.

[Nessy76]

Always nice to come here to keep cool about the situation, and taking into account the fact that Chelsea also had a difficult away game.

The Swansea game will be tough, I would not be too disappointed with one point, and neither would the APLT.

This is the interesting thing about this table, most people will be feeling we need to get a win at Swansea, that if we can beat United at home then that should be easier. But Swansea had a very impressive home record last season, and will be wanting to restore a bit of pride after our last match with them. It certainly wont be an easy game.

On the other hand, they've not started so well this year, while we seem to have taken a few steps forwards.

Would you (anyone here) take the draw? Or do we want to set down a marker with four wins from four?

[Prof]

As a stand alone game, of course I want us to win.

If we draw, I don't think we'd look back in May and say it was a bad result.

If you look at this table so far, we aren't flying away.  We've had good results, but none of our rivals have had shockers.

On paper, our early fixtures are much easier than our run in.  So we need a gap in the real table, which would look like being level-pegging in here.  The danger is expectations rising if we are high up in November.  This table should give a more realistic view of where we are.

[Nessy76]

As a stand alone game, of course I want us to win.

If we draw, I don't think we'd look back in May and say it was a bad result.

If you look at this table so far, we aren't flying away.  We've had good results, but none of our rivals have had shockers.

On paper, our early fixtures are much easier than our run in.  So we need a gap in the real table, which would look like being level-pegging in here.  The danger is expectations rising if we are high up in November.  This table should give a more realistic view of where we are.

True. I think we're currently where Everton were last season.

[Zieki]

it would seem to me that playing the 13th best team away would be easier than playing the champions at home.  What was the league's score against par in these two fixtures last year?

Last season, Man Utd won 16 and lost 3 at home.  They lost to Man City (2nd), Chelsea (3rd, although the league was decided by then) and Spurs (5th).  Ironically, they beat Chelsea and Man City away from home.

In the previous two seasons, the Champions won 18 and drew one.  in 11-12, Man City drew at home to Sunderland (13th) and 10-11 Man Utd drew at home to West Brom.

Winning home matches is the bread and butter for title winning teams.  In fact, the average number of home wins for the Champions over the last six years is 17, and there is no obvious pattern to predict where the points might be dropped.

First of all, thanks to Prof for this thread - I've been following it for 2 years now and always seems to be calmer heads than elsewhere in the forum.

To rednational's point, for the last three years the champions won 19, 16, and 14 against the bottom ten teams (home and away). The average, over the last 6 years, is just about 17 wins per season. With that in mind, this year, I decided to use a model similar to Prof's with a little bit different criteria:

16  "easiest" home games:  Par 3
3 "hardest" home games: Par 1
10  "easiest" away games:  Par 3
9 "hardest" away games: Par 1

Again, easiest and hardest is determined by last year's league position. Pretty much everything is the same bar the 'Par' criteria.

Here is how everything stands currently:

GP     Team           Points-to-Par
3       Liverpool             2
3       Man Utd              1
3       Chelsea               0
3       Arsenal              -1
3       Tottenham         -1

[Prof]

[johnny74]

That's the quickest you've put one of these up Prof and I for one don't blame you!

[Liverbird27]

Great to see that we're doing well jn both league tables! 
It shows that a draw at Swansea was a decent result.... as long as we continue strong form at home. Southampton won't be easy.

[Blinis]

Still on top of both league tables, but the difficult stuff is coming. I would not be surprised if Arsenal or Chelsea were at the top of the APLT after the 7th game.

[edmundljs]

Call me greedy but that was an opportunity to go above the 90 points line, until Michu's shot went in. Gutted but yet satisfied.

[farawayred]

Prof, I think you need to drop Everton or risk dealing with very large negative scales later in the season...   

[DanA]

Just got to keep in touching distance with the 90 point line over the next 5 games. It's the easiest run we have all season but equally there's no opportunity to move forward above the 90 point line with all being par 3's.

[edmundljs]

Prof, I think you need to drop Everton or risk dealing with very large negative scales later in the season...   

Wouldn't write them off after their impressive display against Chelsea.

[Beige]

Great stuff as always, Prof, but  any chance you could chance your image host? The current one is listed on couple of malware lists and is thus very inconvenient to use even if it is completely safe.

[Nessy76]

Great to see that we're doing well jn both league tables! 
It shows that a draw at Swansea was a decent result.... as long as we continue strong form at home. Southampton won't be easy.

Swansea's home record last season was very impressive. Arsenal have to go there soon as well. Be interesting to see how they get on.

[jimmyjr86]

Going to be hard to keep up after our impressive start. If we only drop 3 points to par in the next 4 games I will be very happy indeed.

[Nessy76]

Going to be hard to keep up after our impressive start. If we only drop 3 points to par in the next 4 games I will be very happy indeed.

Next four league games are all par 3s. There's no guarantees of course, but personally I'm expecting Suarez to explode once he's back in the side, which should be enough to carry us through a few matches. Any word on Coutinho's injury? He could also make a big difference.

[Zieki]

Update on the alternative to the APLT...

GP     Team           Points-to-Par
4       Liverpool             2
4       Man Utd              1
4       Chelsea             -1
4       Arsenal              -1
4       Tottenham         -1
4       Everton              -4
4       Man City             -5

[Prof]

Great stuff as always, Prof, but  any chance you could chance your image host? The current one is listed on couple of malware lists and is thus very inconvenient to use even if it is completely safe.

Can you suggest one please?  I changed to this one on the request of a Rawkite.  It doesn't really fuss me which I use as long as it's quick, easy and doesn't require a login.

[Prof]

Swansea's home record last season was very impressive. Arsenal have to go there soon as well. Be interesting to see how they get on.

I had a feeling that Arsenal would be the team to beat this season, and the more I see, the more I think it's true.

They are the only one of the top four from last season not to change manager.  They have the most stable squad (no big transfers out) and have supplemented it with a couple of excellent players (Flamini - already a known quantity -  and Ozil).

They had a poor opening result, which can easily happen in the first game of the season, but since then have looked very good.

[Byrneand]

I had a feeling that Arsenal would be the team to beat this season, and the more I see, the more I think it's true.

They are the only one of the top four from last season not to change manager.  They have the most stable squad (no big transfers out) and have supplemented it with a couple of excellent players (Flamini - already a known quantity -  and Ozil).

They had a poor opening result, which can easily happen in the first game of the season, but since then have looked very good.

They've been on fire the last 6 months.

[Nessy76]

They've been on fire the last 6 months.

From game 24, they dropped points to par 3 times, but made points above par 5 times, giving them an incredible five point swing to close out the season, the only club listed to improve their points standing in the APLT over that period.

[Byrneand]

I've just been running this 3-month rolling average points per game (up until before the weekend) which shows something similar. Key takeaways for me:

- Arsenal had a very strong 2H.
- United have struggled since March.
- Liverpool are showing continued improvement.
- Chelsea materially improved under Benitez

[joe ®]

Can you suggest one please?  I changed to this one on the request of a Rawkite.  It doesn't really fuss me which I use as long as it's quick, easy and doesn't require a login.

I use Imgur.

[Flinstone]

just saw this.

this is amazing mate.have you created those team fixture tables manually?

[Prof]

just saw this.

this is amazing mate.have you created those team fixture tables manually?

Thanks 

Not really.  Copy and paste job, conditional formatting etc.  It takes almost as long to reorder when fixtures are rearranged, which is why I don't put dates.

[DyingAtheist]

Still on par, Swansea result (while certainly a tad disappointing) wasn't a bad one...
To an extent, 'easy' games are a bit of a curse, we've got a very winnable series coming up but we really do have to be winning them if we're going to stay up there.

[Red number seven]

The danger is expectations rising if we are high up in November. 

The other side of expectation is momentum, atmosphere and confidence. Liverpool playing good football, on a good run, top of the league or close to it is a different beast and has th epotential to generate a far, far more intimidating atmosphere.

I'm happy to risk winning all our games til November!

[Prof]

The other side of expectation is momentum, atmosphere and confidence. Liverpool playing good football, on a good run, top of the league or close to it is a different beast and has th epotential to generate a far, far more intimidating atmosphere.

I'm happy to risk winning all our games til November!

My point is that if we are flying then hit trouble, the usual knee jerk supporters will get frustrated.

[Nessy76]

My point is that if we are flying then hit trouble, the usual knee jerk supporters will get frustrated.

They're whining anyway. How many threads locked down at the moment?
Here we are with problems at the top of the league...

[rickardinho1]

Form table below looks great, particularly with Man Utd 6th... lets hope that can continue! Quite surprised about Arsenal too.

Premier League form table (courtesy of http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/liverpools-brendan-rodgers-sends-catch-2280050)

Last 16 games - newly promoted clubs excepted

Team                       P     W   D    L    F    A   GD    Pts

Arsenal                   16   12   2   2   30   13   17    38

Liverpool                16   10   5   1   32   11   21    35

Chelsea                   16   10   3   3  24   13   11    33

Tottenham             16    10   3   3   26   17   9     33

Manchester City     16   10    2   4   26   13   13    32

Manchester United 16    9    4    3   30   14   16    31

Everton                   16    7    6   3   18    10    8    27

West Ham               16    5    6   5   18    16    2    21

Newcastle               16    6    3   7   14    27 -13    21

Aston Villa             16     6    2   8   27    25    2     20

Southampton         16     4   7    5   15    17   -2    19

Norwich                 16     5   4    7   19    23   -4    19

Fulham                  16     5   3    8   17    23   -6    18

Stoke                     16     4   4    8   11    16   -5    16

West Brom             16     3   5    8   18    26   -8    14

Swansea                16     3   4    9   14    29   -15   13

Sunderland            16    2    5    9   16   28   -12   11