For me it shows, your season against quality of opposition played so far. Last year, i recall Everton being low in the actual league table compared to LFC, but above us on the APLT. See the following table from Nov 3rd,
http://www.redandwhitekop.com/forum/index.php?topic=306705.msg12138533#msg12138533 and compare to the actual Premiership table on Nov 3rd. Now although we know we finished way above them in the end, at this moment in the season, they were very real rivals for 4th position, and this table showed that. Whilst Everton maintained form to the 71 point line, Liverpool went crazy and clawed their way up, as the final table from last year shows.
P W D L CS FtS F A GD Pt PPG
1 Arsenal 10 8 1 1 3 0 22 9 +13 25 2.50
2 Chelsea 10 6 2 2 3 3 16 8 +8 20 2.00
3 Liverpool 10 6 2 2 3 2 17 10 +7 20 2.00
4 Tottenham Hotspur 10 6 2 2 7 3 9 5 +4 20 2.00
5 Manchester City 10 6 1 3 4 1 28 11 +17 19 1.90
6 Southampton 10 5 4 1 6 2 11 4 +7 19 1.90
7 Everton 10 5 4 1 5 3 14 10 +4 19 1.90
8 Manchester United 10 5 2 3 2 2 17 13 +4 17 1.70
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I appreciate the point you make, it's pretty much what the APLT is all about.
However, there are other things that occur to contributors which are sometimes shown up in the APLT table and I was just commenting on one which had come to my mind.
Taking your point about the relative strength of sides, I think it would be possible [though certainly not conclusive] to see the affect on a side of a prolonged injury to a particular player or [as in the case of Suarez at the tail-end of last season] a player not scoring as many goals...would that coincide with a dip in form against par.
For me the beauty of the APLT is that there is so much in it to generate observations & discussion.
For example; one discussion which I'm looking forward to is that it's been claimed [in another thread] that the PL winner usually has a lower points total in the season after a World Cup...how far into the season would the APLT give us an indication whether that's true [or even whether it can].
The APLT is predicated on the idea that you need 90pts to win the PL, but that's not strictly correct [though I don't mean that as any form of criticism of the APLT], you only need 1pt more than second place and the average of 2nd place plus 1pt [what you really needed to win it] for the last ten years is only 84pts[the average for the winners actual totals from 05 thru 14 is 88pts].
So, how far into the season will the APLT indicate whether a lower post WC points total would be true for all of the top-4/ top-6 sides...whether only the top couple of sides will total lower points or whether they'll bunch up around the low 80's - high 70's.
As I've said, the APLT isn't meant to 'predict' anything but it's like a lovely thing you can't stop looking at n playing with.
