It's early days, but there have already been some interesting developments in the APLT. As always, thanks to Prof for setting the whole thing up and doing such excellent work.
I thought I'd put together a few thoughts on what we can see already, with an eye to any new readers, or anyone still a bit confused by the whole thing. It's a long one, but you'll like the bit at the end, I promise.
As we know, the aim is to win all home games and the seven easiest away matches, drawing the remainder. This gives 90 points and, usually, the league title.
The emphasis is strongly on winning games (a team playing exactly to par all season will win 26 out of 38 games that's more than 2/3) while losing can result in a loss of 1 or 3 points. If you are going to lose a game then, the logic of the APLT suggests, it's better to lose a "Par 1" game than a "Par 3" one.
This flies in the face of the usual way the title race is portrayed, with games between title rivals often held up as "six pointers". In fact, a loss away to a title rival is far less damaging to the team's ambitions than a loss to a team lower down the league. This is because in the APLT, each team is playing towards an ideal points total, rather than engaging in the "first past the post" title race portrayed by the traditional table, so what your rivals do is less important than how you are performing, which is good, because your own performance is largely under your own control, while your rival's performance isn't. (Look how we came unstuck last season when we started chasing down that daft goal difference vs Palace, for instance.)
So let's have a look at the results so far. On the one hand, this is too small a sample (less than 10%) of the entire season to really tell us a great deal about the destiny of the title. On the other, it's a small enough number of games played for us to be able to easily look at the whole picture.
Chelsea's opening games were
Burnley (a) Par 3
Leicester (h) Par 3 and
Everton (a) Par 1.
By winning all 3, Chelsea have got off to the perfect start. Meeting par in the opening pair of fixtures and beating Everton to give themselves 2 in the bank. For the remainder of the season, Chelsea now need to play marginally below par to ensure the league title. It's a very slight variation at the moment.
Their next two fixtures are
Swansea (h) Par 3 and
Manchester City (a) Par 1.
Beat Swansea and lose to City and they would still be a point ahead of the game.
Liverpool are the only APLT team to have played two par 1 matches already. The opening fixtures of
Southampton (h) Par 3
Man City (a) Par 1 and
Tottenham (a) Par 1
have a par score of 5 points. Despite losing to title rivals Man City, the win over Tottenham was enough to give the club an overall swing of +1 over the two games.
Again, at this stage, this is a very marginal advantage and while you can say LFC now apparently have an easier remaining schedule than any other club in the APLT, with just ten par 1 games left to everyone else's eleven, it's equally true to say that we have one fewer chance to get an above-par result.
The next two fixtures for the reds are
Aston Villa (h) Par 3 and
West Ham (a) Par 1.
3 points from those two games would have us on title winning form from the first 5 games, but the team will see it as a chance to put more points in the bank to hedge against the tougher matches to come.
Manchester City began with a run of
Newcastle Utd (a) Par 1,
Liverpool (h) Par 3 and
Stoke City (h) Par 3.
Despite winning the first two games, the home loss to Stoke was a serious blow. This raises one of the interesting aspects of the APLT; ALL home games are must-win matches, regardless of opposition. And while their win over Liverpool cost the reds a point, their home defeat to Stoke means Man City dropped 3 and now sit below us.
The moral is clear: in the APLT at least, it is better to lose a game away to a rival, than at home to a lower side.
Of course, no-one would say this means Man City are out of the title race just yet, they have a chance to pick up 2 points in their next match away to Arsenal Par 1 before the visit of Chelsea to Eastlands Par 3.
Metrocentric Fixture Fact: Tottenham's league campaign has yet to leave London. Their opening game away to West Ham Par 1 was followed by two home games against
QPR Par 3 and
Liverpool Par 3.
While their start could not have gone better, the 2 points they gained down the road at West Ham were wiped out as they capitulated to Liverpool, their natural superiors.
The APLT is merciless to teams who cannot make a fortress of their home ground. For every game lost at home there is a 3 point deficit to make up. As there are only 12 par 1 matches, and only 2 points over par available from each, it soon becomes necessary to start winning away at some very tough grounds.
I've mentioned earlier that some teams could use "points in the bank" as a hedge against tougher fixtures ahead, and Tottenham could find that truer than most as the season goes on, with the end of their season featuring four Par 1 games (Newcastle United, Southampton, Stoke City and Everton) in their last six matches.
Spurs next two matches are
Sunderland (a) Par 3 and
West Brom (h) Par 3.
Which means the best they can possibly do after five games would be -1.
The four teams covered so far may or may not make up the final "top four" but as it stands, they are the only sides on course for a Champions League place. There is no exact Par basis for getting into the top 4, but the model predicts that sides who gain 71 points should make those places.
Arsenal now sit half a point below the 71 point line. This early on, of course, this is no crisis, and it will be a long time before we know if they can put together their annual threat of a title charge. So far they've had
Crystal Palace (h) Par 3,
Everton (a) Par 1 and
Leicester (a) Par 3.
They started off with a credible win at Palace and a Par-perfect point at Goodison Park, only to undo all the good work with a draw away to Leicester.
The APLT discriminates between drawing at the ground of a top 13 club, and drawing elsewhere. For a visit to a club that finished the previous year in the top 13, a draw is generally a good result. (Because teams do not play themselves, there are 12 such games each season and so 12 Par 1 matches.) So while Arsenal drawing with Everton was a good result, drawing with Leicester was costly.
Their next two games are
Man City (h) Par 3 and
Aston Villa (a) Par 3
It is of course, possible that Leicester could end the season in the top 13, and should they (or anyone else) look like doing so, there will be the usual calls for the table to be redrawn, or the par totals changed. This won't happen, as it would mean different teams would end up with different ideal (par) totals over the season.
Alternatively, the table could be redrawn retrospectively, to take account of the new positions. Again, this won't happen. The only logical time to do this would be at the end of the season, when there is little reason to do it as the APLT is identical to the traditional table at that point. Also, it would spoil the experience of following the table if suddenly it was changed after the event.
The model is not perfect, but it works well to illustrate many things and has run quite smoothly for several years so suggestions for "improvements" need to be a) original and b) really impressive, to be taken seriously.
Our esteemed neighbours Everton began the season with bold talk of a raid on the top four places. For a team that finished 5th last season, it seems a reasonable target, at first glance. And with as generous an opening set of fixtures as you could ask for, optimism was high around Goodison when they set off for their opening games of
Leicester (a) Par 3,
Arsenal (h) Par 3,
Chelsea (h) Par 3.
Their next two are
West Brom (a) Par 3
Crystal Palace (h) Par 3
And here comes a common criticism of the APLT. Because of the absolute need to win all home games, there is no accounting for the strength of the opposition in home matches. So back to back games against Arsenal and Chelsea are deemed as must-win games. Everton's actual results in these matches; drawing away to Leicester, scraping a home point v Arsenal and losing a veritable goal fest to Chelsea 6-3; in isolation, none of these look like terrible results.
The APLT is a cruel mistress and sees a return of just 2 points from a Par 9 series of games as very poor indeed.
It's true, the APLT doesn't care if the best team in the world are coming to play; if you are at home, you need to win those games. But there is a very good reason for this. The APLT is a model of winning the league and title winning teams overwhelmingly win nearly all of their home games, regardless of the opposition.
Even the most optimistic bluenose knows deep down that Everton are not serious title contenders just yet. They may well break the top four. The lower your target, the less useful the APLT is.
A cruel taskmaster indeed, because the APLT is a test for the very best teams.
Which brings us, ironically, to Manchester United.
Following the mix-up last year in which David Moyes was inexplicably handed difficult games at the start of the season, business as usual resumed in the fixture computer as it handed Van Gaal a gentle introduction to the World's Toughest League (tm). Man United have an opening run of nine consecutive Par 3 games, the longest such run of any team in the APLT all season.
Unlike Everton, who the APLT expected to beat Arsenal and Chelsea in their first 3 matches, Man Utd had
Swansea (h) Par 3,
Sunderland (a) Par 3 and
Burnley (a) Par 3.
You don't need the APLT to tell you that 2 points from 9 available there is poor. What the APLT will show you, though, is that that is also 2 points from 9 Par, which is little short of a disaster.
To get back into the title race, then, Manchester United now need to pick up 7 extra points from their Par 1 games, and not drop any more points to par. They need to win their next six matches (including home games to Everton and Chelsea) just to stay on -7.
Only three games in, and the APLT has already shown us that a team highly fancied by many pundits at the beginning of the season are almost certainly already out of the title race.
