With the Premier League returning this week after taking a break for the FA Cup, the focus will be back on the title race between the two Manchester clubs. However, it is well worth asking whether that title race is actually all but over. I have looked at the top three in the Premier League from a variety of different angles and present my findings here.
At approximately 9.25pm GMT on Wednesday, 2 January, Chelsea’s slim title hopes were finally being declared dead by the media and many of their own supporters. As I wrote here back in November, I never really believed in Chelsea’s title challenge and my lack of faith tended to be borne out in the data (see here and here). I am now going to say something similar about Manchester City’s title challenge.
The opening match of FA Cup third round weekend ended with victory for Championship side Brighton & Hove Albion against Premier League Newcastle United. This was hailed at the time, and throughout the day, as a giant-killing. But was it and if it wasn’t, which team should receive the biggest plaudits?
Firstly, let’s look at the dictionary definition of giant-killing: “In sport, when a weaker team or competitor beats a much stronger, well-known team or competitor, their success is sometimes called a giant-killing.”
On table position alone, Brighton & Hove Albion are indeed a weaker team as they are a division below Newcastle but that difference was more than wiped out by the fact that the Seagulls were at home in the third round tie. For years, any team outside the top flight winning a cup match against a top tier team has been referred to as a giant-killer. It was a simple way to judge cup feats but the truth of giant-killing is a little more complex.
In this year’s FA Cup third round match, Brighton & Hove Albion were actually the favourites to win with the oddsmakers. Newcastle United have been doing poorly this season, are currently suffering from a catalogue of injuries to first team players and have just lost their top scorer Demba Ba in a transfer to Chelsea. Brighton, on the other hand, are riding relatively high in the Championship and there is even a slight chance that the two clubs will have swapped divisions by the time next season starts. Add the home advantage for the south coast team and it starts to become clear that Brighton’s 2-0 win can hardly be classed as a giant-killing. In fact there are all-Premier League matches in this season’s third round which would have been bigger surprises – for example if West Ham had beaten Manchester United or Southampton had progressed at Chelsea’s expense.
So, what were this year’s most surprising third round results? We can refer to average bookmakers’ odds to find out.
Brighton’s odds to beat Newcastle were 2.31, quite a bit less than Aldershot, 21st in League Two, were to win at home against their fellow League Two club Rotherham United who are currently third in that league. That all-League Two match has not been mentioned anywhere as a shock and rightly so. It is the sort of result which happens up and down the country throughout the year. However, Aldershot were a more surprising winner than Brighton in this year’s third round.
Looking at the list above, there are no really big stories to report without Newcastle’s defeat being amongst them. It is counter-intuitive for most of us if it is not included as our brains look for the most simple interpretations. However, the most intuitive conclusions are not always the correct ones, as is the case here.
Readers might be surprised to see that the two third round victories by Blue Square Bet Premier clubs against Championship opposition only come in at numbers two and three in this year’s biggest third round shocks. However, that just illustrates how much of a boost the clubs get from playing a relatively high profile cup tie at home and, in Cardiff’s case at least, is also perhaps a reflection of weakened teams being put out by clubs from the top two tiers of professional football at this stage.
The team who should be hailed for the biggest giant-killing act of this year’s third round are League One side Oldham Athletic who won 3-2 at Nottingham Forest, a club 32 places above them in the Football League. Their victory was the most unlikely of the 20 ties which were won this weekend and comes in at number four of the biggest FA Cup third round surprise victories of the last five seasons.
A few days ago, Chelsea manager Rafael Benitez declared that his team can win this season’s Premier League despite being 13 points behind leaders Manchester United. The improvement Chelsea needed to make from last season’s 64 points made their chances of lifting the title before the season started remote and nothing has changed.
The reality is that Chelsea needed to improve their 2011/2012 points total by at least 21 this season to have any chance of lifting the Premier League trophy. The last nine Premier League titles have all been won by clubs getting 85 points or more and there is no reason to think that this season will need fewer points than that, particularly as a total of 85 would be four fewer than last season as it is. Such a turnaround in points has not happened at all in the Premier League era. The last title winners to increase their points total by so many was Arsenal in 1990/1991 (+21).
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I was nine years old watching my first World Cup, falling in love with the fantastic Dutch team but there he was, in the final, ball behind him, taking a step back and firing it into the corner to win the World Cup. Gerhard Müller may have just lost his record for most goals in a calendar year to Lionel Messi but he is still the greatest finisher I have ever seen.
Gerd Müller scored 68 international goals at a rate of more than one per match, he scored 365 Bundesliga goals, a record which no one has ever come anywhere near. Indeed, he is the only player to have even broken the 300 goal barrier. He also scored a Bundesliga season record of 40 goals in the 1971/1972 season, not to mention breaking Just Fontaine’s World Cup goalscoring record, albeit over two World Cups.
Müller was also top goalscorer in European competition with 66 goals in just 74 matches until he lost that record to Raúl two years ago. The Spaniard had needed more than 100 matches to go past Müller’s total.
I can’t better this description of Müller written by British writer David Winner: “Müller was short, squat, awkward-looking and not notably fast; he never fit the conventional idea of a great footballer, but he had lethal acceleration over short distances, a remarkable aerial game, and uncanny goalscoring instincts. His short legs gave him a strangely low centre of gravity, so he could turn quickly and with perfect balance in spaces and at speeds that would cause other players to fall over.”
Hopefully Messi’s achievement will bring more attention to “das kleine dicke Müller” and his exploits.
The Premier League this season has already developed into a two horse race for the title between the two Manchester clubs. Judging from the clubs’ current ISG coefficients which compare their performance this season with last, this weekend’s Manchester derby could make a big difference to the current race but not in the way suggested by the league table.
Firstly, let’s look at why the Premier League now contains a ‘Big Two’ rather than a ‘Big Four’ as in the past. The Euro Club Index, the ranking of all European top flight clubs, allows us to do this in a relatively simple fashion.
West Bromwich Albion lost 3-1 at Swansea City on Wednesday night, a result which has led to much speculation about why the performance level of the Baggies suddenly declined against an opponent they supposedly should have competed better against. Mark Lawrenson, for example, remarked that West Brom’s players were “believing their own publicity a bit”. Looking at the ISG coefficients which compare a team’s results this season with those in the same matches last season, we find little difference between Swansea City and West Bromwich Albion.
Looking simply at the current league table, West Bromwich Albion’s fourth place and 26 points looks impressive but if we compare the club’s results this season to 2011/2012, they have actually managed only four points more against those same opponents this term. Away from home, West Brom have managed to beat only Wigan Athletic and Sunderland, both expected to be struggling this season.
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This was written before last night’s Sunderland – QPR match. James Grayson helped me with some of the numbers and I would highly recommend his blog
QPR travel to Sunderland this evening with new manager Harry Redknapp in charge of the club for the first time. The Euro Club Index gives QPR 4% chance of avoiding relegation this season which means that they would be relegated in 24 out of every 25 seasons in which they found themselves in this position after 13 matches. In order to see what Redknapp’s QPR actually have to do to survive, I contacted analytical blogger James Grayson to help out.
Firstly, Queens Park Rangers are one of only 11 clubs over the last 12 seasons to gain four points or fewer in a run of 13 matches at any point during the season.
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Given that the winner has come from the last 10 songs since 2005 and the producers chose the running order tonight, isn't that match fixing? 58 minutes ago
None of the last eight Eurovision winners came from the first 16 songs. So, one of these last 10? Come on Greece! 1 hour ago
RT @Swannyg66: So an actual giant delivers the best looking girl in Europe into our lives then disappears. Don't care how bad this song is.… 1 hour ago
