Premier League mid week 15 December – 17 December 

Liverpool v Tottenham

The top of the table clash clearly favours Liverpool in terms of odds.

We have a 1-0 Liverpool win predicted (see Score Picks, Most in the table below) – a 1-0 has a 13% chance of happening (see home wins, 1-0).

Liverpool lead on expected goals at 1.77 to Tottenham’s 0.84.

Our model favours Liverpool at 59.5% and Tottenham at 17.4% with bookmakers more or less agreeing at 53.6% to 21.6%

If this had been last season I’d agree with all this. However…. this season, it is clear that Tottenham are set up to deal with attacking sides and Mourinho will fancy his chances. Should be really interesting to see how they cope with Liverpool’s attacking force.

Fulham v Brighton

Near the other end of the table, this match is interesting because our model is predicting a clear Fulham win, whereas bookmakers slightly favour Brighton.

I think our model has this just about right as Fulham have started to look more organised in recent weeks. We have a 1-0 home win for Fulham as the most likely outcome (1-0 itself is at 10.5% but a Fulham win is at 58% overall (see outcome probs).

Man City v West Brom

Bookmakers give almost no chance of a win for poor West Brom (3.7%!) and sadly this is probably about right. We give them a marginally greater chance (7.4%!) but not much, with this being one of two matches we’ve predicted a 2-0 win for the home team (the other is Leeds v Newcastle).

Arsenal v Southampton

If i had to pick one match where I thought both the model and bookmakers were most likely to be wrong, this week it would be this match.

Both our model and bookmakers have Arsenal as favourites (51.5%, our model and 42.9%, bookmakers for Arsenal), our model even predicts a 1-0 win – and I suspect this is largely because in other seasons this would be right, as historically Arsenal beat Southampton.

However – Southampton are in 4th, something that actually makes the league look interesting, in addition to Leicester in 3rd and West Ham in 6th adds to this early season intrigue.

At the other end of the table, Arsenal are 15th and haven’t won in 5 matches (that win against Man Utd is starting to look like an anomaly). Also if you speak to Arsenal fans, the consensus seems to be, they think their own team looks rubbish at the moment!