English Premier League 20 November 2021

The Premier League returns this weekend with Leicester v Chelsea as the lunchtime kick-off. Leicester haven’t quite been consistent in the league so far this season so the home game against Chelsea looks fairly tough, especially as Chelsea are still top of the league.

We have this game with the most likely score of 1-1. However, bookmakers mean odds (see table below) have a Chelsea win at 53.6% and our model still favours them at 48.6%. There are a lot of 1-1 draws predicted this weekend, which is more usual for the Championship rather than Premier League.

Most likely score: 1-1

Newcastle v Brentford will be probably of more interest than it would have been a month ago. This is Eddie Howe’s first game as manager of Newcastle. Our model favours Newcastle at 42.3% with bookmakers having just 1% between the two teams (36.3-35.3%). New manager bounce? Well not much is expected, at least, unless a draw counts!

I see Mark Lawrenson on the BBC thinks Newcastle will win 2-0  but personally I can’t see a drastic turnaround in Newcastle’s fortunes without better players.

Most likely score: 1-1

A game to watch will be Liverpool v Arsenal. Liverpool lost their last game before the international break, whereas Arsenal have now won their last three matches. Will this be enough to stop Liverpool?

Our model favours Liverpool at 56.7% and although it predicts a 1-1 draw as the most likely score, there really isn’t much between that and a 1-0 home win with both exact scores being 10.8% likely. Bookmaker mean odds do favour Liverpool even more than us though at 64.7%.

Most likely score: 1-1