Premier League 4/12/21
West Ham v Chelsea
The Premier League weekend kicks off with a London derby and also a top four clash. West Ham are fourth but have recently lost to Wolves, Man City and then a draw with Brighton, whereas Chelsea are top and have lost one game all season. Our model has a 1-1 draw as the most likely score and this exact score as 12.6% likely.
When compared to Bookmakers Mean Odds (we compare to these as a ‘standard’) however, we find that although our model favours Chelsea at just over 38.6% as winners, bookmakers have them on 53.2%. This is likely to be home advantage helping West Ham’s chances in our model. It’s also probably helped by West Ham’s decent enough expected goals (1.26) and West Ham’s ELO rating is probably better than it’s been for many years.
I did wonder if Lawro at the BBC is just handed some predictions from a similar model to ours but it turns out he thinks it will be a 2-0 Chelsea win (something our model thinks is 6.7% likely). I’d be inclined to agree with him but I expect he is also underestimating West Ham.
Most likely score according to our model: 1-1
Elsewhere in the league, unlike in the Championship, which had 10 draws predicted, we have 5 wins as most likely outcomes.
There are wins for Leeds, Man Utd, Tottenham, Man City and Liverpool on the cards.
Despite this, again when compared to Bookmakers Mean Odds, we find that Man City and Liverpool’s likely wins are underscored as a probability in our model. It seems pretty reasonable to expect Liverpool to beat Wolves, but our model has this only 55% likely, although, whilst a 1-1 draw is the 2nd most likely result at 11.4%, a 1-0 away win in 11.8% and a 2-0 win is 10.1%.