Premier League weekend of 13 February 2021

Leicester v Liverpool

There are not many people who would have predicted that when Leicester played Liverpool in February that Leicester would be 3rd in the league and Liverpool 4th.

Neither team has perfect form going into the game but expectations have meant there are a lot more questions about Liverpool than Leicester. It’s also the first Premier League game of the weekend.

Our model has this game as extremely close at 1-1 with almost nothing to separate the teams on expected goals or the odds our model produces (see, Outcome Probs in the table below).

Bookmakers have Liverpool at 45.5% to win, however. It’s also one of  only two games where our model favours a different team to bookmakers mean odds.

Elsewhere there are 3 games where our model picks clear winners and by a large margin.

Man Utd are favourites to win against West Brom; Man City are strong favourites against Tottenham (Man City on nearly 3 expected goals) and Chelsea are favourites against Newcastle (a 2-0 win is 14% likely according to our model), already looking better with a new manager and with 3 wins in a row.

Our model favours Brighton against Villa with a 1-0 win for Brighton predicted (and that exact score at 13.6% likely) a 1-1 draw though is a 13.2%, this is more closely reflected in bookmakers mean odds where they slightly favour Villa by just under 3%.

My initial instinct was that Villa will win this but looking at the form, Brighton have actually gone 5 league games unbeaten (beating Tottenham and Liverpool) and the last time they lost in the league was against Man City so our model makes a lot more sense based on that.