Premier League Midweek 30 11 21 – 2 12 21
Midweek Premier League games are a fairly rare thing this side of Christmas, unless there is a game postponed.
Usually they are reserved for whatever the League Cup is now called or for European games. This week though we get a full-set, unless it snows again.
Our model (see table above, Outcome Probs) predicts a 1-1 draw for all but three of the games as the most likely score. On the fact of it, this looks like it shows the closeness of the league.
There are three games that aren’t showing as a likely, 1-1. The first is, Villa v Man City, where we favour Man City at 56.6%, with bookmakers mean odds giving City a much higher percentage chance of a win at 70.7%. Steven Gerrard may have done a bit to help Villa since joining but apparently, Man City are in an ’emergency’ according to the BBC. None of this really seems to have affected the likelihood of Man City winning.
Most likely score: 0-1
The other two are, Watford v Chelsea (we favour Chelsea at 62%, bookmakers mean odds 71.5%) and West Ham at home to Brighton, where our model favours West Ham at 58.6% but bookmakers have them just below 50%.
Most likely scores:
0-2 (Watford v Chelsea)
1-0 (West Ham v Brighton)
In tonight’s games our model and bookmakers mean odds each produce almost exactly the same percentage for a Newcastle win at 48.2 to 48% against Norwich. Leeds v Crystal Palace has a bigger gap between our model and bookmakers odds, with our model more heavily favouring Leeds at 47.1%. I expect we are slightly overestimating Leeds here who are 17th compared to Palace in 11th.
I suspect we are also overestimating Everton‘s chances of a win at 21.6% against Liverpool in the Merseyside derby (bookmakers have them at just 12.7%) and personally I think a 1-1 draw is the most likely result for Man Utd v Arsenal (our model agrees but favours Man Utd at 44.4%).