Can the end of one season or the start of the next predict the final table?

 

 

 

• • Arsenal beat Manchester United and the great news is…
  • Yet again international matches end in utter chaos. When will they ever learn

 

By Tony Attwood

It being summer, and my apparently being the only person in the kingdom who has no interest at all in the olympic games (hence no capital O) I started to muse as to what our regular use of  the last six games of the premier league games actually tells us. apart from the obvious (that is, how the clubs have done in the last six games).

So I took the last six games of the 2023/24 season and looked at the league table just based on those six games and compared that with where each club finished up.

As you can see below, the top two clubs in the last six games were the same as the top two over the whole season, not least since both clubs won all six of their games.  

But then there was a surprise – the third-best team across those last six games was none other than Crystal Palace who actually finished the league in 10trh.  And that wasn’t the biggest variation since Everton were fifth across the final six games, but finished in 15th – an end-of-season performance that was way above what they did in the season as a whole.

Tottenham Hots were, as ever, contrary to the general trend.  Across the last six matches, they lost four, which gave them 16th place for the table based on those final outings.  But they ended the league in 5th

Here is the table of the last six games of last season, with (in the final column) the actual position that each team ended up in.  I’ve included the promoted clubs, obviously using their record from the Championship.

 

Last 6 pos	Team	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts	Actual Lge pos
1	Manch City	6	0	0	20	2	+18	18	1
2	Arsenal	6	0	0	16	3	+13	18	2
3	Crystal Palace	5	1	0	20	4	+16	16	10
4	Chelsea	5	1	0	16	6	+10	16	6
5	Everton	4	1	1	8	3	+5	13	15
6	Liverpool	3	2	1	14	10	+4	11	3
7	Newcastle U	3	1	2	16	10	+6	10	7
8	Brentford	3	1	2	11	7	+4	10	16
9	Manch Utd	3	1	2	10	10	0	10	8
10	Leicester C	3	0	3	10	5	+5	9	P
11	Ipswich T	2	3	1	8	6	+2	9	P
12	Southampton	3	0	3	9	11	-2	9	P
13	Aston Villa	2	2	2	10	12	-2	8	4
14	Fulham	2	2	2	8	10	-2	8	13
15	Nottingham Fo	2	1	3	9	11	-2	7	17
16	Tottenham Hot	2	0	4	9	12	-3	6	5
17	Bournemouth	2	0	4	7	10	-3	6	12
18	Brighton & H	1	1	4	3	12	-9	4	11
19	West Ham U	1	1	4	8	18	-10	4	9
20	Wolverhampton	1	0	5	4	14	-10	3	14

 

Seeing a fair amount of variation I wondered if the opening six games of a season tell us much about what will happen at the end of the season.  Certainly, a lot of correspondents do tend to think this is the case.

So below we have the league table on 25 September 2023, when all the Premier League clubs had played their first six games.  The biggest changes that we see from the position after six matches and the end of the season were eight places for Brighton and Hove (down from third to 11th), and for Chelsea (up from 14th to sixth).

The three relegated clubs were in the bottom three positions after just six games, and five of the top six clubs for the end of the season were in the top six after six games.  But only two of the final top four clubs who have gone into the Champions League, were in the top four places.  So not quite everything is known after six games, but a lot can be predicted after just six matches.

Indeed the notion that “it’s all to play for” might not be completely true after six games.  The average team moves 2.7 places between where it stands after six games and where it ends the season.  And here’s the surprising point, only four clubs were more than three places different (up or down) at the end of the season compared to where they were after six games.

These outliers were Brighton (down eight places), Nottingham Forest (up five places), Chelsea (up eight places) and Bournemouth (up five places).

Now after the first six games of the league last season the top of the league read

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Manchester City	6	6	0	0	16	3	13	18
2	Liverpool	6	5	1	0	15	5	10	16
3	Brighton and Hove	6	5	0	1	18	8	10	15
4	Tottenham Hots	6	4	2	0	15	7	8	14
5	Arsenal	6	4	2	0	11	6	5	14
6	Aston Villa	6	4	0	2	12	10	2	12

 

So although that clearly did not tell us exactly what the final top six would look like, it did predict five of the top six at the end of the season, with only Brighton losing out to Chelsea in the final table.

What that table did not predict however was goals scored or goal difference.  As you will know, Arsenal were the second-highest goal scoring side   After six games they were only fifth in the league, only the sixth top-scoring side, with only the third-best defence and only the sixth-best goal difference

If Arsenal are not top of the league after six games this season there will be cries for new players and a new manager to be brought in.  For your own well-being you might care to ignore these screams – they might just be mindless gibberish by people wanting to create a story in 30 seconds, so they can move onto the next pint and who have not understood the similarity that exists in football between the start and the end of each season.