2014

Who Do You Think Will Win The EPL?

By Antonio | March 31, 2014
2014

Who Do You Think Will Win The EPL?

Although my statistical based model has been a fan of Liverpool for most of the season, I've gone on record the last couple of weeks to state that I think the market (and probably the wider public) are now over estimating the chances of Liverpool winning the league. What is the Market saying? Right now, the Betfair Premier League outright market looks like this: Betfair For those that aren't familar or comfortable with betting odds, the above Betfair market suggest that the chances of winning the league are as follows: Man City 54% Liverpool 34% Chelsea 12% How do I view the Title race? Looking at the predictions generated by my stats based betting model which have been ran through 10,000 simulations my current probabilities are: EPL Someone asked me on Twitter why I was so bullish on City, and correspondingly why I was giving Liverpool less of a chance of winning the league than most others. I've had a look at the engine of my model and it looks like there are two main reasons for this: 1 - I rate City as marginally the better team; and 2 - City have 5 of their remaining games at Home.  They are an impressive team at home, and given the quality (or lack of) of the opposition that they will face at home it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that City will win all 5 of those games. Of course, I am aware of the fact that the title is in Liverpool's hands and if they win all of their remaining games then they will most definitely have been deserving winners, but as a gambler I work on probabilities - and I see Liverpool winning the league just slightly more often than once in every 4 runnings of the 2013/14 Premier League.   Predictor Anyway, that's enough about what I think.  So who do you think will win the league? For those who would like to make a logical estimate of who should win the league I am attaching a small Excel spreadsheet in this zipped file: EPLPredictor (It is probably best to choose "Save As" when the dialogue box opens.) The file is easy to use, all the remaining league fixtures for Liverpool and Man City are listed.  All you need to do is enter your estimate of the Home and Draw probabilities for the remaining games and the sheet will do the rest. Hopefully the act of inputting your probabilities and seeing your predicted final league table based on the expected league points will let you see the size of the task that Liverpool have ahead of themselves if they are to win their very first Premier League crown. It is possible, but I believe there is just a 1 in 4 chance of 2013/14 being the season that this occurs in.