By Opta Analyst | Created at 2024-11-18 15:26:16 | Updated at 2024-11-18 17:25:47
2 hours ago
Ahead of the return of the Premier League, we use the Opta supercomputer to assess the likelihood of teams in the danger zone being relegated.
While the middle of the Premier League table is officially as congested as it has ever been, the story at the bottom is a little different. Southampton are already four points from safety, with the gap between them and 17th-placed Ipswich Town the same as the gap between Manchester United in 13th and Chelsea in 3rd.
Saints suffered a particularly damaging defeat to fellow relegation candidates Wolves last time out, and they remain the overwhelming favourites for relegation with the Opta supercomputer. Their chances of going back down to the Championship are now as high as 94.8%.
Russell Martin’s side were the model’s pre-season favourites to go down, but a poor start has added almost 30 percentage points to their relegation possibility (they’d sat at 66.7% before a ball was kicked).
Despite currently sitting just outside the relegation zone, it’s Ipswich who are the model’s next most likely team to go down. Their odds of relegation currently sit at 67.1%. That’s basically flat from where they were at the start of the season (64.7%), and their brilliant 2-1 away win at Spurs – their first of the season – has done a lot to bring that number down recently.
It’s the third of the promoted teams, Leicester, who come next, on 54.6%. After back-to-back victories in October, Steve Cooper’s men are now winless in their last three, and things appear to be about to get harder. A home encounter against Chelsea is the start of a very difficult set of fixtures for the Tigers; only Everton have a more difficult next 10 fixtures according to the Opta Power Rankings.
That’s why Everton (17.6%) have a slightly higher chance of relegation than you might think. Having started the season with four consecutive defeats, Sean Dyche’s men have bounced back well, losing just one of their last seven matches. Their December run is particularly challenging, though, as they face Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Man City and then Nottingham Forest in a tough five-game stretch.
Southampton’s upcoming fixture list is pretty brutal, too, with their next five fixtures pitching them against Liverpool, Brighton, Chelsea, Aston Villa and Tottenham.
After the hardest start to the season in terms of fixture difficulty, Wolves will be relieved to know that their fixture list opens up somewhat for a while. Only Chelsea and Brighton have an easier next set of fixtures based on the Opta Power Rankings.
They’ll hope to build on their first win of the season when they visit Fulham this weekend, although they haven’t won successive Premier League matches since February last season. On the road they’re winless in their last 11 league matches (D4 L7), conceding 28 goals in that time. At 43.4% they are still under huge threat of relegation.
Crystal Palace (16.9%) are the sixth-most likely team to suffer the drop. Given the impact that Oliver Glasner had when he took over in 2023-24, their poor start to the season has surprised many, not least the supercomputer, who had Palace as a top-half team at the start of the campaign.
In reality, they have registered just seven points from their opening 11 league games this season (W1 D4 L6), only picking up fewer points at this stage of a Premier League campaign in 2013-14 (4) and 2017-18 (4).
Palace are actually 15th in Opta’s expected points table, which takes into account teams’ underlying performance metrics. Glasner’s men have been creating plenty of chances, it’s just finishing woes that have really hurt them. They have the worst differential of any team between their expected goals and actual goals scored in the Premier League this season (-6.0, 14.0 xG, 8 scored), as well as having the worst conversion rate (5.1%).
The Opta supercomputer backs them to turn it around, though, with the Eagles predicted to finish 16th.
West Ham (3.1%) and Brentford (1.2%) are the only other teams in the division given a relegation probability of above 1%. Both sides will be fine, though, honest.
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