Is there a growing gap between the best and the rest in the Premier League?

This is unusual. There are four Premier League teams without a win. Norwich, Newcastle, Burnley and Southampton, not surprisingly, occupy the bottom four places.

I looked back over the last 26 seasons, 1995-96 to 2020-21, every completed campaign since the Premier League was reduced to 20 teams.

After seven games how many teams were still without a win? The answer was never as high as four. How often did the lower numbers occur? Four times there were three winless teams, five times there were two winless teams, ten times there was one winless team and seven times there were no winless teams.

If there is an unprecedented number of teams at one end of the table without a win is there also at the other end of the table an unprecedented number of teams without a loss? Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is no.

Only Liverpool are unbeaten. One team yet to taste defeat is below average.

After seven games in those previous 26 seasons how often did different numbers of teams remain unbeaten? Once there were four unbeaten teams, three times there were three unbeaten teams, 13 times there were two unbeaten teams, five times there was one unbeaten team and four times there were no unbeaten teams.

Norwich, Newcastle, Burnley and Southampton have played seven games against opponents currently in the top four. Typically by now teams in the bottom four would have played six games against opponents in the top four. So Norwich, Newcastle, Burnley and Southampton have not faced an exceptional number of high-flying adversaries.

The current top four are Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City and Manchester United, all elite teams. They finished as the top four last season, and the season before. No one would be shocked if they finished as the top four again. They are not gathering points at an unusually fast rate, though.

What has happened this season is that there has been a wider than normal spread of results among the other teams. Is this a fluke or is there a wider than normal range of abilities among those other teams?

I think the first answer is more likely to be right. And I am not the only one.

Bookmakers are right 999 times out of 1,000, at least. I looked at Spreadex’s Premier League points spreads before the season and now. Before the season Spreadex expected Norwich, Newcastle, Burnley and Southampton to gain a total of 126 points from their last 31 games. Now Spreadex expect those teams to gain 127 points from their remaining 31 games. One more, not fewer.

Everton, Brighton, Brentford and Tottenham currently occupy places five, six, seven and eight. In other words, they are the four teams below the top four. Before the season Spreadex expected those teams to gain 160 points from their last 31 games. Now they still expect them to gain 160 points from their remaining 31 games. Precisely the same.

There is a valuable lesson here, with implications that go beyond this subject. Bookmakers have changed hardly at all in their assessment of Everton, Brighton, Brentford and Tottenham, or Norwich, Newcastle, Burnley and Southampton – even though the first four started the season with better than anticipated results and the last four started the season with worse than anticipated results.

I would not be surprised if Norwich tail off – although I hope they do not because they are a likeable club – but I do not think Newcastle, Burnley and Southampton are significantly worse than most of the dozen teams below the top four. And I would have said that of Newcastle even if they had not been taken over.

At the end of a season the average gap between fifth and 17th places has been 27 points. Spreadex expect that this season it will be 23 points. Smaller than usual, not larger.

Signposts toward the odds for a long winless sequence

How likely is it that a team will go seven games without a win? Another way of answering that question is like this.

An average Premier League team should win 37 per cent of their games, lose 37 per cent and draw the other 26 per cent. They should win more often at home than away and lose more often away than at home.

Because seven is an odd number it will include more games either at home or away. If we did not know which it was going to be, and we had to allow for both possibilities, we could compute the chance of an average Premier League team going seven games without a win as four per cent.

Of course not all teams are average. Some are better, others are worse. In the Premier League, as in many other football competitions, most teams are below average. That is because there are a small number of really good teams who raise the average. For a similar reason, most workers earn below the average wage.

Over the 26 seasons before this one, 32 teams out of 520 played their first seven games without getting a win: six per cent. For high-budget teams who should be good, the chance would be less than six per cent. For lower-budget teams who should be poor on the pitch, the chance would be greater than six per cent.

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