Premier League relegation race is close now but may string out by end of season

The liver bird was an early bird. Liverpool won the Premier League with a record seven games to play. Which meant there was a lot of time left for other issues to be resolved. Such as who else will qualify for the Champions League. And which three teams will go down.

Now there are six games to play. Norwich are bottom with 21 points, Brighton are 15th with 33 points. Between them come Bournemouth, Aston Villa, Watford and West Ham. Most likely Norwich will be relegated with two of the next four.

Three points separate those next four – Bournemouth and Aston Villa have 27, Watford 28, West Ham 30. Which suggests they will be close together at the end of the season. And they might be. But they might not.

A big part of making good projections, I feel, is recognising that the future can be different from the past.

I reviewed the last six games of the last 24 Premier League seasons, all those since the number of teams was reduced to 20. The seasons were 1995-96 through to 2018-19.

First I worked out how many points a team would have won in the last six games if they had accumulated them at the same rate as in the first 32 games. Then I counted how many points they did win in the last six games. Then I noted the difference.

For one team out of every five the difference was five points or more. For one team in ten it was six points or more. For one team in 20 it was seven points or more.

Then I looked just at teams from near the bottom of the table, to see if anything changed. It didn’t. The ratios were the same.

Teams who are in a relegation pack can fall behind, or they can pull clear. Which ones? We cannot answer that question simply by citing teams who have what some people insist on calling momentum – the teams with the most different recent results.

When I was in my twenties I lived on the top of a hill and cursed a car that would not start on cold mornings. I rolled it down the hill, running alongside with the driver’s door open, then jumped in to try the ignition before it raced away from me.

Premier League teams are not like a freewheeling car accelerating down a slope. Having sped up they can slow down. Usually they do.

I studied results in sets of six games during those last 24 Premier League seasons. Teams played 38 games so I disregarded the first two then divided the remaining 36 into six sets of six.

If a team gained more points in one set of six games than they had in the previous set of six games, what happened in the next set of six games? Did they gain as many points again? Even more? Or fewer? Usually they gained fewer.

And the giddier the rise had been the scarier the fall was likely to be. The more results improved in one period the more they were likely to deteriorate in the next.

And vice versa. If a team’s points total went down in one set of six games it was likely to go up in the next set of six games. The deeper the drop had been the stronger the bounce back was likely to be.

It is why I say that in football there is no such thing as form. At least, not in the sense the word is commonly used. It is used to mean that a team who start getting better results will keep getting better results, and a team who start getting worse results will keep getting worse results.

Commentators do not help. Nor do a lot of football writers. They talk about form in the present tense. Before a match they will say a team are in form. If a team are in form they will play well today. Often, though, a team who are said to be in form do not play well on that day.

Form is in the past. It is what happened before. And as we have seen, what happens next can be different. Which is why the drop zone can become a flip-flop zone.

Why evolution did not equip us for betting

Think back in time. Why did humans start making sounds with their mouths? For the same reasons as other animals. To woo a mate, to face down a rival within the group, to scare off an enemy from outside the group.

In other words, humans started making sounds with their mouths to get what they wanted. And they still do.

Language evolved as a tool you could use to try to get your way. Its purpose was not, and is not, primarily to get at the truth.

Which is why the sort of arguments that can help someone do well at most things are not the sort of arguments that will help them do well at betting. Betting is one of the few activities in which success depends on being right – rather than getting others to do what you want them to do, which does not require you to be right.

This, in turn, is why the reasoning behind many good bets sounds bad. It is not what we are used to hearing. It might, for example, explain that all the omens signal one thing, then advise betting on another. That sounds crazy. A good bet, I sometimes say, is one that would make you wince with embarrassment if it lost and you had to admit it afterwards to your friends.

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