What happens when teams from different ends of the Premier League table meet?

On Saturday, first and second in the Premier League will play second and third from bottom. At lunchtime Liverpool will host Watford. In the middle of the afternoon Manchester City will go into action at Burnley.

The result of the earlier game will probably change positions going into the later game, but as things stand it is second against 18th followed by first against 19th.

There is only one wider gap between teams possible in the Premier League – when top play bottom.

What as a general rule happens in different sorts of game? What are the chances of a home win, a draw and an away win?

To find out I studied the 24 Premier League seasons from 1995-96 to 2018-19 – I started with the season after the number of teams was reduced to 20 and stopped before Covid emptied grounds. What might be interesting to know is what happens in the circumstances we have again now – when grounds are full.

Only once did the team who would finish bottom beat the team that would finish top. That was in 2013-14 when Cardiff won at home to Manchester City. In three other seasons the team who would finish bottom drew at home to the team who would finish top - Crystal Palace held Arsenal in 1997-98, Sunderland held Manchester United in 2002-03 and Aston Villa held Leicester in 2015-16.

Every other time, home and away, the team who would finish bottom lost to the team who would finish top. This was also so in the seasons completed since 2018-19.

Of course, while a season is in progress we cannot be sure where teams will finish. That is where skill and judgement come in.

If you can say where typically you think two teams would finish you can work out what typically you think would be the difference in finishing positions between them. And then you can use the graph below to help you estimate the percentage chance of a home win, an away win – and, by implication, a draw. The better your finishing position predictions turn out to be the better your match predictions should be.

The graph shows how the percentage chances of a home win and an away win varied with the difference in finishing positions between teams. The lines wriggle about a bit. Real-life data usually does. But I do not think it is hard to get an idea of what the underlying trends were.

The lines cross around games for home teams who would finish four places below the away team. In other words, ground advantage in the Premier League was worth roughly four places in the table.

Home teams who would finish four places below the away team won about as often as they lost. The superior ability of the away team was cancelled out by the impact of the venue – the advantage the home team gained from playing at home and the disadvantage the away team suffered from playing away. In such games there was something approaching a 35 per cent chance of a home win, a 30 per cent chance of a draw and a 35 per cent chance of an away win.

In games between teams who would finish in adjacent places – that is to say, when there was a home team who would finish either one place above or one place below the away team – there was overall a 46 per cent chance of a home win, a 28 per cent chance of a draw and a 26 per cent chance of an away win.

For games in which the home team would finish further above the away team the chance of a home win got progressively bigger and the chance of an away win progressively smaller. And the other way round: for games in which the home team would finish further below the away team the chance of a home won got progressively smaller and the chance of an away win progressively bigger.

Some illustrative examples – strictly speaking, interpretations of the data. With my eyes I am trying to smooth out the wrinkles in the lines.

In games featuring home teams who finished five places above the away team there seemed to be something like a 60 per cent chance of a home win, a 25 per cent chance of a draw and a 15 per cent chance of an away win. When home teams finished ten places above the away team there might have been a 70 per cent chance of a home win, a 21 per cent chance of a draw and a nine per cent chance of an away win.

And when away teams finished ten places above the home team there might have been a 48 per cent chance of an away win, a 28 per cent chance of a draw and a 24 per cent chance of a home win. For any given difference in finishing positions, each team was more likely to win at home than away.

Tomorrow, as well as Liverpool v Watford and Burnley v Manchester City, there is Chelsea v Brentford. You might not think Chelsea will finish third and Brentford 15th, Liverpool second and Watford 18th, Manchester City first and Burnley 19th. But just as a starting point let us ask: what happened in the past in games that brought together teams that finished in those positions in the table?

For home teams who finished 12 places above the away team the chances seemed to be in the region of 75 per cent home win, 18 per cent draw and seven per cent away win. For home teams who finished 16 places above the away team the chances might have been 82 per cent home win, 14 per cent draw and four per cent away win. And for away teams who finished 18 places above the home team the chances might have been 79 per cent away win, 16 per cent draw and five per cent home win.

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