Welcome to The Matchday Diget, here is everything you need for Gameweek 26!

Let’s jump straight into the game everyone will be talking about, Manchester City vs Liverpool will be the game of the weekend, with the results of the match having huge implications for the title race. The goals model has Liverpool scoring 2.02 goals on average with Manchester City on just 1.55.

This is interesting as you’ll see when we get to the main models’ match probabilities for the weekend, Liverpool is not a favourite…

If you’re new to my newsletter, then you might not know that my expected goals model is different from my probability model. The probability model comes straight from the same one which looks at title probability, however, it was built to be accurate over the long term. So to look at expected goals, I have a different model which is slightly more short-term focused which is more accurate at predicting expected goals.

Arsenal as expected are the most likely clean sheet this weekend as they welcome West Ham at home.

So the big game. My model has Manchester City winning in 45.7% of 10,000 simulations, a draw in 23.1% and Liverpool winning at 31.2%. So it is slightly favouring Manchester City. There could be plenty of reasons for this but one thing is for sure is the home advantage currently in any Premier League game this season

• Home Win - 40%

• Draw - 25%

• Away Win - 35%

The result of the Super Sunday game is sure to affect the Premier League title probabilities, with Liverpool after their 2-2 draw to Aston Villa sit on 87.3%, and Arsenal at 12.7%. Currently, in 0.02% of 10,000 simulations, both Man City and Nottingham Forest still pick up title wins.

Southampton survive in just 3 of my model’s 10,000 simulations (0.03%) its so little in fact that my plot has rounded it to 100%! With it now even more increasingly likely that all 3 promoted teams go right back to the Championship.

Looking ahead

Crystal Palace is now the team with the easiest fixture run over the next 6 gameweeks, partly helped by their blank in gameweek 29. Wolves look to be the best team over the next 6 gameweeks which is partly why my model still has them at a relatively low chance of relegation since Leicester City have a difficult run in comparison.

Bournemouth have the third easiest run, this is why they are still predicted highly in my model to get into the champions league.

Despite the blank in gameweek 29, Liverpool is still expected to score the most goals over the next 6 gameweeks due to their home game vs Southampton in gameweek 28.

Arsenal are expected to keep the most clean sheets, which they will need if they are to mount any real title chance this season with them still sitting on just 12.7%.

Website Ideas and Waitlist!

First of all, the waitlist is here! Over 560 people have already signed up so make sure you get your spot!

This week in the development of the site we had a slight backwards step and so the front end has been changed over to React rather than Python which makes searching for tables far quicker and should be the front end much more interactive and easier to expand in the future. Don’t worry, all the same features will be coming to the site.

Here is the slightly different look of the table simulation viewer on the site.

Feel free to reach out to me for stuff you would want to see on the site! Hopefully next week I will have a lot more to show from the newly made site!