How the season works out according to the Premier League’s stats experts at Opta… and it’s bad news for Manchester United as they miss out on a Champions League spot
With the fate of the Premier League season still up in the air amid the coronavirus crisis, fans have been left to speculate about how the campaign will pan out.
Is there any chance Liverpool throw away their 25-point lead at the top of the table? Who wins the race for the final Champions League spot? And which three teams are destined to play Championship football next term?
Top-flight officials still have every intention of completing the season, and now have more time to do so after Euro 2020 was postponed by a year. But if 2019-20 does have to be scrapped, how would the table have ended up?
Virgil van Dijk and his Liverpool team-mates are currently 25 points clear at the top
That’s a question the stats boffins at Opta have attempted to answer by crunching the numbers to predict the results of every remaining game.
Using data on all 20 teams’ attacking and defensive qualities from the last four years, with extra emphasis on recent performances, they awarded points for each match to come up with a final table.
Opta then went through the same process another 9,999 times to estimate the likelihood of each team finishing in each league position – and it’s not good news for Manchester United.
According to their findings, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s men fail to catch Chelsea in the race for fourth place and the final Champions League spot.
Manchester are in the race for the top four, but Opta believe they will finish fifth in the table
The Red Devils had been in a rich vein of form before the season was postponed, but Opta find that they finish the season in fifth, two points behind Frank Lampard’s side.
Unsurprisingly, Liverpool win their first Premier League title with a whopping 101 points – a Premier League record and the second highest total in the history of Europe’s top five leagues.
Manchester City, who finish second, end the season with 80 points, which would have been enough to win the title in the 1992-93, 1996-97, 1997-98, 1998-99, 2000/-01 and 2010-11 seasons.
Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool are on course for a record-breaking season, according to Opta
Leicester return to the Champions League by finishing third, while Tottenham earn a Europa League spot after finishing sixth on 58 points.
At the other end of the table, Watford complete their great escape by finishing 17th to avoid relegation on goal difference ahead of Bournemouth.
Norwich and Aston Villa, who are currently 20th and 19th in the table, fail to get themselves out of trouble and go down in the same positions.
Opta have used years of data to simulate how the current Premier League table will end up
Troy Deeney (left) and his Watford team-mates would avoid relegation on goal difference
