By Graeme Riley
One of the remarkable things about the Premier League so far this season is its unpredictability. Chelsea, long time leaders, have already lost as many games as Birmingham and Fulham, both of whom are stranded in the lower reaches of the league. With 4 defeats in 15 games, they are only 2 short of the total of losses in their entire title winning season of 2009-10. Unbeaten Manchester United find themselves only 2 points clear, with a current points tally which, if extrapolated over the entire season, would see them reach only 79 points, one of the lowest for a title winning team in the Premier League era.
This unpredictability is borne out in the Transfer Price Index (TPI) as well, when looking at every team’s £XI (the average cost of the starting XI over the season, when inflation is taken into account).
If we assume that a +£5m advantage to the home team should result in a home win, and a +£10m advantage to the away team should result in an away win, with anything between these values as a draw, we can see that currently the number of correctly forecast results on this basis is 42.0%. This compares poorly with last year (54.5%) and is indeed the lowest level of predictability since 1998-99, prior to the expansion of the Champions League places.
What has caused this? Clearly the credit crunch has levelled the playing field to some extent. With the exception of Manchester City, none of the major players spent significant amounts of money during the summer transfer window; some even made quite healthy profits from their trading account. At the same time some of the lesser lights spent healthily and apparently wisely, leaving them in a position where there is greater compactness about the league than previously observed.
Although it has proved difficult to predict outcomes at the individual match level, there is nevertheless a familiar look to the league in most areas. The top 4 places are all occupied by the teams you would expect to be there or there abouts, with Spurs falling just short. After a dreadful start even Liverpool are beginning to show signs of life and have steadily climbed to mid-table, albeit some way short of their £XI forecast.
TPI Accuracy
Nine teams currently find themselves within 2 places of where their £XI would have forecast them to be, with a further 3 teams within 4 places. Surprisingly, given the match unpredictability, this placing forecast is quite similar to the accuracy seen in previous years – £XI as a basis for predicting league placing does seem to have a long term accuracy.
The biggest overperformers so far are Blackpool, finding themselves 9 places higher than their £XI ranks them. Not far behind are Bolton, who are 7 places higher than expected, in 6th place. At the other end of the scale are West Ham, stranded at the bottom, 11 places lower than their £XI would suggest, and Aston Villa, 9 places lower than anticipated.
The average difference is 4.4 places, higher than recent years, and caused mainly by these extreme outliers. The standard deviation is 3.2 places, which indicates a tight league.
Given that the teams at the top are not performing as consistently as expected, it is perhaps no surprise to see some very high levels of cost per point. Chelsea are currently at £2.9million pp, which is not far short of their own all-time record. Man City are not too far behind on £2.5m pp.
Blackpool’s remarkable first season performance (so far) coupled with their extreme prudence in the transfer market means that they are running at £67,280 pp – if maintained, it will prove to be the lowest in the history the Premier League. Basically they are spending less than 1/40th of the value Chelsea spend to achieve their points total.
In terms of the percentage of overall squad value that finds its way into the starting XI, Chelsea are faring better than anybody else (69.5% versus an average of 53.8%) which makes their recent poor performance all the more unusual. The lowest rate of utilisation is for Spurs (40.8%) although they have had quite sharp increases in the £XI in recent matches. Similarly Man Utd are only at 44.3%, but they have had recent increases in the value of their £XI, and indeed in the latest round of matches had their most expensive starting XI of the season.
The costliest starting XI (including inflation) so far this season belongs to Chelsea, at £235.6m for the match against Wolves (won 2-0) and the lowest is Blackpool, at £2.3million for their matches against Wigan on the opening day (won 4-0) and Fulham (drew 2-2). The largest variance is shown by Man Utd, with a maximum of £229m (against Blackburn – won 7-1) and a minimum of £62.3m (against Sunderland – drew 0-0). In this latter game they effectively had £235m worth of talent unavailable through injury, suspension or their own choice. This is possibly the most expensive unused group of players in the league’s history.
Not surprisingly the lowest variation comes from the squad with the lowest value, Blackpool. Their lowest value (£2.3m) compares with their highest of £3.9m which they have used in 5 games.
Bolton’s success seems to arise from getting their expensive players on the pitch; their utilisation rate is 68.3% isonly slightly lower than Chelsea’s, and ranks in second place. This has enable them to convert the 13th-most expensive squad into the 6th-placed team in the league.
West Ham, at the other extreme, are managing a utilisation rate of only 50.6%. Their very low points total means that they are ranked way up in 7th in the cost per point table, at £1.3m. This puts them in a similar bracket to Man Utd, Aston Villa and Liverpool. Both of these latter two clubs are underperforming and are pretty well aligned with each other, both in terms of squad cost and cost per point, although Liverpool are getting the more expensive £XI on the pitch.
