Top 4 this season, is it achievable?: Page 14 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

Top 4 this season, is it achievable?

QuincyAbeyie

Chelsea before and after Tuchel came in last season were very different though.

goon

Sure but a manager change isn't the only thing that can turn form around. Plus it's not like Chelsea's run in was particularly impressive, they dropped points in 7 of their last 14 games.

Point is all the sides are capable of dropping unexpected points or going on runs and it just take's a swing of a couple of games for it to completely turn around.

jones

goon wrote:
Sure but a manager change isn't the only thing that can turn form around. Plus it's not like Chelsea's run in was particularly impressive, they dropped points in 7 of their last 14 games.

They also played four more games to reach the FA Cup final and seven more matches to win the CL beating the likes of Madrid, Atletico and City twice each to get there. Also a couple of those losses in the league were when they were guaranteed 4th already I'm pretty sure, Chelsea's turnaround under Tuchel was definitely impressive no two ways about it.

goon

Save it for his biography mate, I mean it wasn't all that impressive in the context of them getting top 4.

It's encouraging for us, but it's also encouraging for them.

TambourineMan

The way I see it, the games we have left are bucketed as follows:

3 points: Watford (H), Leicester (H), Brighton (H), Leeds (H), Everton (H). This set of fixtures need to yield maximum points (15 points)

0/1/3 points: Villa (A), Palace (A), Southampton (A), United (H), WHU (A), Newcastle (A), Spurs (A). These are games where anything can happen and we aren't a level yet where any of these games are guaranteed wins. From this set of 7, I reckon we'd do well to get 9 points (2 wins, 3 draws, 2 defeats).

0 points: Liverpool (H), Chelsea (A). We are not getting any points from these two fixtures I reckon.

The above would give us a total of 69 points for the season and should be enough for top 4.

Sicario

Tambourine Man wrote:
The way I see it, the games we have left are bucketed as follows:

3 points: Watford (H), Leicester (H), Brighton (H), Leeds (H), Everton (H). This set of fixtures need to yield maximum points (15 points)

0/1/3 points: Villa (A), Palace (A), Southampton (A), United (H), WHU (A), Newcastle (A), Spurs (A). These are games where anything can happen and we aren't a level yet where any of these games are guaranteed wins. From this set of 7, I reckon we'd do well to get 9 points (2 wins, 3 draws, 2 defeats).

0 points: Liverpool (H), Chelsea (A). We are not getting any points from these two fixtures I reckon.

The above would give us a total of 69 points for the season and should be enough for top 4.

We should be beating Palace, Southampton and Newcastle.

The games v Utd at home, West Ham away and Spurs away should be minimum draws.

All of it comes down to when we play them (ie are they playing us on the back of Europe, us playing mid-week etc). So a few variables to consider.

Chelsea haven’t beaten us at SB since August 2018 so we got a good recent record there, no reason why we can’t get a draw or better (as we did last year with a shitter team).

Interestingly our re-arranged fixture with Chelsea will prob occur in mid-April either side of our game v Man Utd at home. We may even play the Spurs re-arranged game in May! Sky would be pushing for that imo.

goon

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/soccer-predictions/premier-league/

66% chance now they reckon. Usually dismiss these statistical predictions but I'm willing to look past it on this occasion.

QuincyAbeyie

Sounds about right.

Ricky1985

[Twitter]

The most in-form team in Europe over the last 10 games. Pretty incredible really.

Don Pacifico

Guys, why are you trying to jinx this...?

KurtEisner

Ricky1985 wrote:
[Twitter]

The most in-form team in Europe over the last 10 games. Pretty incredible really.

To be fair, the losses against Liverpool and Nottingham in the cups aren't included here, and apart from City, Wolves and West Ham were the only decent teams we played and we should expect to win against them. Some of the games were mighty close as well.

It's still impressive mind, and that kind of consistency against the smaller teams in the league is exactly what we need to not only get back into the Champions League, but also eventually challenge for the Premier League.

Shady

To reach 70 points:

Arsenal:

3 points: Leicester (H), Palace (A), Brighton (H), Leeds (H), Newcastle (A), Everton (H)

1 point: Villa (A), Southampton (A), Man Utd (H), West Ham (A)

0 points: Chelsea (A), Liverpool (H), Spurs (A)

Man Utd:

3 points: Spurs (H), Leicester (H), Everton (A), Norwich (H), Brentford (H), Brighton (A), Palace (A),

1 point: Arsenal (A), Chelsea (H),

0 points: Liverpool (A),

Spurs:

3 points: West Ham (H), Newcastle (H), Brighton (H), Brentford (A), Leicester (H), Burnley (H), Norwich (A)

1 point: Man Utd (A), Brighton (A), Villa (A), Arsenal (H)

0 points: Liverpool (A)

Make of that what you will.

Looking at the games I've assigned as "1 points", you would hope we could hopefully get a couple of wins, which would cover any surprise dropped points. Spurs have got a lot of winnable games, but they need to be consistent. United have got such little room for error, that they are almost out of it. Any result in the NLD would really do wonders for us, but a long way to go until then.

TambourineMan

Spurs have the easiest set of fixtures so we really need to get something from the NLD.

Qwiss

United wont go the rest of the season losing just 1 game so you can pretty much count them out. I think even conservatively we are good for 70 points. All our away games are potential banana skins but even if you slip up in a couple of them we'd still be alright if we win all our non Liverpool home games and grab a few away wins and draws. Spurs run is tougher than you are rating it there I think, there home form isn't as good as ours either so I think their results will be more variable.

goon

Nicely broken down.

Ideal result from the weekend is a draw. If United win it's still good as it means we'd have the opportunity to create a 6 point gap between us and Tottenham with a game in hand. Tottenham win keeps the pressure on, but it does mean United would be pretty much out of it, one less team to worry about.

Basically beat Leicester and our situation come Sunday evening will look even better one way or another.

HomeSteak

Qwiss! wrote:
United wont go the rest of the season losing just 1 game so you can pretty much count them out. I think even conservatively we are good for 70 points. All our away games are potential banana skins but even if you slip up in a couple of them we'd still be alright if we win all our non Liverpool home games and grab a few away wins and draws. Spurs run is tougher than you are rating it there I think, there home form isn't as good as ours either so I think their results will be more variable.

I think they went by league position ? Spurs have trouble in beating low blocks so don't know if this is really true...but yeah, on paper they have a very easy run in and Kane & Son picked up form at the right time. United are out of it, they will keep drawing and losing games and we will beat them at home. So it's between us and Spurs and for us to do it we need to start winning the big games, so that means Spurs away is a must, and also somehow we need to get points vs Chelsea and Liverpool. Still don't think we can make it.

banduan

Our next results (excluding the matches waiting to be rescheduled) as predicted by 538:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/soccer-predictions/premier-league/

Leicester (H) W 62%
Pool (H) L 53%
Villa (A) W 40%
Palace (A) W 42%
Brighton (H) W 51%
Soton (A) W 45%
Mancs (H) W 46%
Hammers (A) W 40%
Leeds (H) W 63%
Newcastle (A) W 51%
Everton (H) W 63%

That's 30/33. Notably though the model tends to disfavour draws.
If we took any win 40% or less to be draws that'd be 26/33. Would still put us at 74 points.

They nevertheless expect Arsenal to finish at 69 pts so not sure I really know how their predictors work 😆.

QuincyAbeyie

I guess your list there for example looks at each result individually and predicts the most likely one. For example Soton away is a win even if it's 45% likely because the two other possible results are even less likely.

In predicting our total points to 69 the calculation is different, for example simulating each match X number of times based on the percentage and add the average number of points gained to the total.

Burnwinter

Yep you'd need the draw or loss percentages to model the whole thing as a set of independent three-way variables, look at all the possible pathways through the model and aggregate on points.

Not too sure what stats package would do this for you given the data (R, probably) ...

banduan

I was thinking that would be the case but could not figure out the model from the pattern presented. Not that it's too important.

We're the most likely to finish fourth and the results of the games in hand are only going to determine if it's a heart attack inducing finish or not.

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