It's all going Liverpool's way

The Premier League weekend roundup

Author

Ted Knutson
January 20, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes

Variance Betting Update

(Note: If the Variance Betting stuff is new to you, you can find the midseason analysis for free right here. It’s a good explanation of what I’m doing, why, and why you might be interested.)

+6 over the weekend, including +4.5 in the Championship
+22.5 going into the CL midweek rounds
+£1967 profit on £325 per bet this weekend

Yes, I have been a professional sports bettor in my life, so I might be good at this. But I am also running hotter than the sun right now. It feels good, but there are massive ups and downs in this stupid industry, and this ain’t my first rodeo.

One thing I might be just as proud of as the streak right now is the fact that we managed to negotiate a promo with Bet105 that delivers world’s best pricing on the leagues I analyse on Friday afternoons.

That’s basically unprecedented in the gambling industry, and a HUGE thank you to the Bet105 team for making that happen.

And if you want to follow the Variance Betting analysis, the premium subscription is available here.

—TK

Now… on with the show!

We’ve gotta talk about Liverpool first because this feels like the weekend they well and truly put a stake in the heart of the title race and nailed the coffin shut.

Arsenal have had exceptional metrics for weeks, but some bad luck, bad finishing, and bad mistakes have cost them points.

Liverpool weathered ALL of that in the early season to come out with a points haul that was undeserving of their actual underlying metrics, to open up a solid lead up top. Regardless of what Liverpool fans might think if someone who is NOT a Liverpool fan says it, they had not been a 90+ points team in the numbers through the first half of the season. And no, they don’t have some special fucking sauce that lets them sit on leads better than every other team that has ever existed.

As an entity, we clearly believe in variance in football, and teams sometimes get both good and bad luck.

Think back to how much luck/Russell Martin insanity was needed to get past Southampton earlier in the year and then remember there have been a few of those, but they pretty much all ended as wins. Or the 2-2 against a fairly dismal Man United team at home — there could have been so many more of those types of days in a different season.

I’m not trying to harsh anyone’s vibe, yo, but we try to keep it real ‘round here.

ANYWAY… all that has begun to change in recent weeks, as for the first time really all season, Liverpool have started to get truly stompy on the shot generation front. 23 shots away against Forest. 37 (!!!) against a pretty decent Bees side, away this weekend. 19 against Man United. If you’re putting up 20+ shots against just about every team in the league, home or away… yeah, you’re going to win a metric fuckton of those and march off into the sunset most seasons.

It’s good news for Liverpool fans, and really bad news for everyone else.

Klopp retires, Michael Edwards comes back, and Liverpool are going to win a title on e-z- mode.

It’s a weird season.

[I lost my bet on Brentford this weekend, because of not just one Nunez goal after the 90th minute. No, it took TWO of them to cost me my Asian Handicap.

We were sitting about 20 rows behind the Liverpool goal in the second half (a public thank you to the kind Ticket Fairy for the hookup), and I made a little joke to my son telling him to watch his head now that Nunez was on. And lo’ and behold, there was a shot from Darwin that nearly came our way.)

“But I actually kinda love Darwin and thought he’d be a great target for Arsenal last summer.”

Then the first goal happened, and we groaned with the rest of the stadium, but it was both deserved and inevitable.

Then I saw the blow up of possession happen at the halfway line, looked at the team shape, and literally uttered, “Fuck… here comes the second.”

Sigh.

I cannot believe I got fully Darwined in person.]

Final Note: Listening to Alan Parson Project’s Sirius in stadium in the Brentford buildup made me wistful for my childhood as a Chicago Bulls fan. In fact, I did the Michael Jordan intro at full voice at the end BECAUSE IT NEEDED TO BE DONE. Thankfully, my kid has watched The Last Dance, so I didn’t look like a complete crazy person.

“FROM AVALLON, FRANCE At Forward… standing 5’8, number 19, Bryan… MBEUUUUUMO!”

“FROM COPENHAGEN… at midfielder, standing 6’1 - THE CAPTAIN - number 6…. Cristian NOOOOOOORGAAAAAAARD.”

Somebody tell Benham an upgrade is needed.

I get a lot of stick from generalist fans for saying nice things in my analysis while still being objective enough to note hints of caution. For example, last week I said Newcastle had taken care of business during the 9-match winning streak, but also that the PL schedule during their run had been quite soft and squishy. The match against Wolves in particular was a win, but it wasn’t a comprehensive one in the underlying numbers.

Fast forward to 2:30pm Saturday and I look like some fucking savant, but the reality is that Bournemouth are excellent and Newcastle — who are also good — had an off day. And part of what the Cherries do under Iraola is make teams have bad days.

There was a time when Justin Kluivert was in his middle teens that he was absolutely guaranteed to be the next big thing in football. A famous dad, outstanding genes, and all the stats you could possibly want out of the Dutch league before age 18.

Most of a decade later, he’s having one of Those Runs. Those once-or-twice-in-a-lifetime goalscoring runs that everyone remembers. Except in this case it’s aided by some very nice finishing (he could not miss Saturday), and… six penalties.

The fanalyst part of me wanted to get excited, but the stats side of me had to just shrug, mildly appreciate things (and he’s definitely a good player and important to Bournemouth’s attack), and move on. Just like this column.

An Unai Emery team did me right this season?

If I say objective, correct, but slightly negative things about Thomas Partey, I get bitchy DMs and emails from the small swathe of Arsenal fans that feel the need to defend him. But also… maybe watch what he does on BOTH of the goals Arsenal gave up to Villa? On the first, he gives DIgne acres of space and time to pick out the cross to Tielemans. And on the second? Decides not to mark his man — one Ollie Watkins — on the goal for the equaliser.

There’s plenty of blame to go around when you lose a 2-0 lead, but Partey owns a hefty chunk of this one.

Arsenal are tired, injured, and need a break. Arteta needs to play actual children in at least one of these CL matches to help get things back on track. The Cup exits will help too, but it’s just the CL left to play for this year.

One of my very good friends is named Seth, and for his sins, he somehow became a Manchester United fan. And poor Seth loves to message me during United matches — even when I am not watching them — with both joy and angst. This season, it is obviously mostly angst. I think he even publicly gave up on United earlier this season, and YET… still sends me texts when shit like Sunday rolls across his screen.

There isn’t much to say, to be honest. This iteration of United are bad. No coach can fix the current set of players. And United are not making any sort of moves that suggest it’s going to get any better before next season begins.

This image is definitely going to live in my head for a while, though. It’s Mazraoui heading almost full-speed, folded-in-half by the post on Mitoma’s goal.

An A for effort, an ow for everything else.

The Mazraoui Owie.

United fans, maybe go root for Barcelona for the rest of the season. They are a totally different, terribly run super team, which should feel comfortable, but at least their matches are full of fun.

Brighton fans, however… YEAH BAYBEE! There’s hope. This is what you want to see as your lads finally get healthy. Is it the start of a run that can continue through the end of the season? Eh.

Also, that Baleba assist to Mitoma was left-footed. Someone’s paying a mint for that dude, assuming there are any mints left to find. Then you get the magic Joao Pedro turn on the goal that was counted off by VAR, plus the Minteh cross to Mitoma for his goal.

I personally think Tony gets punchy and keeps this crew together to see how far they can run, but I have no insider info on that - just a feeling.

It would be mean to comment on Spurs at this point.

Watch the highlights here for the little Calvert-Lewin dance to score the first, the sparkling Ndiaye second, and the chef’s kiss chip from Kulusevski to get Spurs on the board.

Everton got the win off an own goal. They can’t hold a lead right now. Neither can Spurs. We continue.

If you have been following Variance Betting, you know that betting against Manchester City has been the most profitable play for me so far this season.

I dodged this one HARD. I just had zero belief that Ipswich would be able to fight back at all if City got an early goal.

And… well… exactly.

Knowing when not to bet remains the most important factor in being a profitable bettor.

Foden had two goals and an assist in this one. Something to watch for the next little run as City bring in reinforcements.

(If you listen to the podcast, you know I have said pretty strongly that City would be in the January market aggressively for reinforcements. Khusanov last week. Marmoush this. I still think they are shopping for a midfielder and a fullback, but keeping things dead quiet until deals are ready to go.)

I somehow lost half this bet after being 3-0 up. And the last shot from Forest was at minute 73.

Not happy.

To be fair, the Forest lead was largely the result of some amazing finishing, but we like to hold nonsensical gambling grudges for no good reason around here.

Ruud van Nistelrooy is going to need to show some progress with this team soon, to keep his job for next season, or possibly even this one. Whatever he’s currently doing with these guys isn’t even close to working.

One of the things you are constantly doing when evaluating teams is trying to figure out whether new things matter. Case in point, how much will Potter as head coach matter immediately, especially given the lack of training time? And on the other side, how much does losing Trevoh Chalobah matter for Palace?

In this case, we didn’t really get any conclusive answers. Both teams largely succeeded in keeping things tight until a combination of Mavropanos doing dumb shit and Fabianski doing the same doomed West Ham.

Palace are now on their best PL run in like 40 years.

Up to 12th.

It’s a weird season.

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