Chelsea only win that 14% of the time

Now that we are in the season and the transfer window is over, Mondays are usually going to be recaps of what we saw over the weekend. We’ll try to pull out objective, interesting bits we saw either while watching or in the stats. But sometimes we’ll just point and make fun of things, because that’s also part of the service we provide.

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Southampton 0-3 Manchester United

It felt like Southampton had United on the ropes for the first 35 minutes, and United fans on Twitter seemed to feel the same. There was a collective groan when Dalot felled Tyler Dibling in the box for a penalty, and the Saints looked to have cracked an opening from all the early pressure. (Programming Note: Dibling is raw, but he’s skinning every fullback he goes up against off the dribble right now. A little bit of development, and he is going to be A Problem™.)

Then a missed penalty from Cameron Archer, a well-designed United set piece goal, a seeing-eye Rashford screamer later in off the far post, and the game was dead in about a 7-minute span.

What I didn’t realise was that Southampton didn’t have another shot for the entire match after the saved penalty sequence. I steered clear of a Southampton bet on the weekend because they had yet to be good for more than a half, and I’m glad I did. This one solidifies it - expect Russell Martin to be one of the first coaches out the door. Southampton spent too much on recruitment this summer for their ownership to be comfortable being this bad.

Liverpool 0-1 Nottingham Forest

In my betting analysis, I said that I believed in Liverpool defensively, but was really uncomfortable with them covering a 2-goal spread. Part of that was the international break, but a much larger part was a sneaky suspicion Forest might be good.

They throttled the Liverpool attack, limiting them to .87 xG at home. Yes, maybe there was a bit of luck in scoring from one of only five shots (Liverpool defence!), the first of which didn’t even come until the 55th minute, but it’s football… luck happens. Forest have a squad that should be an irritant to almost everyone, all season long.

Fulham 1-1 West Ham

The analysis on Friday was that West Ham have been bad so far, but Fulham had only played cupcakes, so I was in wait and see mode. Fulham were dominant in the match (21 shots) and would be expected to walk out winners over 60% of the time. BUT… a late, late 95th minute equalize (from Danny Ings of all people!) salvaged/stole a point.

Pretty sure even with the big spending, West Ham are stinky right now.

Brighton 0-0 Ipswich

I watched this one because I like watching Brighton and wanted to learn a little more about how Ipswich defend against good attacks. There were almost no shots in the first 35 minutes, as Ipswich defended just well enough to keep Brighton from clicking. It was tense, but successful. I’m not sure how sustainable it is, though.

Brighton are a weird one right now — the squad they ran out Saturday was crazy young. You’ve got a few olds in Veltman, Dunk, and (the ageless?) Danny Welbeck, but Hinshelwood, Minteh, Ayari, and Baleba are all 20 or under. Rutter and Vebruggen are 22. Two of the subs were under 20 as well?

It was nice to see Mitoma back and causing trouble, and based on performances this season, Carlos Baleba is going to make a baleba out of everyone*, and be yet another midfielder Brighton sell for £100m.

Ipswich… got lucky. You have to score goals in order to get 3 points, and they are going to need a few of those in order to stay up. Maybe at Brighton wasn’t the spot to test that, but it needs to happen sooner rather than later.

*I’m sorry, the AI-typed this and won’t let me delete it.

Manchester City 2-1 Brentford

I wanted to play Brentford at +2.25, but the model was shouting the other way, so I left it alone. 2-1 was actually very close to the expected goals numbers, so a fair result. Apparently it’s good to have Erling Haaland on your team. Who knew?

Like Nottingham Forest, I think Brentford are legit this season, and going to cause trouble all over, provided they stay healthy — they don’t quite have the same depth as Sherwood Forest.

Crystal Palace 2-2 Leicester

Palace can’t defend right now and it’s killing them. Will Hughes looks like a weak link in midfield, and a defensive system that is supposed to prevent shots is giving up way too many of them. The xG charts for this one are heavily influenced by game state, where Leicester took a lead in the 21st and then weathered the storm. It was almost dead even until Mateta’s pen.

Glasner needs to figure out his midfield and his press — and he may not have the pieces for both to work right now. This could be a nervy season for Palace fans, though you can see there’s potential too.

Aston Villa 3-2 Everton

The Market-implied model wanted me to bet Everton, and I nearly felt bad for ignoring it after Everton once again went 2-0 in a Premier League game.

But then Everton happened. Again. The looooong distance shot from Jhon Duran felt harsh (StatsBomb had that down as a generous 2% chance), but the scoreline really didn’t. You could not pay me or most people enough to be an Everton fan right now. They keep stealing away hope, and without hope as football fans, we have nothing.

Bournemouth 0-1 Chelsea

Chelsea were dominated, yet walked out with a 0-1 win. If you believe the expected goals monte carlo, that result happens about 14% of the time. Lovely goal from Nkunku though, and Jadon Sancho looked frisky both in setting up the winner, and in his 45-minute run out.

Pedro Neto, who Sancho replaced, looked [searches for antonyms for frisky] uh… somber, stuffy(?), inhibited?

He was sort of this, okay?

I joked on Twitter that it’s never a proper return to betting unless one of the teams you bet on misses a penalty to cause you to lose. So thank you, Bournemouth. Glad we got that out of the way in week 1.

Tottenham Hotspur 0-1 Arsenal

72% of the time, Spurs walk away from this match with at least a point. However, a set piece goal that should have been disallowed for a clear two-handed push that that freed Gabriel for the header — remember boys and girls, I am both an Arsenal fan and a set piece coach, so no Spurs bias here — and Arsenal walked out with a 0-1 away win.

That’s three North London Derby wins at Spurs in a row for Arsenal, and they did it with a barely functional midfield. Expect to see more of this grindy-ass midfield sufferball style until Arsenal’s first choices return to health. At least everyone well and truly loves Kai Havertz now, so we’re back on the side of wonder and light, as some of us were right from the start.

[That’s me. I was there all along.]

I guess the good news for Spurs is that Brennan Johnson “did some things” including generate four shots. Whether you you think Johnson is good enough to be on the pitch doing said things for a team that wants to make the Champions League is a different story.

Wolverhampton 1-2 Newcastle

Expected goals had this one almost dead even. I’m not sure we learned anything we didn’t know about either of these teams. Neither team looks great, but Newcastle have 10 points from 4 matches, while Wolves have 1 and look every bit the relegation candidates we described them as during the Premier League outrights analysis.

Newcastle also have what appears to be a fairly public leakfest going on between their new Director of Football and their Head Coach, as each jostles for position in figuring out who will get the bulk of the blame if/when the Magpies’ performances begin to crash back toward their underlying numbers. It is uh… very unusual for the head coach and DoF not to talk for extended periods of time, even if Howe probably prefers it that way because like so many egos in the coaching hot seat, he prefers to have full control.

—TK