Manchester City sit top of the Premier League for the first time since August after leapfrogging Arsenal, ending the Gunners\u2019 spell at the summit. Both sides are level on 70 points and a +37 goal difference, but City have scored 66 goals to Arsenal\u2019s 63, which places the Citizens ahead on goals scored.<\/p>\n
City\u2019s midweek victory also confirmed Burnley\u2019s relegation to the Championship. That leaves the drop battle focused on Leeds United, Nottingham Forest, West Ham United and Tottenham Hotspur. Leeds snatched a point against Bournemouth on Wednesday evening as they move toward safety.<\/p>\n
Opta\u2019s supercomputer has updated its final-table projections following City\u2019s win. The model still favours Arsenal to win the title, predicting the Gunners will finish on 80.75 points with a 66.38% title probability. Manchester City are forecast to finish on 79.17 points with a 33.62% chance. The projected gap of 1.58 points underlines how small any margin for error now is for both contenders.<\/p>\n
The model\u2019s view of European qualification is similarly decisive. Aston Villa and Manchester United are expected to finish with about 66 points each and both have better than 98% odds of qualifying for the Champions League. Liverpool are predicted to join them with roughly 62.83 expected points and a 91.04% chance. Brighton & Hove Albion retain a slim 6.42% chance to reach the Champions League, while Bournemouth are projected to finish around 54.63 points and appear likely to settle for a Conference League place.<\/p>\n
Chelsea are slated to finish ninth on 53.83 expected points. That projection follows a run of five consecutive league defeats and the club\u2019s decision to part company with Liam Rosenior.<\/p>\n
At the bottom, Leeds are all but safe with a 0.21% relegation chance on 45.68 projected points. Nottingham Forest sit close behind with a 4.27% chance. West Ham and Tottenham remain in the real contest for survival, with the model assigning relegation probabilities of 38.58% and 56.93% respectively. Opta\u2019s projection has Burnley and Wolves confirmed as relegated in its final table.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
City have leapfrogged Arsenal; Opta predicts Arsenal 80.75 pts, Man City 79.17 and tight title odds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12691,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230,1056,172],"tags":[1162,1047],"class_list":["post-12692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analytics-stats","category-man-city","category-epl","tag-analytics","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}