It's been a while, y'all. I had run the projections last week, but work intervened. And then i decided it would be more fun to work on the Shot Matrix database than to write up a set of projections anyway. So I have no particular shot matrix data to share this week, but I'm getting closer. I'm really rather excited about this, I think it's a degree of data granularity for football that hasn't been publicly available before. My hope is that by the New Year, I'll have information dating back several years for all the major European leagues as well as for international football. It's just a matter of drudgery and finding the time. But I figure if I flog it here publicly, that will shame me into completing my drudgery over time. So that's really the logic behind this paragraph.

I'm also stalling so I can avoid talking about the Spurs game. That was bad! Tottenham Hotspur had previously been leading the English Premier League with the lowest number of both shots on target allowed from inside the box and the lowest number of shots on target allowed from the most dangerous positions inside the box—from close and central positions. Before last week, Spurs had only allowed five shots on target in six games from these positions. Against West Ham United, they allowed four, nearly doubling the season total. The effect of this loss, which came in a home game from which we were expected to take on average 2.3 points or so, go beyond just the loss of expected points. Spurs defensive rating, which has been the driver of our strong projections, also took a medium-size dent.

And just to make things a little bit worse, my work with the shot matrix database identified a very minor coding error in my earlier data. This error didn't make much difference for 19 clubs, but it makes a small difference for Arsenal. A couple of shots allowed had been mis-coded as SiBoT when they weren't, giving Arsenal a slightly worse overall defensive rating than they should have had. So while Arsenal dropped points away to West Bromwich Albion, they also picked up maybe a half-point in expectation due to the fixing of the coding error. Great work, me.

Power Rankings and Projections

Do remember that because of rounding, not all the numbers necessarily add up quite right.

Club W D L Pts GD Team+ Top4% ΔT4 Rel% ΔRel Title% ΔTitle 5th Manchester City 22 9 7 74 +36 148 77% +8 0% 0 28% +7 9% Chelsea 21 10 7 72 +28 138 68% +8 0% 0 20% +5 11% Arsenal 21 9 8 71 +24 134 64% -3 0% 0 17% -3 12% Tottenham Hotspur 20 9 9 70 +21 137 56% -18 0% 0 12% -12 14% Liverpool 20 9 9 69 +21 129 52% +5 0% 0 11% +2 14% Manchester United 19 10 9 67 +22 136 44% +4 0% 0 7% +1 15% Everton 17 12 9 64 +14 123 27% -5 0% 0 3% -2 13% Southampton 15 11 12 56 +5 103 7% +1 0.5% -0 0.5% +0.5 5% Swansea City 15 10 13 55 +4 110 4% -1 0.5% +0 0% 0 4% Aston Villa 12 11 15 48 -5 86 0.5% -0.5 4% -0 0% 0 1% Newcastle 12 10 16 47 -10 89 0.5% +0.5 5% -6 0% 0 0.5% West Bromwich Albion 11 13 14 46 -6 87 0.5% -0 6% -0 0% 0 0.5% West Ham United 11 11 16 43 -7 83 0% 0 11% -14 0% 0 0% Norwich City 11 10 17 43 -13 84 0% 0 14% +3 0% 0 0% Stoke City 10 10 18 40 -15 77 0% 0 23% +4 0% 0 0% Hull City 9 11 18 38 -22 64 0% 0 31% +2 0% 0 0% Fulham 9 10 19 37 -20 74 0% 0 31% -9 0% 0 0% Cardiff City 9 10 19 36 -20 68 0% 0 34% +13 0% 0 0% Sunderland 7 10 21 31 -28 70 0% 0 67% +6 0% 0 0% Crystal Palace 7 9 22 30 -30 61 0% 0 73% +2 0% 0 0%