Following the latest round of Premier League matches, we use the Opta supercomputer to assess the current chances of the frontrunners in the title race.
24 November
The title race is well and truly on. And Liverpool are the team to beat.
Arne Slot’s men overcame a scare at 20th-placed Southampton on Sunday afternoon but eventually secured a win that extended their lead at the top of the table. Having trailed with as little as 25 minutes remaining, Mohamed Salah’s late double turned the game around and handed Slot a record-equalling 10th win from 12 games at the start of his Premier League career.
Manchester City, who have won the title for the last four seasons in a row, had slipped up 24 hours earlier, beaten 4-0 by Tottenham to extend the worst losing run of Pep Guardiola’s managerial career to five games. They are the first reigning English top-flight champions to lose five games in a row in all competitions since Chelsea in March 1956. Their grip on the Premier League is slipping by the week.
Liverpool’s win at St Mary’s took them eight points clear of City at the top of the table and very much into the driving seat in the title race (if they weren’t already in it).
According to the Opta supercomputer, which simulates the season 10,000 times and calculates the proportion of those simulations that each team wins the title, Liverpool now have a 69.5% chance of winning the Premier League this season. That’s up from 60.3% after the last round of fixtures, meaning an increase of 9.2% after matchday 12.
City’s chances are tumbling. Already down from 82.2% before a ball was kicked at the start of the 2024-25 campaign to 34.3% after matchday 11, they now win the title in just 23.3% of the Opta supercomputer’s latest round of simulations. That’s a drop of 11.0%.
Arsenal’s 3-0 win over Nottingham Forest on Saturday helped their chances, though only slightly – from 5.0% to 6.5%. They remain the only other genuine title contenders.
Chelsea, meanwhile, saw their title chances double this weekend – from 0.3% to 0.6%. That means that in 10,000 simulations of the season, they win the title just six times. That’s better than nothing, which is more than can be said for most of the rest of the Premier League. Newcastle are the only other teams with anything like a noteworthy chance of winning the title, currently at 0.1%.
11 November
Manchester City’s poor run of form continued on Matchday 11 of the Premier League season, with their 2-1 defeat at Brighton & Hove Albion their fourth loss in a row across all competitions.
It’s an unusually bad run of results for both Pep Guardiola and Man City. Guardiola has lost four games in a row in all competitions for the very first time in his managerial career (excluding penalty shootouts), while City have lost four straight games for the first time since August 2006, when Stuart Pearce was manager of the club.
The sole consolation (if any) to be had is that just two of those defeats have come in the Premier League, and it hasn’t completely derailed their chances of winning a fifth consecutive top-flight crown.
Unexpected back-to-back league defeats away at Bournemouth and Brighton mean that City have lost two Premier League games in a row for the first time since October 2023.
They suffered a blip near this point in the Premier League last season, winning just three points in four games across MD 12-15 (D3 L1). They then recovered with a sensational 23-game unbeaten run (W19 D4) to finish the campaign as champions, while Arsenal and Liverpool faltered. However, they remained favourites with the supercomputer during that blip (bouncing between 41-46%).
That is different to the situation now, where City’s poor run of results, coupled with Liverpool’s excellent start to 2024-25 has seen Arne Slot’s side overtake them as favourites for the Premier League title with the Opta supercomputer for the first time this season.
Following MD 11 at the weekend, Liverpool now find themselves favourites for the Premier League title with the Opta supercomputer. The Reds win the Premier League in 60.3% of the current 10,000 season simulations played out by the AI-powered machine.
That’s well above Man City’s current chance (34.3%), with Arsenal (5.0%) and Chelsea (0.3%) the outsiders. City have fallen from 82.2% in pre-season, while Liverpool were given just a 5.1% chance before a ball was kicked in August – testament to the sensational job that Slot has done since replacing Jürgen Klopp this summer.
Liverpool have become just the 12th side to win at least 28 points from their opening 11 games of a Premier League season, with the most recent being Arsenal in 2022-23 (also 28). The Gunners found themselves two points ahead of Man City after 11 games that season, but eventually lost out on the title by five points.
This is Liverpool’s second-best start to a Premier League season after 2019-20 (31 points) when they won their only Premier League title.
Man City have 23 points from their 11 games so far, which is the same tally as they had at this stage of 2021-22 when they finished as champions, while it’s four more than in 2020-21 (19) when they also won the title.
Arsenal have gone four consecutive Premier League games without a win for the first time since April 2023 (D2 L2); the Gunners had picked up all three points in 21 of their previous 25 league matches before this (D3 L1).
Mikel Arteta’s side have finished as runners-up in the last two seasons, and this season is their worst points return at this stage across those campaigns (28 in 2022-23 and 24 in 2023-24). They now find themselves nine points behind leaders Liverpool. Their 5.0% chance of winning the title is down from 12.2% at the start of the season.
Liverpool, Man City, Arsenal and Chelsea aren’t the only clubs who won the Premier League in 2024-25 across the Opta supercomputer’s current 10,000 simulations. Newcastle won it four times, Aston Villa and Tottenham twice each and Brighton once. Those fans can still dream, it seems.
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