16 Conclusions on the F365 Tables: Brighton for the Champions League as Postecoglou has it easy
Brighton are doing even better than we think, Tottenham are doing worse and Wolves are more Arsenal than Arsenal.
We’ve been terrible at plugging the soon-to-be famous F365 Tables, which we’ve had a lovely time poring over to bring you 16 Conclusions. You can get to them from a tab on the homepage, there’s 21 of them in total, and they’ve got nifty filtering options and all sorts of other user-friendly features.
1) Brighton in the Champions League race
We all cooed when Fabian Hurzeler arrived at Brighton, fresh-faced and eager, and said he wanted to “challenge the establishment”. ‘Good for you, young man,’ we all thought. ‘Best of luck with it.’
Off to a pretty good start, to be fair. No team in the Premier League has picked up more points against teams in the top half than Brighton (11), who have beaten Manchester City, Newcastle and Tottenham.
They’ve also played more games against teams in the top half (7) than any team other than Wolves (8), which goes a long way to explaining the struggles of Gary O’Neil’s side and bodes extremely well for Brighton, who are level on points with Chelsea in third and have a very gentle run-up to Christmas, which may very well grant them breathing space in the race for Champions League qualification.
2) 11-way Champions League qualification battle
You’ve probably seen what we like to call the ‘Full Table’ before. It’s where the Premier League teams are ranked according to how many points they win in Premier League games.
Liverpool are top and five points clear of crisis-club Manchester City, slumming it in second, with three points between them and Chelsea in third, but then wonderfully, only another three points separates the Blues and Manchester United in 13th.
We’re big fans of bunching to the extent that it’s not as simple as saying United could go third with a win, because there are so many teams between them and Chelsea, and some of those teams will have to pick up points by dint of them playing each other.
3) Tottenham the odd one out
Other than Ipswich, who would require a simple swap with Crystal Palace just below them, every Premier League team bar Tottenham is in precisely the right spot according to their goal difference. Liverpool have the best, Southampton have the worst; hopefully we need not explain that further.
Spurs are currently tenth in the Premier League but have the second-best goal difference (10) having scored more goals than anyone (23), with only five teams conceding fewer (13).
Ordinarily a team with such superior goal difference to those around them would feel as though they’re in a false position, as it suggests big wins and defeats by fine margins; Tottenham’s results do indeed show that. But you can’t tell us when looking at Big Ange’s big grumpy face after the defeats to Ipswich and Crystal Palace that he thought his players deserved anything less than no points and the rocket he surely gave them.
If we have any advice to the Tottenham players it would be to spread the goals out.
4) The Bees hive
Glorious, this. Brentford are two points off third and haven’t won a single point in the five games they’ve played away from home. Not a sausage.
They’re bloody brilliant at home though. Not only are they unbeaten but have won five of their six games, with the Gtech undoubtedly the place to go as a neutral, with 29 goals coming in those six games. 4.83 goals per game, compared to the league average of 2.88.
5) Arsenal bottom on form
Thank goodness the F365 tech nerds were able to provide the option of creating ‘Form Tables’ up to six games, granting us the opportunity to select the perfect number of fixtures (4) to see Arsenal prop up the rest of the table.
6) Ipswich giving up leads
Brentford, the undoubted heroes of this 16 Conclusions, would currently be top of the Premier League on 30 points if they had held on to every lead they’ve had this season. They’ve only failed to open the scoring in one of their 11 games, but in all four in which they’ve taken the lead away from the Gtech they’ve gone on to lose. Ridiculous football team.
But Thomas Frank’s team have had enough of the limelight. Before their trip to see Dr Tottenham on Sunday, Ipswich had taken the lead in five games and failed to win any of them (D3, L2). That’s 12 points that would currently see them ahead of The Bunch, level on points with Manchester City, one of the teams they took the lead over before the champions got angry and scored four.
7) Manchester United more creative than Manchester City
The narrative has been re-written somewhat in recent games, with United enjoying an interim-manager bounce under Ruud van Nistelrooy and City enduring their worst-ever run under Pep Guardiola, but this suggests United weren’t that bad and City weren’t that good even before the script was ripped up.
The absence of Kevin De Bruyne and the struggles of Phil Foden go a significant way to explaining why City have created just 26 Big Chances, the same number as Brentford, while as Erik ten Hag was at pains to point out before being given the boot, it wasn’t United’s creativity that was the problem, but their inability to convert enough of their 27 Big Chances to date.
8) The world’s best goalkeeper?
Consecutive Yashin gongs for Emi Martinez but he’ll be hard-pushed to make it three on the trot at this rate, keeping just one clean sheet in 11 games, and without the benefit of a major tournament for Argentina to draw eyeballs, acclaim and opportunity for lewd trophy demonstrations.
9) The Southampton Way
Vincent Kompany was criticised over his lack of pragmatism last season but Burnley were in the middle of the pack in the Premier League with 47% possession. Russell Martin has taken the Get Promoted And Play Our Way philosophy to a whole new level, with bottom-of-the-table Southampton currently seeing more of the ball than all but two Premier League teams (Manchester City – 63%; Tottenham – 61%), level with league-leaders Liverpool on 57%.
10) Wolves more Arsenal than Arsenal
We’ve heard more than enough about Arsenal’s excellence from set-pieces and way more than enough about Nicolas Jover, the first of what is now far too many set-piece coach celebrities. One would be too many.
What we haven’t heard so much about is how reliant Arsenal are on said set-pieces. Arsene Wenger will be turning in his FIFA Chief of Global Football Development grave at the thought of his beloved Gunners going all Stoke City and scoring fewer open-play goals (13) than Brentford (16), Fulham (15) and Wolves (14).
11) Crystal Palace missing Michael Olise
Only Southampton (7) have scored fewer goals than Palace (8), which is obviously the key concern for a team that’s only conceded 15, just two more than Manchester City and Chelsea.
An added worrisome and incredible element of their lack of goals is them scoring just two of them from open play, which is an extraordinary return from 11 games. Everton, Manchester United and Southampton have the next fewest on six.
12) Tottenham have had it easy
Glass-half-full Spurs fans – there must be some somewhere – will look at the table and their goal difference and think it won’t take much for them to be back up challenging for the Champions League spots. A reasonable assertion without considering who they have and haven’t played.
No Premier League side has played fewer games than Tottenham (4) against teams in the top half of the table. And it’s not just that they’ve had it easy, they’ve also been rubbish when it’s not been so easy, losing three of those four games against the better sides.
They play seven games up to and including Boxing Day; just two of those games are against teams in the bottom half (Bournemouth and Southampton). Postecoglou sack before Christmas, anyone?
13) Don’t make Manchester City angry
Liverpool were The Comeback Kings last season, losing just four of the 16 games they conceded first in, but it’s Manchester City whom opposition sides should now avoid poking early doors, with the champions winning four of the five games in which they’ve conceded the opener.
14) Newcastle slow starters
Not really worth turning up to a game as a Newcastle fan until half-time. They’ve scored just four goals in the opening 45 minutes, compared to nine after the break, and would currently be 16th in the Premier League if games only lasted that long.
They’re worst away from home, where they’ve scored just once in the first half of their six games and have been behind at the break in five of them.
15) Boring, boring Slot
We’re not finding it as easy as we suspected we might to find fault with Arne Slot after he took over from Jurgen “c*nt” Klopp, but they’re bottom of one table, tied with Manchester United for games in which both teams score (4). The difference between them and Manchester United being that Liverpool have only failed to score on one occasion, with their own clean sheets culpable for the other six wins-to-nil.
Both teams have scored in 36% of Liverpool games this season compared to 68% last term.
16) Leicester as creative as Newcastle
Big wins over Nottingham Forest and Arsenal for Newcastle in their last two but a side presumably chasing Champions League football should probably be creating more Big Chances than Leicester. They’re tied on 18, below Ipswich (20).