First alt-3 Premier League table of the new season: Saints on the march!

We’re 5 matches in, and the first alt-3 league table of the season is now online. With Liverpool so far ahead already, all the action in this first alt-3 table of the new season is further down the league.

It’s early days, and we can expect things to change a lot over the next few weeks. But the headlines right now are:

• Southampton, Norwich and Burnley have all faced a fairly tough start to the season.
• The alt-3 method of presenting the league table has Southampton currently in 3rd place (not 10th as shown in the official league standings).
• At the other end of the scale, Everton and Watford have both had — by the alt-3 reckoning — a notably easy start to the season.
• The alt-3 table has Everton in 15th place (not 11th as shown in the official league standings).

The difference between Southampton and Everton is therefore much bigger than the official league table would suggest!

Southampton

The Saints have played 3 of their first 5 matches away from home, but what has really limited their potential to gain points so far is the fact that they have already played Liverpool. In effect then — since Liverpool so far are beating everyone they play — Southampton have effectively had only 4 opportunities to gain points in the league; and yet still they have 7 points. That’s a better points rate, by the (correct!) alt-3 reckoning, than any of the 6 clubs currently sitting on 8 points.

So Southampton currently can reasonably claim to be in 3rd place!

Their current alt-3 schedule-strength graph (below) nicely illustrates this: the Saints have played 4 “average” matches (in terms of strength of opponents, and home advantage), and the match against Liverpool. Hence the “effective matches played” (ePld) for Southampton in the alt-3 table is 4.0 (to 1 decimal place), which results in the points-per-effective-match-played rate of 1.73.

Everton

At the other extreme in terms of schedule strength, Everton have already had what would appear to be two of their clearest opportunities to collect league points (i.e., home matches against Wolves and Watford). Everton’s current alt-3 schedule-strength rating means that their “effective matches played” (ePld) is 2 more than the 5 matches they have actually played. As a result, Everton are currently down 4 places in the alt-3 table (relative to their standing in the official table, which takes no account of schedule strength).

Everton’s current alt-3 schedule-strength graph:

What about other Premier League clubs?

To see any Premier League team’s schedule-strength graph, just click on the team name in the current alt-3 league table.

(Just don’t bother to look at Liverpool’s graph! For Liverpool, on the form they have shown so far this season, all opponents are just “average”, so the graph carries no information at all.)

NB: Not a prediction!

See the about alt-3 pages, for full details of the alt-3 method.

A crucial message there is that the alt-3 table is not in any way a prediction: rather, it is simply a better representation of current league standings, based on all the match results so far this season.