Why 91 Points WILL win the Premier League
Liverpool supporters are looking at the Reds sat top of the Premier League with an eight-point lead. Here's why another 60 points will seal the title
Liverpool are favourites to win the 2024/25 Premier League title. The bookmakers think so, the Opta supercomputer (algorithm) agrees and the history of teams with 31 points after 12 games is near unanimous behind them for a hattrick of positivity.
The percentages will shift with every game. Rarely will that be more apparent than this weekend when the Reds face Manchester City at Anfield. It’s worth rewinding five years for a very similar example to prove the point.
After 11 games of 2019/20, Liverpool held a six-point advantage over City. FiveThirtyEight gave them a 52 and 44 per cent chance of winning the league respectively. Jürgen Klopp’s boys then beat the defending champions, Pep Guardiola bellowed ‘twice’ into the Liverpool sky and those title likelihood estimates shifted to 67 and 29. The points gap was never again any closer than it was at full time that day.
The Reds are already hold a 76.7 per cent likelihood with Opta this season. They will still be in a fantastic position even if a badly stumbling City somehow manage to win at Anfield with fans present for the first time in over two decades.
Regardless of the outcome on Sunday, fans are starting to wonder how many points will be needed to secure the Premier League title this season. We have all seen the Cityzens have the occasional autumnal stumble, only to roar back in the new year with a near-perfect second half of the campaign.
Even though they are below par at present, City have earned an average of 91.1 points over the last seven seasons. It would be foolish to dismiss their chances too soon. Equally, there is a reason within that impressive history which shows (as much as anything can) why they won’t reach 91 this time and why if Liverpool do, they will become champions of England for a 20th time.
As much as City are the club Kopites fear most, we should pay Arsenal the courtesy of assessing their chances. They finished second in both of the last two seasons, after all.
Even if we ignore the fact that the club has never reached 91 points - the Invincibles got 90 - Opta’s Michael Reid laid out in simple terms why it looks hugely unlikely they can do so this season.
He noted that it’s 22 years since Arsenal had a 26-match streak of sufficient success to secure the 68 points they would need to hit 90 for 2024/25. Records are there to be broken and nothing ever happens until it does for a first time. But the Gunners would need to go at 2.62 points per game - the equivalent of a 99-point season - when their average for the campaign is 1.83 at this stage. Evel Knievel couldn’t jump a gap that wide.
City, as we recall all too well, have showed that sort of form under their current manager in the past. Indeed, before they recently lost three league matches in a row, 68 points is the total Guardiola’s side had taken from their previous 26 league games. Getting that form going again would put 91 points on the final Sunday in May in sight.
While not yet impossible to achieve, there are several reasons why this feels incredibly unlikely. City have got 68 points in 11 per cent of their 26-game stretches since Guardiola took charge. It requires a performance level that has been elite even for a club that won six of the previous seven titles.
There’s also the time of year to consider. Despite being renowned for finishing seasons ridiculously strongly when the title is there to be won, Pep’s pups have never taken 68 points from their final 26 games. Deep runs in domestic cups and Europe inevitably take a toll.
It’s vital to note they might have achieved this had they needed to, as theoretical as this notion must remain. In both 2017/18 and 2020/21, City collected 66 points in the time frame of our interest, but dropped two and three points respectively after the title was secured. Even allowing for that, 68 would remain in the absolute upper echelons of their previous achievements.
Let’s therefore assume for the sake of argument that the Cityzens of this season are capable of such a run. How likely is it, when they’ve just ended a run of five straight defeats with a draw in which they conceded three goals in the final 16 minutes?
The best way to assess this is to look at their expected points and goal difference after 12 games of the last seven seasons. This is the bedrock upon which their generally scalding hot finishes to campaigns were built.
In three of the four seasons in which they got at least 91 points, the Cityzens had at least 10 more in both the xPts and xGD column than they have now. Their supporters might point towards 2020/21, as the current numbers aren’t that far apart from that campaign, and as mentioned above they then took 66 points with three left on the table.
But nine of their 13 most used players that season are still in the squad, with six of them in their thirties. Can they go again to this extent with an extra four years on the clock? As the previous example took place in sterile, scientific conditions behind closed doors, the comparative value is greatly reduced too.
It may be that Liverpool are unable to accumulate the 60 more points they need to reach 91 in total. They’ve only managed it three times from the final 26 games in the last 10 seasons.
The Reds did have at least 30 points after 12 matches as the basis for two of those strong finishes, though, just as they do now. Regardless of how much the probabilities and predictions change on Sunday evening, there is very little evidence to suggest that 91 points won’t win the league, whichever team happens to get there.
It’s more likely to take fewer points, if anything, which only helps Liverpool even more.