By The Numbers Week 9

Rob Allen

It feels like an age since my last column but that’s probably because it has been! It finished well last time out with 92 points in the official game moving me up to the top 8.7% of all teams. I’m in 9th in the AMCR league on Fantrax, 124th in Beat the Bloggers and 33rd overall in PlayTogga’s Perfect XI (annoying 0.25 behind Nik Agiropoulos). Of course, everything may well change this week as so many injuries were picked up during the international break – Aguero anyone?

Here’s this week’s predictor

Predictor

As you can see, the most obvious team is City which is hardly a surprise. I’m pretty sure than anyone could have come up with that one! Of course, an easy game at home to Bournemouth may well mean that Aguero will be rested even if his injury isn’t too bad so keep an eye on things.

Then we have Tottenham at home to Liverpool where I agree with the predictor and oppose Liverpool. Yes, they have a great new manager but, to put it bluntly, you can’t polish a turd. That’s maybe a little unfair, Liverpool have some great players and I can see them doing well and soon but no quite this soon. Spurs are backing in winning ways and at home so Liverpool should struggle.

There are three other teams that have a 50% or greater chance of succeeding; Swansea, Everton & West Brom and again, I can’t really argue. I can see Gomis getting back to winning ways, Barkley continuing his fine England form for Everton and probably Berahino getting going for West Brom. Many people will argue that Man Utd should be favourites as Everton have only one once at home and Utd have won twice away but please don’t ever underestimate how much of an advantage the home team have.

Poisson

As I explained before, these heat maps will become more and more accurate as the season progresses. This week the most likely teams to score are City, West Ham and Southampton with at least 3 goals likely in these games. On the flip side, Tottenham, Arsenal and West Brom all look good value for a clean sheet (although they are really few and far between this season).

Personally, I think that you should be looking for defenders from West Brom, Sunderland (yep, I know), Arsenal and Tottenham – probably in that order. For attackers, you can pretty much look at every other team but with special preference for City, Arsenal, West Ham, Spurs and Southampton.

So that’s it from me this week although I do have one final reminder. For those of you who read my column last season, you may want to re-read this post in the light of Manchester City’s performance last time out.