That chart from the BBC got me interested. Looking at the Premier league table distributed by points makes it lot more interesting than distribution by ranks.
So, I downloaded the Premier League data for current season from Football Data, and created some graphs1.
Weeks 1-8: Mixed bag, except for Crystal Palace
7 straight defeats! Crystal palace really had a crap start to the season!
Weeks 9-19: Runaway City!
Manchester City recorded 18 straight wins, home and away, to run away from the pack.
Rest of the table is still pretty well packed with United being the best of the rest.
Weeks 20-26: A 3 speed league
Speed 1: Manchester City – continuing to keep a lead of about 15 points at the top.
Speed 2: Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Tottenham. The 4 teams stayed within 5-8 points of each other.
Speed 3: The tightening bunch.
At the half-way stage, the gap between 7th placed team (Burnley) and the 19th placed team (West Brom) was 18 points. By the end of 26th week, the gap is down to 12 points.
1: Yep, all but one of the non-big-6 teams are within 12 points of each other.
2: The gap between team #1 and team #2 is 13 points!
3: The gap between team #5 and team #7 is another 13 points!
The outliers:
1: Arsenal. The gunners haven’t kept pace with the second pack, but are still way ahead of the tight bunch below.
2: West Brom: 5 points in 7 games = they’ve dropped off to the bottom of table, 4 points adrift2
(Other) Story of the season so far: Crystal Palace
After scoring zero points in 7 games, and staying bottom of the table for 14, Crystal Palace have risen to the 14th place in the table.
This rise speaks as much of their recovery under Roy Hodgson, as of how tightly the bottom 13 are packed together. 4 more points would’ve taken them to 10th. 4 less points would’ve dropped them to second from bottom.
- A. Click through on any chart to see an interactive version
B. I’ve greyed out most teams on the charts to keep the focus on the message
C. Similarly, I’ve removed the points on the vertical axis to keep the focus ↩ - I feel bad for them. A team from the struggling West Midlands, and two managers I like – Tony Pulis (as a manager) and Alan Pardew (as a personality). ↩