The Premier League: United vs. City championship chances

2012-12-10

Using the same model as previous posts (and, I'd say, not going against any intuition), the leading candidate to winning the Premier League is Manchester United, with approx. 88% chances. Second is Manchester City, with a bit over 11%. The rest of the teams with nonzero chances: Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Tottenham, and West Brom (with Chelsea, the best-positioned of these dark horses, clocking in at about half of a percentage point).

Personally, I'm happy about these very low-odds teams; I don't think any of them is likely to win (that's the point), but on the other hand, they have mathematical chances of doing so, and it's important for a model never to give zero probability to non-impossible events (modulo whatever precision you are working with, of course).