Could the Premier League’s New Normal offer a glimpse of hope for Norwich?
Anyone who has had a football bet on a Saturday afternoon will be familiar with the old adage that towards the end of the season upsets happen as teams fighting for survival are more motivated than mid-table secure teams.
Of course if this was true we would all be rich from gambling. But in reality there are still a number of factors that influence a result beyond how motivated a team is.
As the Premier League grapples with how to finish the 2019/20 season perhaps The Motivation Factor will finally have its day.
Despite all the statistics and ‘R’ numbers flying around the media, the coronavirus crisis in a human crisis and footballers are as human as anyone else (as report of players being worried about the safety of the return to work shows). With games at neutral venues, or at least behind closed doors, there are less external influences on a player and it is possible internal motivations will be more important. After all, how motivated will you be to play a game that has little impact on your league season but could affect your own, or your family’s health.
With that in mind, I looked at the remaining games of the bottom six Premiership teams to asses the motivations of their opponents. The idea being that there are points to be won from a motivated team playing a less motivated team. For each team I gave a motivation rating depending on how close they were to relegation or a European place.
I also wanted to take the quality of the team into account, as I suspect a top quality team just going through the motions are still a tricky proposition for relegation strugglers. So each team also received a quality rating based on their current season performance.
Taking these two rating together (motivation and quality) allowed me to map each team’s opponents onto a four-box model as shown below. Put simply, playing a highly motivated, top quality team did not offer much chance for a win, while playing a demotivated poor team was a ‘should win’ game. The other two probabilities shown below are tight games and potential upsets (playing a good but de-motivated team).
Potential outcomes based on quality and motivation of opponents
The opponents of the bottom six as seen through this lens is shown below.
Final season fixtures based on the number of opponents in each quadrant
So what conclusions can we draw?
In reality these graphs would change game-by-game as motivations would alter as league placing change each week. But looking forward from now we can say…
Brighton have enough easy games to stay out of trouble.
West Ham are not going to have it easy as two-thirds of their games are against highly motivated teams – and a lot of them are good teams.
Watford have an easier run-in than West Ham and should be confident of overtaking them.
Bournemouth have enough ‘should win’ games to see them get out of the relegation zone.
Aston Villa may have a game in hand but they also have one of the hardest run-ins.
Norwich might possibly escape if they can win all those tight games.
Based on the above, West Ham are probably in the most precarious situation and may be hoping there is no restart to the season.
Sport.dat 