If my grandmother had wheels
Liverpool weren’t bad, maybe everyone else just got better?
Liverpool have won the English Premier League, for a record equalling 20th time. Of course, they are the most successful footbal club in England anyway, by virtue of having more European Cups and Champions Leagues than any other English side.
After the second game, they had double the points (6) of Manchester United (3). Amazingly, the same held true at the end of the season (84 v 42). By game 11, they had a 5 point lead over Manchester City, and no-one got any nearer to them for the rest of the season. Arne’s Slot machine simply rolled on, like a seasoned pro-boxer, never in any trouble. People complained because the season wasn’t exciting enough, as no-one was challenging them, and they never appeared to have to get out of 3rd gear.
Their 84 point total was the second lowest winning total since Leicester won in 2015/16. Does this make them a poor side?
Obviously not, because they won the league.
The bottom 4 in 2024/25 were worse performing than the bottom 4 back then. Of note is that the middle tier of teams performed better than in 2015/16. Everyone complains if a team bulldozes the league, but if you want a more competitive league, surely that means that more teams take more points off each other, with the result being less points all round?
That’s my theory anyway.
This next plot shows the top five finishes since 2014/15. Each point is sized according to each team’s total, as a proportion of all the points won in that season. For example, in 2024/25, 1047 points were won across all teams. Liverpool’s 84 points were 8.02% of all points won.
Arsenal’s manager remarked that their previous second place totals would have won them the league in other seasons. That is correct. The same applies to Liverpool, who in 2018/19, somehow won 30 games, lost only one, and still finished second on 97 points.
So yes, Arsenal’s second place finishes could have made them champions. Their tally for 2024/25 would have seen them finish 5th.
As a TV chef once memorably said, when someone suggested that changing ingredients in his recipe would result in a different dish, “if my grandmother had wheels, she would have been a wheelbarrow”. (Actually, he said “bike” which was funnier, but a cursory search reveals “wheelbarrow” to be the more common Italian saying)