Early Sunderland Gloom Unwarranted

Paulo Di Canio invested heavily in the summer, making 11 new signings; unfortunately he was unable to change his team’s luck in their opening fixture.

Sunderland dominated proceedings, registering 21 shots to Fulham’s 5, but it wasn’t good enough for even a point as Pajtim Kasami’s second-half strike meant all three points went back to London.

The Black Cats now head to the south-coast to take on a Southampton team that snuck past West Brom with a last minute winner, but there is a significant disparity in the prices; Sunderland a generous 5/1 (BetVictor) to win the match.

Sticking with Sunderland related bets, Adam Johnson looks a fair price at 11/2 (Bet365) in the anytime goalscorer market. The England winger had four shots in his last game and if he fashions a similar number of chances he could get on the scoresheet; last season he enjoyed a solid 11.1% conversion rate.

Performance Judged Results

Source: whoscored.com
Negative numbers = away team supremacy

Using the criteria set out in our Alternative Football Form feature, we analyse the recent set of Premier League fixtures to see if the scorelines were a fair reflection of the games. Using shots rather than goals as our key metric, we hope to discover matches that didn’t produce a ‘fair’ scoreline given the balance of play.

Alternative League Table

Our alternative league table is the running total of the ‘supremacies’ for each team this season. As the year progresses we can compare it to the real league table to see if any teams occupy a false position.