Gunners still predicted to win Premier League. Probably.

Will Wagstaff • 31 March 2023

Premier League title is still Arsenal's to lose

With the Premier League heading towards the final few games, we have rerun our predictive model to see who will win the title, which teams will qualify for Champions League football and which will be relegated.

Our predicted final Premier League standings is based upon probabilities. To generate the probabilities we use results from this season and previous ones to model the number of goals scored in a match as a Poisson distribution (the probability for a team to score one goal, two goals, three goals and so on in a match). We then identify parameters to represent a team’s attacking strength, defensive strength and home advantage. Applying this model to the remaining Premier League fixtures we can predict the final standings probabilities.

The probabilities suggest that Arsenal will win the league from Manchester City. But it's very close. We also predict that Manchester United and Liverpool will join them next season in the Champions League. 

At the bottom, we predict that Southampton, Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth will go down. 

Our heatmap showing the probabilities for the position each team is likely to finish in.


We give the Gunners a 51% probability of winning with City on 49%. Last time we ran the model, at the end of the transfer window, Arsenal had a 55% chance of winning. The gap is narrowing. Squeaky bum time Gooners fans.


Manchester United has a 54% probability of finishing 3rd and has a 77% chance of qualifying for the Champions League along with Arsenal and Manchester City. Liverpool is predicted to finish 4th, slightly ahead of Newcastle and Spurs, but there's really very little to choose between all three sides. Liverpool historically finish seasons strongly which is why they are predicted to get the edge over Newcastle and Spurs.


There are only two other sides who have a chance of making the Champions League. Brighton has a 20% chance of a top 4 finish and Brentford has a 1% chance.


Premier League Probabilities Heatmap 

At the bottom, the model predicts that Southampton (73% probability), Forest (60% probability) and Bournemouth (59% probability) will be relegated. There is still all to play for though as  Wolves (20%), Leeds (17%) and West Ham (16%) are not out of danger yet.

Game on. 

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