As regular readers will know, for years now I’ve been sharing the Relative Performance Index early-season data since alerted to it many years ago by a subscriber on the old TTT site.
For the first quarter to a third of the season, the Relative Performance Index is an excellent way of gauging form, as it takes into account how well your opponents have done so far this season, and how well the teams they’ve played have done. It measures home form and away form.
It’s a handy barometer, even if the weather can (and will) change.
So you may be facing Nottingham Forest, who seem easy, but their own form was good, and remains good.
Prior to playing Bournemouth, only Arsenal had faced ‘better’ opposition than Liverpool this season based on RPI score (a team’s points-per-game/ppg added the opposition’s ppg), and Bournemouth themselves were ranked 9th.
Meanwhile, the four teams Man City had played averaged just 0.25ppg, or between them had one point this season.
Last season, Spurs were top of the league after a quarter of the season, but had played pretty much every seriously struggling team bar Liverpool, who they beat courtesy of VAR madness and an unhinged refereeing display in general.
Spurs could only beat what they faced, but they mostly faced teams who had won almost no games.
The RPI had them well off the pace (like Man City now), simply because of the weird fixture skew, which enabled fans to think Ange Postecoglou was the second coming; and now there’s disquiet, apparently, with entertaining football no longer good enough after the dull football of Antonio Conte. Goodwill doesn’t last long.
My argument last season, when Gary Neville said at the midway point that Spurs would finish above Reds when their injured players returned, was that his impressions had been skewed by Spurs’ start, which was itself skewed by having an exceptionally easy run of games. I said that at the time (before he made that comment), and so it proved.
Here’s the piece from October last season, and below is the RPI table from that time, before I get onto this season’s tables.
October 2023 Table:
What the RPI model won’t do is tell you what will happen next, as no one can do that. And after everyone has played everyone else, it ceases to serve much use. But early on, it does tell you more of the context of the games so far.
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