Where does your team come in our alternate Premier League?

By Richard Aikman in Mirror Football Blog

Published 18:21 01/09/10

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Have you ever wondered what the Premier League would look like if margins of victory were taken into account? Do you think that lowly Wigan deserved more than just three points for winning at high-flying Spurs? Mirror Football's Karl Sears attempts to right these wrongs by putting into practise his alternate league system...

I was thinking during the second weekend of football, as I'm sure many others have felt at some point, that after their annihilation of Wigan, surely Chelsea warranted more reward than the same three points Birmingham got for beating Blackburn 2-1.

This got me thinking. Could I try and devise a league system where points were allocated on the basis of winning margin? But more than this, could I also include the factor of 'strength of opponent', where for instance, if the team who were bottom of the league drew with the team who were top, then the team who were bottom would get a greater reward than their opponents?

Teams who lose are still awarded points on the basis that, for example, being narrowly defeated 1-0 at Old Trafford should still warrant some kind of reward.

So with a system based on the FIFA World rankings I have devised a league table that takes into account:

• the match result
• the Premier League position of opponent at the start of the weekend
• the winning/losing margin
• the comparative difference of Premier League position between the two teams

So, here is what the league table would look like adopting the new system:

Chelsea are still leading the way, but the gap isn't as wide as we might expect. The reason for this is that while the Blues have a goal difference of +14, they haven't yet played a side who were outside of the bottom three on the day of the game in question, so the victory points have been lessened.

Arsenal, on the other hand beat Blackpool in week two at a time when Blackpool were 2nd and Arsenal were 9th. So while Chelsea's 6-0 win over Wigan was worth 7.48 points, Arsenal's 6-0 win was worth 9.51 points (yes, a win against Blackpool is probably overstated here, but it will balance itself out by the end of the season).

Some big differences to the actual Premier League table include the rise of Newcastle from 8th to 4th. While Newcastle haven't won as many games as Aston Villa, Newcastle's opponents have averaged a league position of 4th, so all of their results to date reflect the high standard of their opposition. The opposite can be applied to Aston Villa, whose games have come against teams averaging a position of 17th.

Highest and lowest scorers so far:

Week 1:

Highest: Chelsea 7.48 points (6-0 win against Wigan)

Lowest: Wigan 0.96 points (0-4 defeat against Blackpool)

Week 2:

Highest: Newcastle 9.61 points (6-0 win against Aston Villa)

Lowest: Aston Vila 0.36 points (6-0 defeat against Newcastle)

Week 3:

Highest: Sunderland 6.54 points (1-0 win against Man City)

Lowest: Tottenham 1.24 points (0-1 defeat to Wigan)

What do you think of Karl's scheme? Comment below to let us know...

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