Premier League Points Leaders: Week Eight

Carlos Tevez takes over the top spot from Dimitar Berbatov with a nearly three-point performance against Blackpool in week eight, scoring go-ahead goals in minutes 67 and 79 to eclipse the Bulgarian's total with Manchester United. There no other big moves at the top of the table, but the bottom sees some tumblers - Kevin Foley joins the ranks by conceding a penalty in the second half against West Ham United, and Birmingham City's Scott Dann helped his team throw away a 1-0 lead at Arsenal by kicking out at Marouane Chamahk in the box on more or less the stroke of halftime. His -0.79 points on the week brings him to -1.70 overall, just shy of Pepe Reina's monumental mark of -1.97.

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Figure 1: Premier League PE+, week eight. Powered by Tableau.

What is this?

Part of the benefit of having win probability data for football is that we can then see how much any single event effected the game. We can then translate that event into points. Stewart Downing's goal against West Ham, the first major event of the season, was worth 0.288 wins for Villa and -0.114 draws, which is equivalent to about 0.74 points earned. Major events such as penalties, goals, and red cards are all tracked - and this table shows the real impact of every such event in the season to date.