The Football Intelligence Ratings and Rankings takes the top teams in the English Premier League, picks their best eleven in a nominal 4-4-2 formation and rates and ranks the players against each other.
The Ranking is from 1-7 with 1 the best and 7 the worst player. There are no equal rankings. Rankings are then totaled, then matched against the top Ranked team.
The Rating is done by ranking each player against the top Ranked player who is Rated at 10. The Ratings are then totalled and averaged.
The Rankings take into account ability, form and fitness.
Rankings:
- Chelsea (1.0)
- Tottenham Hotspur (0.97)
- Arsenal (0.77)
- Manchester United (0.72)
- Aston Villa (0.67)
- Liverpool (0.67)
- Manchester City (0.61)
Ratings:
- Chelsea (8.55)
- Tottenham Hotspur (8.36)
- Manchester United (8.27)
- Arsenal (8.18)
- Liverpool (7.82)
- Manchester City (7.27)
- Aston Villa (7.27)
Conclusions:
Chelsea are the strongest team and are in the best form. African Cup of Nations aside, they are clearly the best team in the league, currently.
Tottenham Hotspur have a superb team with three best-in-position players. They are at least on a par with Manchester United whose best eleven is surprisingly short on quality and Arsenal who are perhaps penalised by the 4-4-2 assumption.
Manchester City have a good squad but relatively poor first eleven. Craig Bellamy and Shea Given are their best players by some margin.
Liverpool’s team is surprisingly good with Fernando Torres, Steven Gerrard, Javier Mascherano, Glen Johnson and Jose Reina scoring well.
It makes Liverpool versus Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday an absolutely critical event for both teams.
Full prediction to come.
In the mean time, Chelsea remain the best bet for the Premier League title with the top four comprising of Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United.
Manchester United being a good outside bet for missing out on the Champions League places.
If you’re of a similar mind, Betfair is a good place match small, outside bets.
Click here to have a look at potential bets to make and match on Betfair.
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I don’t understand how it works. But I like the general impression it has left me with (that Tottenham are good).
Hi James. We’re going to compile the lists each month so the process will go through a number of iterations before we get it right but the general idea is to rate the top teams based on player ability, best eleven, fitness and form.
What that should give is the best indicator as to how each team currently ranks and how each should fare for the rest of the season.
And yes, Tottenham have a very good team. You could also make an argument that next season’s top four could be Arsenal, Tottenham, Manchester City and Aston Villa…
Hi Maven, sounds good – best of luck with it, I’ll stay tuned. I like the look of next season’s top 4 – Spurs nicely bedded in, with no Utd or Chelsea. Aaaaaaaah…
I like the look of the Arsenal, Spurs, City and Villa top four too
Chelsea will probably never fall out though because their debt has been wiped, but I wouldn’t mind if Utd and Liverpool stagnate thanks to their crushing debts. City are Chelsea Mk II but at least the other three are relatively financially responsible and all have unique styles that I would argue would not fare as badly in Europe as some predict.
It’s interesting to me that Spurs are so high up in your ratings. The media imo have a tendency to talk us up because of our ‘name’ players (eg Bentley) but rarely do they perform to expectations; we then get slammed as underachievers, whereas I believe the expectations were unrealistic in the first place. Even as a Spurs fan I could not see us coming higher than 7th, 6th at most this season, because it was clear that Liverpool had a title-challenging squad with only one player changed, and City have invested so much and have CL-tier players like Robinho, Ireland, Tevez etc while De Jong and Bellamy are having brilliant seasons. I think you are underestimating Pool and City because of their form so far this season – they have a lot of potential to improve even with the same players; there is some confidence and team ethic missing, this is not their real quality. Even Villa have strengthened what was a top 4 challenging team last season thanks to their defense. (Meanwhile Spurs’ defense is constantly changing – I don’t believe Woodgate and King can be considering starting XI players anymore, because they are so rarely fit nowadays. When uninjured that partnership is brilliant and got us the best home defense in the league last season, but sadly that is no more. We also didn’t strengthen our starting XI, Crouch aside, over the summer – we showed at best top 6 form in the second half of last season with a better defense and without City rivaling us, so I don’t see how we can jump to top 4 form now unless teamwork has massively improved.)
A bit pessimistic, but I think we are a good team yet not quite ready to make the step up. We are a pretty young team, one that mentally collapsed at Old Trafford last season; a few bad results could badly hurt confidence that has been carefully reassembled after the Ramos debacle of last season. It takes some time for a manager to build his team, even if he inherited a good one. So I have steered clear of expectations and comparisons of our squad quality to others, and simply hope that our players give it their all in every game.
Hi Blueyid. It was important when we put together the r&r’s that we took a different route than who we intuitively thought were the better teams and players. You do that and you assume that if a player is in the Champions League then they are a priori better than a player who doesn’t (England teams are often picked on this rationale). Because a team has more money, one assumes that the players they spent so much money on are better than those at other clubs (did Julian Lescott become a better player?).
The list essentially does a straight ranking of a team’s best players based on ability (subjective), form (less subjective) and injury, so there are areas which we don’t yet take into account (squad strength, fluid formations).
What we tried to do was weigh the rankings based primarily on the form of the players who have played most over the last month while still trying to keep some sort of perspective over their relative strengths.
So for instance, many people would instinctively say that Fernando Torres is the best striker in the Premier League – he came out third because he’s barely fit and needs an operation so has little prospect of playing above his current level. There was actually debate that Torres should have been lower.
As for Spurs, they do rank highly but then can you say that Manchester United or Liverpool have been better than them over the past month or two? Instinctively you’d say that Spurs always roll over when they play ManU and being pessimistic, Liverpool will probably beat them on Sunday but if you look at the elevens, Spurs are noticably better.
Ask yourself this question: who are the best players playing on the left and right of midfield in the league at the moment? We were unanimous.
In fact taking the squad into account, you could contend that the top three wide midfielders all come from the same club…
As for Tottenham not strengthening, they did buy Krancjar and Bassong but more importantly, being a young team they have improved. Benoit Assou-Ekotto ranks highly at left-back, Dawson is playing out of his skin (backup for Terry and Ferdinand in South Africa?), Corluka has been very good, Gomes is in top form, Lennon is back to his best, even Huddlestone is improving (although he ranked second-last for his position).
Chelsea are fortunate to have an owner who has written off another £350m! But to a certain extent they are deferring their problems; they are still making a loss filling their stadium each week and playing the Champion’s League. Their squad isn’t getting any younger and in a year’s time when they can buy players again, another large injection of cash will be needed to keep them where they are (or a smaller injection in January and again in a year’s time).