Race for the top four blown wide open as Aston Villa struggle while Man Utd bounce back under Michael Carrick
Can Villa hold on to their spot in the Champions League places?
Occasionally billed as title contenders this season, Aston Villa failed to take the opportunity to make up ground on Arsenal at the weekend as they lost 1-0 at home to Everton.
Speaking after the game, Villa manager Unai Emery raised one or two eyebrows by suggesting his team were not even necessarily good enough to finish in the top five, despite them still being third and a whole eight points clear of fifth-placed Manchester United.
Still, Emery’s comments might not come as that big a surprise to fans who’ve been paying attention to the numbers this season, with Villa so often over-achieving compared to their xG metrics.
This was picked up by BBC Sport towards the end of last month, but many fans had already made use of this data to spot this trend earlier, with the availability of detailed analytics for football and a whole host of other sports changing the nature of modern fandom. No longer are fans simply passive viewers, but informed participants in the game who can better grasp the complexities behind every decision, play, and result than many coaches would have done just a couple of decades ago.
This equips fans to make better predictions too, which could mean there are exciting opportunities for them to look at on sites like betpack if they can make use of the numbers out there to spot trends before everyone else.
One such trend to follow could be Villa and Man United’s reversal of fortunes in the race to finish in the top four, with the Red Devils perhaps now feeling the momentum could be with them after such an impressive win over Manchester City last week.
Interim manager Michael Carrick might have just enjoyed a bit of that so-called ‘new manager bounce’, but his side produced their best xG performance of the season, cutting through Pep Guardiola’s City with uncharacteristic ease.
In fairness, even the recently-sacked Ruben Amorim had this United side creating a lot of high-quality chances, and some fans will feel he was a bit unlucky to get his marching orders when he did, which seemed to be more down to his poor relationship with sporting director Jason Wilcox rather than results or performances.
Carrick looks to have improved the mood in this United squad, but in many ways the raw ingredients were already there for this team to have a decent season. With Villa’s luck now looking like running out, could this present a big opportunity for United to overtake them and return to the Champions League?