EPL Game of the Week.Sunderland v WBA.

The win probability for each team is tracked on a minute by minute basis throughout each game.At any point in a game a team will have a probability of winning the game outright and an associated probability of drawing the game.By multiplying the probability of winning the game by 3 and the probability of drawing by 1 and adding the results together you will get an expected longterm average for the number of points that team will achieve from that position or Expected Points (EP) for short.

It was a fairly mundane set of Premiership games as the first teams to score,usually the pre game favourites,cantered gently to the winning post with the minimum of effort.Only Tottenham and WBA were pegged back.We saw here that if the first half of a game has been particularly unusual,the second half is much more likely to follow our pre game expectations rather than continuing to produce extraordinary occurrences.For that reason I've chosen the Baggies' potential relegation six pointer at Sunderland.Only once in 800 games will a team find themselves 2 goals to the good against a similarly talented team before some fans have taken their seats.And even with 85 minutes still to be played WBA would have been able to secure all three points in around 80% of the games,but an equally quickfire brace of goals from the Wearsiders around the 25th minute restored parity.

Those late arrivals who were hoping for an equally action packed second period were destined to be disappointed.A goalless second period was the most likely outcome before the game kicked off.....and that's just what happened.

Sunderland verses WBA.The storm before the calm.


Scorers.
0-1,Morrison,4'
0-2,Long,5'
1-2,Bendtner,24'
2-2,Mohamady,26'