The Premier League returns on Friday night, and the Statz model has already played the whole season — 10,000 times. The simulations produce a projected table with three stories running through it: champions strengthening while their nearest historic rivals sell, a Champions League race compressed to fractions of a point, and the harshest relegation projection the model has printed for any league this season.
Everything below comes from the Statz Premier League outrights model, updated 17 August. The live version — title, top-four and relegation probabilities for all 20 clubs — re-runs continuously once the football starts.
| Pos | Team | Title % | Rel % | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 57.0 | 0.0 | 78.7 |
| 2 | Man City | 28.6 | 0.0 | 74.3 |
| 3 | Chelsea | 5.4 | 0.0 | 66.0 |
| 4 | Man Utd | 5.2 | 0.1 | 65.9 |
| 5 | Liverpool | 2.7 | 0.1 | 63.3 |
| 6 | Brighton | 0.4 | 1.2 | 55.6 |
| 7 | Aston Villa | 0.2 | 1.6 | 54.4 |
| 8 | Bournemouth | 0.2 | 2.0 | 53.6 |
| … | ||||
| 18 | Coventry | 0.0 | 60.9 | 36.1 |
| 19 | Ipswich | 0.0 | 65.1 | 35.1 |
| 20 | Hull | 0.0 | 92.5 | 27.8 |
The full 20-team table, with probabilities for every market, lives on the outrights page.
The champions are the model's pick to go again: Arsenal win the league in 57% of simulations, projected at 78.7 points with the division's best goal difference. The summer explains the confidence — a reported £75m for Newcastle captain Bruno Guimarães headlines a window that also brought Christos Tzolis, a permanent deal for Piero Hincapié and cover elsewhere, strengthening from the front of the grid.
Manchester City are the only serious rival at 28.6% — between them the top two soak up more than 85% of the simulated titles, and the pair split the league's superlatives: City own the best projected attack (74.0 goals), Arsenal the best defence (27.6 against). City's squad now lists Antoine Semenyo, Marc Guéhi and Gianluigi Donnarumma among the arrivals, and nobody else wins the league even one season in eighteen. The market broadly agrees — Arsenal are 2.25 to retain the title with bet365 at the time of writing, City 4.50, and no other club shorter than 7.00. A champion projected at 78.7 points also tells you the model expects a scrappier, tighter league than the runaway title races of recent memory.
England has five Champions League places this season, and the model's projection of the battle for them is absurdly tight. Chelsea take third at 66.0 projected points; Manchester United — with Bryan Mbeumo and Matheus Cunha now leading a rebuilt attack — sit fourth at 65.9. One tenth of a point across 10,000 simulated seasons. Liverpool, with Alexander Isak leading the line, hold the fifth and final spot at 63.3, reaching the top four in 43% of runs.
Behind them, Brighton (55.6) and Aston Villa (54.4) take the Europa League slots and Bournemouth — eighth, and handed the hardest opening run in the league by the fixture ratings — the Conference League place. The gap from fifth to sixth (7.7 points) is the largest in the projection: the model sees a top five and then a different league.
The most arresting single row belongs to Newcastle: twelfth, at 50.4 points. The model is pricing a dismantled squad — the club's summer sales have been reported at beyond £240m, with their captain now wearing the champions' shirt — and it now rates them below Forest and level with the pack. Around them sits the muddled middle: just 4.4 projected points separate ninth-placed Brentford from fifteenth-placed Everton, with Spurs tenth — a band where one hot autumn rewrites a season.
The model sends all three promoted clubs straight back down — the same pattern it printed for the Championship — but with very different degrees of conviction. Coventry (60.9% relegation, and Friday night's curtain-raiser away at Arsenal) and Ipswich (65.1%) at least get a fight; Hull get 92.5% — 27.8 projected points, 35 goals scored against 76.7 conceded, the bleakest projection the model has produced for any club in any league this season.
The survivor line runs through Sunderland in seventeenth: a 25.2% relegation chance says the model expects them to stay up, but at 42.4 projected points it will not be comfortable. Everything from Fulham (12.0%) upwards is projected safe with room to spare.
An August projection is a starting grid, not a verdict — the model re-runs continuously from Friday's first whistle. The Premier League outrights page carries the live probabilities for every market alongside best bookmaker odds, the Premier League hub tracks the real table as it forms, and FPL managers can see how the projections map to the opening fixtures on the fixture ticker before Friday's Gameweek 1 deadline.
Who is predicted to win the Premier League in 2026/27? Arsenal — champions in 57% of the model's 10,000 season simulations, projected at 78.7 points, with Manchester City the only serious challenger at 28.6%.
Who is predicted to be relegated from the Premier League in 2026/27? The model's projected bottom three are Hull (92.5% relegation probability), Ipswich (65.1%) and Coventry (60.9%) — the three promoted clubs.
How many Champions League places does the Premier League have in 2026/27? Five — the model projects Arsenal, Manchester City, Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool to fill them.