Manchester City have now won the 2020-21 Premier League season title with top quality, finishing well ahead of their nearest rivals Manchester United.
Pep Guardiola’s men were outstanding in their pursuit of the crown, securing the title for the third time in four seasons.
Given Liverpool’s imperious run to the title in the 2019/20 season, many believed that the Reds were the top candidates to win the crown for a second term on the bounce.
It appeared that way after the first three months of the 2020/21 campaign as Jurgen Klopp’s men topped the table, while City was languishing outside of the top four and pressure was building on Guardiola.
However, the hidden metrics were in the favor of City and savvy bettors would have been able to capitalize on a wager on them to win the crown, earning great value in the process.
Unusually for Manchester City, they had a poor start to the term in front of goal due to the absence of Sergio Aguero, while Gabriel Jesus and Raheem Sterling were off the boil.
At the other end of the pitch, the signing of Ruben Dias was proving to be a masterstroke, handing Guardiola the best defense in the league.
Once City started firing in the final third through Ilkay Gundogan, Riyad Mahrez, Sterling, and Jesus, they moved rapidly up the table and marched towards the crown.
For those that predicted their success, the profits will have been sizeable, while others may be left scratching their heads where they went wrong.
The answer could come in their approach to things. One of the main downfalls of wagers is trying to know based on sentiment and a gut feeling rather than the core data at hand.
A frontier could be on hand in the form of artificial intelligence to aid bettors in their pursuit of streamlining the facts rather than their feelings on wagers.
These tools have already been deployed in horse racing in the United Kingdom and Ireland, where criteria such as form, pedigree, weather, and track conditions are put into a formula.
An AI system then calculates the competitor with the best chance of emerging with the victory.
Many of the competitors that claimed wins in the horse racing results today would have had the qualities identified by the artificial intelligence tools, which may have been overlooked in the same way that City’s stout defensive performances were in the early stages of the campaign.
Given the importance of data in modern football, artificial intelligence programs could have the same decisive impact on wagering on the game.
Statistics will have highlighted the strength of City’s backline and proved that they were not going to lose as many matches throughout the season compared to their rivals like Liverpool.
Liverpool were affected significantly following injuries to Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez and were facing the possibility of Europa League football.
It was clear to see that Liverpool could not sustain their levels without the Dutchman at the heart of their defense.
There is a clear gap in the market for the use of artificial intelligence when betting on football, and a huge opportunity for bettors to capitalize on potential windfalls by following the data rather than their intuition.
