With the Swedish season soon coming to an end it’s a good time to try out how the Expected Goals model will predict the final table. With only three games left a top trio consisting of this season’s big surprise Norrköping just in front of Göteborg and AIK are competing for the title as Swedish Champion. At the opposite end of the table Åtvidaberg, Halmstad and Falkenberg look pretty stuck, with the two latter teams battling it out for the possible salvation of the 14th place relegation play-off spot.

Let’s take look at the remaining schedule for the top three teams:

Norrköping have two though away games left against Elfsborg and Malmö, who are both locked in a duel for the 4th place which could potentially mean a place in the Europa League qualification. Elfsborg are probably the tougher opponent here, with reigning champions Malmö busy in the Champions League group stage. Between these two away games Norrköping will play at home against Halmstad who are fighting for survival in the bottom of the table.

Göteborg have two though away games themselves, first off at Djurgården and later a very important game against fellow title contenders AIK. This game will probably decide which of the two will challenge Norrköping for the title in the last round. Göteborg finishes the season at home to Kalmar who could possibly play for their survival in this last game.

AIK have the best remaining schedule of the three top teams, with away games at Halmstad and Örebro on either side of the crucial home game against Göteborg. As mentioned, Halmstad is fighting for their existence in Allsvenskan, while Örebro’s recent great form have seen them through to a safe spot in the table.

At this late stage of the season there are a lot of psychological factors in play, with the motivation and spirit of teams and players often being connected to their position in the table. These aspects are very hard to quantify and have not been incorporated in my model. So my prediction of the table rely solely on my Expected Goals model used in Monte Carlo simulation. I won’t reveal exactly how I simulate games but the subject will probably be touched upon in a later post so I’ll spare you any boring technical details for now.

Each of the remaining 24 individual games have been simulated 10,000 times. For each of these fictional seasons I’ve counted up the points, goals scored and goal differences for every team to come up with a final table for that season. Lastly I’ve combined all these seasons into a table with expected points and probabilities of each teams possible league positions.

The model clearly ranks Norrköping as the most likely winner with Göteborg as the main contender, while AIK’s chances of winning the title is only at about 18%. The bottom three looks rather fixed in their current positions with Falkenberg having only a 2% chance of overtaking Kalmar in the last safe spot in the table. At mid-table things are still quite open, even though Djurgården’s season is pretty much over with a 89% chance of placing 6th. Malmö seem to have an advantage against Elfsborg in the race for the 4th place, but given their Champions League schedule their chances should probably be less than the model predicts.

I’ll probably be posting updated predictions on my twitter feed after each of the top teams remaining games to see how the results change the predictions.