Arsenal may be on top of the league at this stage of the English Premier League season, but online sportsbooks have yet to show the kind of faith befitting the status of a favorite.
In fact, Arsenal isn’t even the favorite to win the EPL this season; that distinction falls on the shoulders of Manchester City despite being six points behind the Gunners in the points table with a little over a third of the season already in the books.
City are 5/2 odds to win the title, lower than what bettors would get if they bet on Arsenal (9/2), or even Chelsea (3/1), which actually sits in second place in the standings, two points clear of the blue side of Manchester.
The favorite status on City can be attributed to its superior goal differential in the league at +25, compared to Arsenal (+17) and Chelsea (+13), but even so, bookmakers are curiously bullish on a Manchester team that has already lost to Aston Villa, Cardiff, and Sunderland, three teams whose odds to win the EPL title (2,500/1, 9,000/1, 9,000/1) range in the same vicinity as me winning American Idol this coming season. Hard to put your faith in a team that maddeningly inconsistent.
If there’s a team that has pretty tasty odds at this point in the year, it’s the defending champions, Manchester United.
Currently, United’s odds are at 10/1 and with two-thirds of the season still to be played, the nine-point difference between Arsenal and United isn’t as daunting, especially if United becomes pretty active in the upcoming transfer window.
Liverpool, who came out of the gate as gangbusters, now sits fifth in the odds table at 12/1, a number that could very well tumble in the coming weeks now that Daniel Sturridge will miss six to eight weeks.
From there, it’s a bunch of longshots that really don’t have any chance of seriously contending for the title. Tottenham’s at 60/1, and that’s when the team sits ninth on the standings. Everton is at 100/1 despite having as many points as Liverpool, and Southampton, the only other team that has odds below 1000/1, is at 250/1 to win the EPL title.
Everybody else is just a waste of money, and that includes Newcastle (1,000/1), Swansea City (2,000/1), Aston Villa (2,500/1), West Brom (2,500/1), West Ham (5,000/1), Stoke City (5,000/1), and a cadre of 9,000/1 odds for Fulham, Sunderland, Cardiff, Norwich, Hull City, and Crystal Palace.
