City had the significantly harder game, away to Everton v Liverpool home to Leeds. We're also one game closer to the end of the season, which is worse for Liverpool. Despite that, Liverpool showed a lot more than City did, so the odds for EPL winner narrowed a tad.

The relegation race is wide open now. Newcastle is not out of the woods, but are in very good shape. Burnley has been making a strong case to stay up, of late. The rest are collapsing.

winner
city          76.5
liverpool     23.5

relegation
norwich       90
watford       79

burnley       36
leeds         35
brentford     29
everton       19
newcastle     10

palace         1.5
leicester      0.5

Burnley has 14 games left and is expected to get 15 points on average. Probably something like 3.75 draws and 3.5 wins. And 6.75 losses.

The least wins by a team that survived was 6, done by West Brom in 2004/2005 with 16 draws too, and 34 points. A few teams have done it with 7 wins. If we knew Burnley was going to get exactly 4 more wins (for 7 total) their odds of surviving would be pretty good. Maybe upwards of 80%. 3 or fewer not so good.

Most draws in a 38 game EPL season was 17, by a few teams, most recently by Sunderland in 2014/2015, who was one of the teams that had 7 wins and narrowly avoided relegation. Burnley already has 12, so it's still not likely but they could match or beat the record for draws. They would probably need to if they want to stay up this year with just 3 more wins. 34 points is unlikely to do it.

Brighton and Palace also have 12 draws each, but have played 2 more and 3 more games, respectively.

EPL CL/EL-related odds:

             top 4   top 6
liverpool    99.5
chelsea      94

arsenal      53.5    87       
united       25      81
tottenham    20      73.5

west ham      6.5    39
Wolves        1.5    14

leicester             2
southampton           1.5
brighton              1
villa                 1

I wonder if they're drawing straws among the Chelsea players to see who has to go out there today. Blue and yellow armbands might help some.

Villarreal had two big home losses in late November where they also didn't play very well: against United in the CL and against Barcelona in the league. Since then they've been on fire, playing like one of the best teams in the world. Best xGD in La Liga over that period, with only Real Madrid close. They also beat Atalanta on the road to qualify for the CL KOs and outplayed, and should have beaten, Juve last week. They've likely surpassed Betis as the most likely team to sneak above Barca or Atleti into the top 4 of La Liga this year.

Lots of chances in the League Cup final. Both keepers played well. Goals also called back for fouls and offside.

With their draw today, Dortmnund's season is pretty much over. They are slipping too far behind Bayern to catch them (2% on 538), and are too far ahead of the rest to realistically have to worry about falling out of top 4. They got eliminated from the DFB Pokal in January, to St. Pauli no less, and eliminated in the Europa League to Rangers.

Almost time to kick back and enjoy the rest of the season in a low stress environment.

These have been some very good penalties.

Kelleher took a very good PK for Liverpool's 11 straight. Kepa's sailed way over the bar.

Bringing in Kepa for PKs backfired most spectacularly. No saves and a skied PK to lose it. Most would have been impossible to save, but he could have saved at least one and maybe a couple more with luck.

So it's kind of harsh but where does that rank in the worst substitutions ever? Bring on the "penalty specialist" in the final minute then he goes 0 for 11 on the penalties then misses his penalty to lose.

One thing I love about watching penalties is that a lot of times you can see the nerves on some guys as they walk up. But really the only times I saw a guy look unsettled were Lukaku and then Elliott and both of them buried their penalty. Quite the shootout.

We talked about it previously but absent some really strong evidence I'll never believe that making a substitution right at the end of a match expressly for penalties (whether bringing on a keeper or bringing on a shooter) is the right move. If you are going to make the move that's fine you have to give the player a few minutes at least to get going.

Liverpool's odds of the quadruple are just under 1%.

We all know by now Fulham is a virtual lock for the EPL next year. Bournemouth has been matching their own preseason expectations, and are now very likely to join Fulham for an automatic spot, especially with West Brom's collapse. The race for the last spot is wide open, though. Don't look now, but the best of the lot seems to be Sheffield United again, who have been very good this year in the Championship. It will be a tight one to make a playoff spot, and always hard to make it through via playoff, but they are considered the team with the best chance to do so: 25% to be promoted by betting odds (30% by 538, who likes them even more, and has them rated second in the league above even Bournemouth in quality).

Marsch to Leeds looks a done deal. The high intensity pressing should be a good fit, but Marsch failed at Leipzig, seems to have lost the dressing room in a very short amount of time there, and Salzburg seem even better without him. What happens with Leeds will be very interesting. They've had injuries, and have a number of guys who seem to still be Championship level. They also have at least a few guys (Phillips, Bamford, Raphinha) who are all Europa or CL level players, imo.

There's probably a lot more money to be made being one of the yo-yo teams that's content to just be the 18th-25th best team in England like Norwich, Bournemouth, etc. than actually trying to get into the mid-table consistently. I guess Fulham has been a yo-yo club too, but I think they have, or at least did have, more ambition than that as recently as 10 years ago.

Russia suspended from international soccer. I think that means Poland advances to the winner of Sweden/Czech Republic. It definitely means Leipzig have qualified over Spartak in Europa. Russia has been so bad in Europe this year anyway that was the last team still alive.

UEFA confirm that with Spartak Moscow suspended - RB Leipzig are qualified to the quarter-finals of Europa League.

Sounds like Russia will appeal to CAS. Interesting to see how this goes on many levels. FIFA also released a weak ass response yesterday that they got dunked on for, including by the UEFA VP, that essentially just amounted to playing on a neutral field and having an Olympic-esque fake name for the team.