Premier League reranked: Why Man City won't beat Arsenal

With each passing day, Everton looks more and more like the team of Dyche's dreams. They've outscored four December opponents by a combined 8-0. They've got the lowest possession rate (39.3%), the most direct attack (1.69 meters per second) and the lowest average number of passes per possession (3.7) of any team that isn't currently in the relegation zone. They block 32.2% of shots (second in the league), and only 6.5% of opponents' attempts are worth 0.3 xG or more (first). Consequently, only 28.0% of opponents' shots end up on target (first). James Tarkowski (first in the league with 25 shots blocked) and Jarrad Branthwaite (second in total defensive interventions) might be the best center-back duo in the league.

This roster doesn't seem to possess much genuinely elite talent -- the market values at Transfermarkt rank them 15th in the league, with only one player's services (defensive midfielder Amadou Onana) valued at more than €30 million -- but Dyche has them playing brilliant Dycheball. And if not for the 10-point deduction that I waited as long as possible to mention, the Toffees would currently be in 10th place, ahead of Chelsea, tied with Brighton and only three points behind sixth-place Newcastle.

No matter how things play out from here, the point deduction will end up defining Everton's season. There's no way around that. Either they continue to play well and we continue to talk about how close to a spot in Europe they might be if not for the penalty, or their form starts to fade and, despite a mid-table overall performance, we talk about how close they are to the relegation zone. After all, even with their current torrid form, they're still only seven points away from danger. Play poorly for two weeks, and that gap could be cut in half.

But so far, the deduction seems to have been strangely freeing. It likely gave Dyche an extra "us against the world" card to play -- managers love those cards -- and seems to have made Goodison Park once again one of the toughest places in the league to play. Everton has averaged a finish of 12.6 in the table over the past five years and could be on the way to something similar this season. But it would be just about the most encouraging and energizing 12th- or 13th-place finish you'll ever see. -- Connelly

Bournemouth continue to trust the process

Much to the surprise of, well, pretty much anyone who watched the Premier League last season, Bournemouth fired manager Gary O'Neil over the summer and replaced him with Andoni Iraola. O'Neil had saved the Cherries from seemingly assured relegation after taking over for Scott Parker -- Iraola had never managed a team with a positive goal differential in a major European league.

The first few months of the season seemed to showcase the stupidity of the decision. O'Neil took over at Wolverhampton, and his side were tied for 11th at the end of October after flirting with relegation the year before. Bournemouth, meanwhile, were in 17th, just one point clear of the drop zone. Not only that, the performances were awful, too. Only Sheffield United had a worse expected-goal differential through October.

This could've been the moment when the club cut their losses, parted ways with their inexperienced foreign manager and replaced him with, say, Sam Allardyce or Alan Pardew or Steve Bruce. Someone, as they say, who knows his way around a relegation scrap.

Instead, Bournemouth hung onto Iraola -- and it's working out brilliantly. Since the start of November, only Everton, Aston Villa, Arsenal and Liverpool have won more points than Bournemouth. And really, only the Gunners have played better soccer since the end of October.

Here's the non-penalty xG-differential table since the start of last month:

Bournemouth were somewhat fortunate not to be relegated last year since, by xG differential, they were easily one of the three worst teams. That -- or some version of the idea that they couldn't afford not to improve -- drove them to replace O'Neil with Iraola, who, in his two seasons with Rayo Vallecano, produced proactive sides that finished mid-table in LaLiga despite a bottom-of-LaLiga payroll. Imagine what he might be able to do with a roster awash in all that Premier League TV money.

Well, this is what his team has done so far, compared to last season:

• Non-penalty xG: 1.35, up from 1.05

• Non-penalty xG allowed: 1.66, down from 1.71

• Touches in opposition box: 25.5, up from 19.6

• Final-third possession (field tilt): 43.4%, up from 35.9%

• Passes allowed per defensive action (PPDA): 11.86, down from 15.71

They're creating more, conceding less, controlling more of the ball and pressing much more aggressively. Oh, and they've done it all with mostly the same roster as last season. Their three €20 million-plus summer signings -- midfielder Alex Scott, forward Hamed Junior Traore and midfielder Tyler Adams -- have combined for just 236 league minutes so far.

We shouldn't write off their awful start, but this really looks like the case of a club finally catching up with its coach's new ideas. If Bournemouth keep it up, Iraola should be a candidate for Manager of the Year. -- O'Hanlon

Spurs, Brighton, Brentford find out that talent rules all

Brentford and Brighton are the two smartest clubs in the Premier League -- both with top-down mandates from ownership to base decisions on objective information to the maximum extent such a thing is possible. Knowing a better way to play the game and a better way to identify players has allowed both teams to overachieve.

Spurs, meanwhile, seemed to experience the restorative powers of a special manager to start the season. The arrival of Ange Postecoglou immediately transformed the team's style of play and vaulted them up to the top of the table despite the departure of Harry Kane over the summer.

Set-piece savvy, cost-effective recruitment and managerial brilliance all matter, but they can only take you so far. The midseason struggles of all three clubs point to a much simpler, much more important driver of success: just having good players.

Brentford have continued to exploit the basic analytical tenets of the sport. They take the highest quality shots in the league. They conceded the lowest quality shots in the league. And they create more value from throw-ins and set pieces than anyone in the league.

The stat expected possession value (xPV) calculates how much more likely each individual action makes a team to score, based mainly on where the ball moves to on the field. By looking at throw-ins and set pieces, we can begin to assess which teams are playing these situations most optimally. And through this lens, it's Brentford, way ahead of everyone else:

Despite a sound process, they've struggled this season -- especially recently -- because their two best players, Ivan Toney and Bryan Mbeumo, have started a combined 15 games due to Toney's gambling-related suspension and Mbeumo's recent injury.

Brighton, meanwhile, aren't moving their players or throw-ins into dangerous areas, but that was all fine when their center-backs were putting the soles of their feet on the ball, and it was eventually leading to goals. Roberto De Zerbi's team is still dominating possession -- not far off from City's levels this season. It's just not going anywhere this term. Their xG differential last season (+0.69) was top four, but this year it's more than halved, all the way down to +0.3. The biggest reason why: They lost Alexis Mac Allister and Moises Caicedo, €150 million worth of midfielders, over the summer and still haven't found a way to replace either one.

As for Spurs, they've still managed to score 34 non-penalty goals, second most in the league, after Kane's departure. But the brilliance of Kane was that he was an attack all unto himself -- his ability to create opportunities for himself and his teammates allowed for more defensive decisions to be made elsewhere in the lineup. With him gone, though, Spurs have had to completely destabilize the defense -- 26.22 non-penalty xG allowed, seventh worst in the league -- in order to produce that much attack.

In addition to Kane's exit, Spurs lost their new star, James Maddison, to an ankle injury at the beginning of November. He hasn't played since the 4-1 loss to Chelsea. Tottenham's xG differential with Maddison on the field: plus-0.52 per 90 minutes. Without him? It's minus-0.56. -- O'Hanlon

Nottingham Forest is determined to give us a relegation fight

Since the initial August season preview, we've updated these power rankings three times. In all three instances, the three recently promoted teams -- Burnley, Sheffield United and Luton Town -- have occupied the bottom three positions. All you have to do is look at the table to understand why, of course: They've won a combined six of 50 matches thus far, four of 46 that weren't against each other. No Premier League team has survived the drop with fewer than 34 points, and none of these three teams are on pace to top even 22. It's looking pretty dire.

But for those of us who enjoy the pure morbidity of a good relegation fight, Nottingham Forest's current form offers hope. In the past three months, they've taken just seven points from 12 matches. They've scored the third-fewest goals from shots worth the fourth-lowest xG, their best attacker (Taiwo Awoniyi) is dealing with another medium- to long-term injury, and only reasonably decent defense -- they've allowed the seventh-most goals from shots worth the 10th-most xG, and center backs Willy Boly and Murillo have rather comfortably been their most consistently strong performers -- has allowed them to secure three wins and enough draws to stay safe for now.

Over their next seven league matches, Forest will play both Newcastle and Bournemouth, one of the league's most in-form teams, twice each. They also face first-place Arsenal and seventh-place Manchester United. If they don't beat Bournemouth at home Saturday, their next most likely win might be a Jan. 20 trip to Brentford.

It's somewhat understandable that the club chose this week to let go of beloved manager Steve Cooper in search of the proverbial new manager bump. And the good news is, whatever you think of new manager Nuno Espirito Santo and his odds of delivering said bump, the bar remains extremely low: Even if they only maintain their current 31-point pace, that might be enough to comfortably survive in this unique season.

There are theoretically enough high-end pieces here -- Murillo, Awoniyi when healthy, attacking midfielder Morgan Gibbs-White, midfielders Ibrahim Sangaré and Orel Mangala and all of the seemingly hundreds of other young players they've brought in over the past 18 months -- that they should be able to rally. But even with the bottom three teams struggling at an almost historic level, Opta's projections still gives Forest a 29.4% chance of going down.

This relegation fight isn't over just yet. -- Connelly