How Arsenal's Loss To Man City Affects EPL Odds

The fight for this season’s English Premier League title has mostly been a two-horse race all season long. The two horses are Arsenal, who haven’t finished in the top four since 2016, and Manchester City, who have won three of the last four Premier League titles, including the 2022 trophy. While Arsenal have led the way by a wide margin for most of the season, most betting sites like Sports Interaction were waiting for the other shoe to drop, and now that it has, Premier League odds are favoring City to take their third straight EPL title with very short odds.

EPL Outright Winner Odds

Manchester City EPL Odds

After trailing behind Arsenal for over 20 weeks of the Premier League season, Manchester City have done what most football fans expected all along: make their move and leapfrog Arsenal. They did so a lot faster than most would have expected, closing a large eight-point gap in a matter of two weeks. While most betting sites now have them as slight favorites to win it all, some such as Sports Interaction have gone all in on City hoisting yet another Premier League trophy, putting their outright odds at extremely low -376.

City have been an absolute powerhouse over the past decade, winning 55 percent of the league titles in that span, including three in the last four campaigns under legendary Spanish manager Pep Guardiola. They have won two straight titles, so if they win again this season it would put them in rarified air: only the Sir Alex Ferguson Manchester United teams of 1999-2001 and 2007-2009 have ever won that trophy for three years on the bounce.

While it seemed for a bit in January like this might be the year of mighty City’s downfall after losing to Spurs, selling disgruntled star Joao Cancelo, and all of the FFP allegations swirling around, they have managed to emerge from the storm looking as dangerous as ever. It will take a very impressive finish to the season for Arsenal to once again give themselves a chance at dethroning Guardiola’s team.

Arsenal EPL Odds

After finishing eighth, eighth, and fifth in manager Mikel Arteta’s first three seasons, the future didn’t exactly look promising for Arsenal with him at the helm. But he always said trust the process and have patience. That’s exactly what the powers that be at Arsenal did after they bottled a top four finish at the end of the 2022 campaign. Then, everything changed in the summer as Arteta, who used to work for Guardiola at City, was able to recruit two former City stars in striker Gabriel Jesus and fullback Oleksandr Zinchenko.

Both players had a massive effect on the team, which is the youngest in the EPL by the way, and helped them jump out to their best start ever, with 50 points at the halfway line of the season. Unfortunately, Jesus suffered an injury during the mid-season World Cup, and ever since the Arsenal attack has lacked a bit of his toughness and skill set at the front, where he was able to link up play nicely, especially on the left side, where Gabriel Martinelli and Granit Xhaka have both been struggling in his absence. 

Nonetheless, Arsenal still had two hands on the trophy up until a couple of weeks ago, but a loss to Sean Dyche’s Everton, a draw to Brentford, and the most recent 3-1 loss to Manchester City have seen their eight-point lead disappear. Now, they still have a game in hand on City, who are only ahead on goal differential at the moment. So it’s not quite over yet, as evidenced by their -121 odds on Sports Interaction, especially considering the top two teams still have another matchup yet to play that could be the real deciding factor on who lifts that trophy come May.

Manchester United EPL Odds

The only other team with even a remote chance at the 2023 title is Manchester United, who dominated in the 1990s and 2000s but who haven’t won the Premier League since Ferguson retired in 2013. They’re now just five points back of the two teams tied at the top, though Arsenal has a game in hand on them and no more matchups with United remaining. It would take a truly impressive collapse from both Arsenal and City to give United a real chance at Premier League glory, but hey, stranger things have happened.