If you’re looking for context on this, here’s last Wednesday’s explanation of how it works. The short version is that we rigged up a spreadsheet that uses FiveThirtyEight’s SPI to try to estimate Burnley’s relegation probability given different combinations of results in the games today.
With Leeds not in action, Burnley’s mostly in control of its own situation. Everton’s result affects Burnley, and we’ll get to how, but it’s not a huge scoreboard-watching day. That’ll be Sunday. Today is about Burnley, and here’s our estimate of where Burnley will stand based on how today turns out:
| Burnley Result vs. Villa | Relegation Probability |
| Win | 3% |
| Draw | 15% |
| Loss | 42% |
This is encouraging, and demonstrates at least FiveThirtyEight’s faith in Burnley’s situation on a hypothetical Sunday in which they enter one point back of Leeds. Burnley has this game in hand, and a game in hand’s a big deal, with even a loss lifting them only from 31% likely to be relegated to somewhere in the 42% range.
Here, then, is how Everton’s results factor in, and keep in mind that there’s more noise with these because, in our 10,000 simulations, not that many had Burnley tying (in other words, it doesn’t actually help Burnley to have Everton win if Burnley draws—in fact, Everton’s result is so inconsequential if Burnley draws that random noise is the only thing pulling it around).
| Burnley Result vs. Villa | Everton Result vs. Palace | Relegation Probability |
| Win | Loss | 1% |
| Win | Draw | 1% |
| Win | Win | 6% |
| Draw | Win | 13% |
| Draw | Loss | 15% |
| Draw | Draw | 17% |
| Loss | Loss | 40% |
| Loss | Draw | 41% |
| Loss | Win | 45% |
If Burnley pulls even with Everton or ahead of Everton today, they’re almost assured of being safe. If Burnley pulls ahead of Leeds today, their safety probability is roughly 16-in-17. If Burnley draws today, their safety probability is roughly 5-in-6, equivalent to your probability of rolling anything but a seven with one roll of a pair of dice. If Burnley loses today, they’re only barely better than a 50/50 bet to survive, but they’re still probably going to be on the right side of fifty percent, especially if Everton loses or draws.
The last thing to consider is goal difference, where Burnley leads Leeds by twenty and Everton by two. Those two goals could end up being significant, but the scenarios in which they’re significant are narrow. Either Burnley would have to win one of these next two and lose the other, Everton would have to lose one of these next two and draw the other, and Leeds would have to win on Sunday OR Burnley would have to draw twice while Everton lost twice and Leeds won for it to matter, and in those exact scenarios it’s unlikely and impossible, respectively, that we’d see Burnley fall past Everton (or fall to even with Everton) on goal difference, since Everton’s goal difference would worsen in all such scenarios, meaning Burnley would have to lose by at least four goals in the loss, and possibly more.
