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Manchester City v Sunderland

Sun, Sep 20, 9:00 AM ET · Matchweek 5 · Premier League

Club research: Manchester City · Sunderland

Tested blind on past seasons. Tested blind on nine past Premier League seasons (2013-14 to 2021-22, 3,420 matches) it was never fit on, where it beat the previous model and a plain rating system. Its total-goals numbers follow the league's recent scoring rate, so they are the same for every match — in that test they were more accurate than the previous model's team-by-team totals. Its live record this season is still being graded. 36 Premier League matches have been graded under this model — far too few to support any accuracy claim. No live win rate or accuracy figure is quoted until its season record is large enough to mean something. These are themodel's own probability distributions, published so you can see what it says — not picks, not advice, and not compared against any price.

Model-only, pre-odds: no authorized market snapshot covers this fixture yet, so there is no market comparison here — only the model's own numbers. Prices join closer to kickoff, and this snapshot refreshes until then.

Simulation story

7 chapters · read from the published artifact

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Manchester City v Sunderland

Manchester City host Sunderland in matchweek 5.

Match result

Full time, 90 minutes

The draw is a real outcome and is never folded away.

Manchester City win75.1%

Draw16.9%

Sunderland win8.0%

Two of three outcomes

Manchester City or draw92%

Sunderland or draw24.9%

Either side wins83.1%

Each is a sum of the three probabilities above, so it cannot disagree with them.

Exact score

The ten likeliest scorelines

These ten account for 82.5% of the distribution — the remaining 17.5% is spread across every other scoreline.

Score (Manchester City–Sunderland)	Probability
2–0	15.2%
1–0	13.8%
3–0	11.2%
2–1	8.6%
1–1	7.8%
3–1	6.3%
0–0	6.3%
4–0	6.2%
0–1	3.5%
4–1	3.5%

Goals

Total goals in the match

Expected 2.77. The middle half of the distribution falls between 2 and 4 goals.

Expected goals2.77

Median (p50)3

p10 – p901 – 5

Probability of each total (goals)

Over / under ladder

Line	Over	Under
0.5	93.7%	6.3%
1.5	76.3%	23.7%
2.5	52.3%	47.7%
3.5	30.1%	69.9%
4.5	14.7%	85.3%

Half lines only — a match cannot land exactly on one, so over and under sum to 100% with no push.

By side

How many each side scores

The marginal of the same grid — not a separate fit, so these add back to the total above.

Manchester City2.20 expected

Sunderland0.56 expected

Derived

Goalscoring shape and margin

Every figure is an exact sum over the same score grid.

Both teams score38.4%

Manchester City clean sheet56.9%

Sunderland clean sheet11%

Expected margin+1.64

Winning margin (Manchester City goals − Sunderland goals)

-4

-3

-2

-1

Positive means Manchester City win by that many, 0 is the draw, negative means Sunderland. Margins beyond ±4 carry the remaining mass and are not drawn.

Player predictions · anytime goalscorer

If he starts — likeliest scorers

The lineup is not posted yet, so each figure is the chance that player scores IF he starts — not a claim that he will. This is a different model from the score matrix above, with its own out-of-sample test.

Player	Club	Appearances	To score	A shot on target
Erling Haaland	Manchester City	127	52.9%	81.3%
Phil Foden	Manchester City	98	29.8%	58.9%
Antoine Semenyo	Manchester City	100	29.3%	64.1%
Omar Marmoush	Manchester City	22	29.3%	58.9%
Jeremy Monga	Manchester City	none	26.1%	55.1%
Luís Semedo	Sunderland	none	26.1%	55.1%
Jocelin Ta Bi	Sunderland	1	25.4%	52.9%
Romaine Mundle	Sunderland	2	24.8%	50.9%
Brian Brobbey	Sunderland	22	23.8%	51.9%
Wilson Isidor	Sunderland	11	23.8%	50.1%
Chemsdine Talbi	Sunderland	16	23.2%	47.8%
Nilson Angulo	Sunderland	5	23%	52.9%

Showing the 12 likeliest of 53. No injury or suspension feed exists here, so a player who is unavailable can still appear in this list. Shots on target is a separate model from the scorer figure beside it, fitted and tested on its own — the two are not derived from one another and can disagree.

Method

Where these numbers come from

Per-club attack and defence rates are fitted to Premier League results only, then combined into an exact Poisson score matrix for this fixture. Every probability on this page is a closed-form sum over that one grid — there is no sampling here, so there is no run count to quote and the figures are identical for every visitor, every time.

The fit takes an explicit cutoff at the run clock, so it cannot see a result from a match it is forecasting. Team-level only: no lineup, injury or team-news input exists in this model, by design.

Model: epl-model-v2-elo-poisson
Scoring rates (λ): Manchester City 2.20 · Sunderland 0.56
Generated: 2026-09-14T21:57:35Z
Validation: VALIDATED_OUT_OF_SAMPLE_HISTORY

Other Matchweek 5 fixtures

Paper-only and educational. Not betting advice. All Premier League fixtures