With around a third of the games in the Premier League completed, it’s fair to say that we are already separating the men from the boys. Manchester City is already streaking ahead with 11 wins from 12 games and 34 points from a possible 36. At the other end of the table, poor old Crystal Palace is languishing adrift on just five points and one win.

Such is the difference in quality between the top and the bottom that just seven of the 20 teams have a positive goal difference and only these seven have managed to claim more than half of the points available to them.

Fantasy turned nightmare

If you have been dealt a duff hand packed with players from the lower half of the league, you are probably experiencing a bit of a nightmare. You may even find yourself feeling a bit like Crystal Palace, looking up at every other team in the league.

But all is not lost. Even Palace, who had no points at all after seven games, have pulled it back a little, with five points from their last five games, so it’s not the end of the world. It’s not even the end of the season. And with 26 games to go, there is still plenty of time to draft new players, swap your cards and try to get a few aces into your hand to turn your season around.

Nuclear war is the bookies’ favourite.

Source: Wikimedia

The end of the world

Being dealt poor cards in poker isn’t world-ending, nor is a poor squad in fantasy football. So, to cheer you up a bit, let’s take a look at some of the things that would mean the end of the world, and how likely it is that any of them will come to pass.

 

Like Tranmere Rovers’ hilarious back pass in their recent FA Cup replay against Peterborough, the bookmakers think that the most likely scenario is that we will be the architects of our own doom and end the world ourselves. Nuclear war has the shortest odds at just 30/1, which proves that human beings are more dangerous than the planet itself as a natural disaster is just 45/1.

 

An ape-ocalypse has a 4600/1 shot.

Caption: An ape-ocalypse has a 4600/1 shot.

 

More likely than Leicester

Some of the odds for the end of the world may look reassuringly long. For example, an animal uprising in the style of “Planet of the Apes” is rated a huge 4600/1, a zombie apocalypse is 1000/1 and an invasion by aliens from outer space is 500/1. But of course, it is worth remembering that Leicester City won the league at longer odds of 5000/1 just a couple of seasons back.

The Large Hadron Collider — a black hole machine?

Source: Wikimedia

On the plus side, one of the things that many people worry about is also one of the least likely to happen. As many as 30% of people worry that cheeky, chappie keyboard player turned scientist Prof Brian Cox will kill us all by creating a black hole with his Large Hadron Collider, yet the chances of this are a mere 1 million/1.

To put this into context, being swallowed by a black hole is less likely than being dealt a royal flush at poker, which is a 649,740/1 chance. And if you played 20 hands a day for 89 years, odds are this would only happen to you once.

Not worth worrying about

Of course, there is no point in backing your favourite scenario for the end of the world or even worrying when or how it will happen because, by definition, you won’t be around to collect your winnings anyway.

But you will likely be around for the rest of the season, and there’s still plenty of time left to change your hand and turn your team from a Crystal Palace to a Manchester City. So, remember, it’s not the end of the world, it’s just the end of the first third of the season.