EA Sports FC 26: We Simulated The EPL So You Don’t Have To

EA Sports FC 26 launched in the small hours of this morning, and our researchers got to work.

Oddspedia Insights have simulated the Premier League using what many of us still know as ‘FIFA’ to find out if the most realistic football game in the world can predict the EPL season and help you find some value bets you may have missed.

So while you were sleeping, our researchers were yawning, pumping caffeine directly into their eyes, and feverishly writing down team names in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. If you want to enjoy their pain: skip to the end of the article for some of the notes they made during the study.

Let’s do this: the EA Sports FC 26 Premier League Simulator.

Key Findings

• Liverpool won the Premier League in 81% of our simulations and never finished lower than 3rd.
• Manchester City and Arsenal also dominated the top spots in study: City never finished lower than 3rd and the Gunners lowest finish was 4th.
• Wolverhampton Wanderers were relegated in 80% of simulations.
• Manchester United didn’t crack the top four in our study – their average finishing position was 7.3.
• Of the three promoted teams: Sunderland AFC was given the best prospects of survival with an average finishing position of 15.2 and achieved a 7th place finish.
• Arsenal’s Viktor Gyökeres finished as the league’s top scorer in over 40% of simulations, averaging 25 goals, beating out the bookmaker’s favourite Erling Haaland (30%).

EA Sports FC 26 Premier League Team Finishing Positions

Average Finishing Position

	Team	Average Position
1	Liverpool	1.4
2	Manchester City	1.8
3	Arsenal	2.8
4	Tottenham Hotspur	4.6
5	Manchester United	4.8
6	Newcastle United	5.5
7	Chelsea	7.2
8	Aston Villa	7.8
9	Crystal Palace	8.5
10	Nottingham Forest	9.8
11	Bournemouth	11.6
12	Brighton & Hove Albion	12.4
13	Everton	13.2
14	Sunderland	14.5
15	Fulham	14.7
16	West Ham United	15.2
17	Brentford	16.5
18	Leeds United	17.3
19	Burnley	17.8
20	Wolverhampton Wanderers	17.9

Highest and Lowest Finishing Positions

Is the ‘Top Four’ now the ‘Top Three’?

Our EA Sports FC 26 simulations were dominated by Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester City – they won every title in every outcome.

Liverpool and Manchester City never finished lower than third place throughout with Arsenal logging a number of fourth place finishes

After that: four other teams took a share of fourth place: Spurs, Aston Villa, Newcastle United and Nottingham Forest on one occasion.

This shows the gulf in talent between those top three teams and the rest of the league: no other team was as reliably predicted in the simulator with an average range of league positions for the other 17 teams of 7.1.

Manchester United outside looking in

Manchester United’s fall from grace over recent years sees them fall outside the top four completely in our study, finishing no higher than fifth.

The pressure on Ruben Amorim and his squad is clearly expected to continue through this season, and our notes recorded no big name transfers coming into the club to raise fans’ spirits.

Chelsea: boom or bust

Chelsea FC were one of only two teams outside of Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester City to crack the top three of the Premier League in our study.

However they also recorded an 11th place finish in one outcome.

This is the Stamford Bridge rollercoaster: where the manager changes as often as the kit and the owner just wants the ride to go faster.

A surprise striker takes the Golden Boot

Our study found Viktor Gyökeres unexpectedly broke the Haaland/Salah lockdown on the Premier League Golden Boot trophy as the top goalscorer in the league in over 40% of simulations.

He’s currently priced at 11/2 in the EPL Top Goalscorer odds with an implied probability of 15.4%: he may be the value bet of value bets for this market.

The Relegation yo-yo: will the three new teams go straight back down?

Good news! As a group of three: the promoted teams of Burnley, Leeds United and Sunderland were never relegated all together in our study

Bad news: at least one of three was relegated in every simulation, with two of the teams relegated in over 40% of outcomes.

This is totally to be expected: all three teams are among the favourites for the drop in the latest Premier League Relegation odds.

…but things could be worse. You could be a Wolves fan.

Not only are winless Wolverhampton Wanderers still pointless in the Premier League: they’re also heavily predicted to finish in the bottom three (80%) and dead-last (30%). Yikes.

Transfer Tidbits

Throughout the EA Sports FC 26 study we tracked major transfers in the January transfer window: here’s some of the wildest moves that showed up multiple times.

Player	From	To	Highest Fee
Nico Williams	Athletico Bilbao	Manchester City	£178.1m
Martin Odegaard	Arsenal	Real Madrid	£107.6m
Moises Caicedo	Chelsea	Paris SG	£107.0m
Jordan Pickford	Everton	Juventus	£19.0m
Gabriel Jesus	Arsenal	Brentford	£19.2m
Diogo Costa	Porto	Tottenham Hotspur	£57.0m

• In 30% of simulations Antonio Rudiger moved from Real Madrid to a team at the top of the EPL.
• Jordan Pickford left Everton in 52% of simulated January transfer windows.
• Manchester United sold far more than they bought in the study, including allowing young talent like Amad and Kobbie Mainoo to join Bournemouth and Sunderland respectively.

Methodology

Our researchers simulated one season of the Premier League in EA Sports FC 26 16 times using the exact same settings:

• Manager Mode: Live Start Points
• Team: Crawley Town (League 2 – chosen at random to enable access to information about the EPL but with very little chance of interacting with an EPL team)
• Gameplay type: Authentic
• Difficulty: Ultimate
• Deeper simulation: on > choose the EPL only
• Half length 6 minutes
• Board Strictness: No sackings
• Financial takeover: off
• Currency: Sterling
• Unexpected events: off

They then simulated from the starting point of the season through to the end of the January Transfer Window, and then through to beyond the end of the season in June 2026.

The finishing league positions for every team were recorded, alongside the winners of the Premier League Golden Boot, the FA Cup, and the UEFA Champions League.

Researcher’s Commentary

• “Crawley Town’s season is collapsing over and over while the EPL sims in the background.”
• “I haven’t seen a single second of gameplay for this game and I’ve been playing for 90 minutes now…”
• “Salford City’s logo looks like a fictional team logo from a modern Roy of the Rovers.”
• “The Pro-Liverpool bias in this game is bonkers.”
• “The game is annoying me now with the crashes.”
• “Cambridge United’s logo is BANGING.”