Premier League 2016/2017 Teams Worth Backing as Favourites or Underdogs

Looking at the 2016/2017 Premier League through the eyes of actual bettors means asking a specific question: given the prices on offer, which teams were more trustworthy when laying goals (playing the favourite) and which were more attractive when getting a start (playing the underdog)? The answers sit at the intersection of performance, perception and odds, not just in the final league table, which is why some mid‑table sides ended up more rewarding to support on the handicap than the champions themselves.

What “play the favourite” and “take the underdog” really mean

In handicap and Asian‑line betting, “playing the favourite” means laying a goal start—backing the stronger team to win by more than the spread—while “playing the underdog” means taking a positive handicap that pays if the weaker side avoids a heavy defeat. During 2016/2017, the broad market view was that the league would be unusually open, with six teams priced at 10/1 or shorter for the title and Manchester City a relatively big 9/4 favourite, which filtered down into weekly match odds that often compressed perceived gaps between teams. In that environment, picking the right sides to trust with a minus‑goal line, and the right sides to support when getting a head start, depended on spotting where underlying performance diverged from those cautious pre‑season expectations.

Teams that made sense to back as favourites

For much of the season, Chelsea and Tottenham were the two clubs that most consistently looked justifiable when you were considering laying goals, because their performance converted dominance into actual margins of victory. Chelsea finished champions with 30 wins, 85 goals scored and 33 conceded, while Spurs ended second with 26 wins, 86 scored and a league‑best 26 conceded, indicating that their wins were often by comfortable margins rather than narrow escapes. Tottenham’s 17‑2‑0 home record, combined with a 47‑9 home goal difference, made them particularly strong candidates for minus‑1 or minus‑1.25 lines at White Hart Lane, where their pressing and crowd‑driven intensity regularly overwhelmed visiting mid‑ and lower‑table sides. For bettors, the cause–outcome link was straightforward: when these teams were in their natural “bully” spots—at home to weaker opposition with few distractions—the handicap risk was often lower than the market narrative about an “open” title race suggested.

Under‑the‑radar teams you wanted on your side as underdogs

On the other side of the equation, mid‑table and lower‑half clubs with specific strengths often provided more value when you took them as underdogs than their league positions implied. Crystal Palace are the clearest example: a 14th‑place finish with inconsistent form, yet season‑end betting reviews show that backing them to win every match with a flat stake would have produced the highest overall profit of any Premier League team that year, largely due to high‑priced upsets away to elite sides. Watford also appear prominently in profitability breakdowns, ranking third‑most profitable thanks in part to a surprise win at Arsenal, which paid handsomely for those who took them with or without a handicap. For underdog bettors, the pattern was that athletically capable sides with pace in transition—Palace, Watford, and in home contexts Burnley—could turn modest baseline strength into outsized returns whenever the handicap or moneyline price underestimated how awkward they were to play against.

Snapshot: who you’d rather “lay” with and who you’d rather “take”

Putting the season into a compact view helps clarify which teams, in hindsight, most suited favourite or underdog roles from a betting standpoint, under a flat‑stake framing.

Team	League finish	Natural role for bettors	Key reason in 2016/2017 context
Chelsea	1st	Selective favourite	High win rate and strong margins, but often very short prices.
Tottenham	2nd	Strong home favourite	Perfect home record; dominated weaker visitors by multiple goals.
Burnley	16th	Home underdog	Outperformed at Turf Moor; undervalued as host despite low overall rank.
Crystal Palace	14th	Volatile underdog	Few but big‑price away upsets; most profitable team to back overall.
Watford	17th	Selective underdog	Profitable largely via a small number of major upsets (e.g. at Arsenal).

Interpreting this, you can see that “play the favourite” made most sense with structurally dominant sides in clear advantage spots, while “play the dog” paid off with tactically awkward or home‑strong smaller teams, especially when their reputations lagged behind their real threat level.

Why some big names were dangerous to lay goals with

Despite their quality, not every big club was a safe vehicle for handicap bets in 2016/2017, because some struggled to turn control into wins often enough to justify the prices. Manchester United under José Mourinho finished with a 18‑15‑5 record and only 54 goals scored, accompanied by 29 conceded, indicating many tight games where dominance did not translate into comfortable margins. From a handicap perspective, that profile meant that minus‑1 or minus‑1.5 lines at Old Trafford were much riskier than their badge suggested, as a draw or narrow one‑goal win occurred frequently enough to leave backers exposed. Similarly, Liverpool’s strength against fellow big‑six teams but inconsistency versus deep‑defending underdogs meant that laying big lines against bottom‑half visitors often required more caution than their attacking numbers alone would imply.

How real users’ behaviour shaped “favourite vs underdog” choices

For many regular bettors, the 2016/2017 season felt like a year where blind favourite‑backing struggled to deliver, while carefully chosen underdog plays generated the more memorable wins. Post‑season blogs and reviews emphasised that home underdogs were frequently underestimated in the Premier League, echoing broader research that betting on home underdogs can yield better long‑term returns than always siding with favourites. In practice, users who combined that structural insight with specific team knowledge—trusting Burnley with a start at Turf Moor, giving Palace a chance in big away games when the tactical match‑up suited—experienced a very different season from those who loaded up on short‑priced big names every weekend. The impact is clear: perceived unpredictability raised by pre‑season narratives did not remove value, it simply punished those who refused to move beyond badges and table positions.

In settings where users look to apply these ideas in real time, another layer appears: assessing how their choice of betting outlet influences which favourites and underdogs are realistically attractive. When someone includes ufabet as one of the options they use, the rational attitude is to treat it as one node in a network of operators and to examine whether its pricing on 2016/2017‑style scenarios—short odds on Chelsea or Spurs at home, generous lines on Palace‑type underdogs away, or Buffernley‑style home dogs—differs meaningfully from the broader market; only when that sports betting service leaves a bit more room on a favourite or an underdog than consensus suggests does the theoretical edge described above translate into a concrete, executable opportunity for the user.

Reading context before deciding favourite or underdog side

The same team can be a good “play the favourite” candidate in one context and a poor one in another, so a fixed mental checklist helps prevent lazy assumptions. In 2016/2017, Tottenham laying goals at home to a low‑scoring visitor with no midweek distractions was a very different proposition from Tottenham away after a European tie; similarly, Burnley catching a small start at Turf Moor against a mid‑table visitor was not the same as Burnley getting a big line away at a top‑six club. The underlying mechanism is that handicaps magnify small shifts in edge: a team that is 60% likely to win but only 40% likely to win by two or more may be a fine moneyline favourite but a poor minus‑1.5 bet. By anchoring decisions in venue, schedule, tactical match‑ups and goal difference, bettors move from simply “liking” a side to understanding whether the specific role the line assigns—giving or taking a goal—is justified.

Behavioural traps when choosing sides on the line

Human tendencies often push bettors toward favourites in emotional ways and toward underdogs in reckless ways, both of which 2016/2017 exposed. After Leicester’s 2015/2016 title, many players became acutely aware of the upside in underdogs and perhaps overcompensated by chasing long shots without sufficient structural edge, while others doubled down on familiar brands in an attempt to “return to normal.” Both reactions can distort judgment: the first leads to too many bets on weak teams at inadequate prices, the second to overexposure on short odds where the true probability advantage is tiny. The experience of that season suggests that the best results came from those who treated underdogs and favourites as interchangeable vehicles for value, not as emotional categories—sometimes you lay Chelsea; sometimes you take Palace; the constant is the gap between your probability estimate and the market’s.

Summary

Using the 2016/2017 Premier League as a reference point shows that the teams worth “playing on the favourite side” were those that repeatedly turned superiority into clear margins—Chelsea and especially Tottenham at home—while the sides worth “taking as underdogs” were tactically awkward or home‑specialist smaller clubs like Crystal Palace, Burnley and Watford when the lines underestimated their resistance or upset potential. The season also underlined that big names like Manchester United could be dangerous handicap favourites due to draw‑heavy, low‑margin wins, and that true value lay in reading context—venue, schedule, style and market pricing—before deciding whether the smarter move was to lay goals or accept them. For any bettor, the core lesson is to treat each team’s 2016/2017 role as a pattern to recognise—dominant favourite, volatile underdog, home specialist—then apply that thinking forward rather than letting badge or memory dictate which side of the line you choose.