As always, I leave my season’s predictions until after the summer transfer window closes – I personally think it makes no sense whatsoever during an ever-changing period of time to try 'n' say, with any accuracy, who’s gonna finish where / do what when teams are ‘in flux’ of strengthening or being weakened by losing players.
First of all…
…how did I do this time last year?
1st Chelsea
Predicted 3rd (just 2 places out)
Predicted 4th (just 2 places out)
3rd Manchester City
Predicted 1st (just 2 places out)
4th Liverpool
Predicted 6th (just 2 places out)
5th Arsenal
Predicted 7th (just 2 places out)
6th Manyoo
Predicted 2nd (4 places out)
7th Everton
Predicted 8th (just 1 place out!)
8th Southampton
Predicted 10th (just 2 places out)
9th AFC Bournemouth
Predicted 17th (8 places out)
10th West Bromwich Albion
Predicted 18th & relegated
(8 places out)
11th West Ham United
Predicted 9th (just 2 places out)
12th Leicester City
Predicted 5th (7 places out)
13th Stoke City
Predicted 13th (SPOT ON!)
14th Crystal Palace
Predicted 11th (3 places out)
15th Swansea City
Predicted 14th (just 1 place
out!)
16th Burnley
Predicted 19th & relegated
(3 places out)
17th Watford
Predicted 15th (just 2 places out)
18th & relegated Hull City
Predicted 20th & relegated (just 2 places out)
19th & relegated Middlesbrough
Predicted 12th (7 places out)
20th & relegated Sunderland
Predicted 16th (4 places out)
All in all, if I could give myself some praise for a moment, I’d say that getting
12 from 20 teams somewhere between “spot on” and “just 2 places out” is pretty
damn good when-trying to predict 20 teams’ finishing positions after just 3
games of the season played! Well-done me, hey? Okay…
Pre-season,
City results prediction (percentage correct): 60.53%
Pre-match,
City results prediction (percentage correct): 65.79%
City cup predictions:
Predicted: Final…and then who knows!
Achieved: Last 16 stage (3 rounds out)
Predicted: Final…and then who knows!
Achieved: Semi-final (just 1 round out!)
Predicted: Quarter finals
Achieved: Last 16 (just 1 round out!)
And, so, for this season…
1st Manyoo (5 up on last season and champions)
2nd Manchester City (1 up on last season and runners up)
3rd Liverpool (1 up on last season and into an automatic C/L
spot)
4th Chelsea (3 down on last season but grab a C/L knock-out spot)
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
5th Spurs (3 down on last season and into an auto Europa spot)
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
6th Everton (1 up on last season)
7th Arsenal (2 down on last season)
8th Watford (9 up on last season and biggest climbers)
9th Southampton (1 down on last season)
10th Swansea City (5 up on last season)
11th Leicester City (1 up on last season)
12th West Bromwich Albion (2 down on last season)
13th Huddersfield (promoted last
season and survive)
14th Stoke City (1 down on last season)
15th Burnley (1 up on last season)
16th AFC Bournemouth (7 down and joint-biggest fallers)
17th Brighton & Hove Albion
(promoted last season and survive)
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
18th West Ham United (7 down; joint-biggest fallers & relegated)
19th Crystal Palace (5 down on last season and relegated)
20th Newcastle United (promoted
last season and relegated)
 |
| WHAT?! |
I’ve agonised over this since the summer
transfer window closed; there’s been a raging battle between my head &
heart. This is just how I see it…and it would be remiss of me to type a blog
with any bias feelings rather than being an honest footy fan.
I think, as much as it pains me to, that
apart from perhaps the left-wing area; Manyoo have strengthened in all the
right areas – particular with regards to their ‘fire power’. I just think
they’ve got their ‘ship in order’ and are looking very strong for the season
ahead.
I’ll
move onto City in a bit…
Chelsea have strengthened a little but not
nearly as much as they would have liked, I’m sure. I think also that they’ll
suffer the ‘Champions hangover’ / 'season after syndrome' a little and now have a European calendar to
contend with too, unlike last season.
Liverpool managed to fend off the mighty Barcelona’s efforts to sign Philippe Coutinho and have strengthened also –
they have a VERY dangerous, attacking midfield with lots of goals in them…even
if some of their defence is still very shaky.
I think Spurs, although they have added to
their attack late on in the window, WILL suffer the much-talked-about ‘Wembley syndrome’. They’ll be a decent team who will
have good runs that’ll give other clubs some cause for concerns at times but I think,
equally, they’ll have bad patches too; where they’ll struggle to regain form,
especially at home.
Everton have improved their team a LOT but
only improve on last season by 1 place, in my opinion, due to the strength of
the other sides around them.
Arsenal are a club in utter turmoil and
have a very unhappy dressing room, in my view.
And I’ll give mention to Watford - a team I
think will do really well for themselves this season (hence being the ‘biggest
climbers in my prediction league table).
West Ham, despite adding some attacking
talent, look all over the place and well dodgy at the back.
Palace look in worse shape than The
Hammers.
Newcastle barely strengthened, if at all,
in the summer and look very vulnerable indeed.
Okay…now for us.
I find that my positive feeling about
us-improving the goalkeeping situation; the vast improvement of our flanking defenders
/ wing-backs and adding further quality of Bernardo Silva to our enormous wealth of attacking, creative midfield / wing
department – with the returning Ilkay Gundogan to add to that further – is
tempered a lot by our weakening of, STILL FURTHER, our striking department;
not to mention failing to address the much-needed improvement to our central
defensive cover.
What
the HELL were City doing all summer not to have
sorted both of these key areas out?!
Regarding the defence, we’re left with an
unwanted Eliaquim Mangala that we shipped
out on loan last season and tried to sell this summer and, so, have red-card-ready Nicholas Otamendi, ‘still learning’, young John Stones who, let’s not forget, had a fair few injuries last season as
well as being dropped a lot (including this season so far) and a Captain in Vincent Kompany who could break down at any
moment. Good grief…
Huh…and as for the forward line; it’s more
like a ‘forward piece of string’…albeit a very-high-quality piece.
I mean, okay, I’m including Enes Unal & Wilfried Bony here; but we’ve sold 3 strikers (including Kelechi Iheanacho) and brought in no-one up front! We’ve got a very young, very talented Gabriel Jesus who was out for several weeks in his
first half-season with us and ‘our Serg’
who, let’s not forget, has spent MONTHS out injured in the last 2 campaigns. Will
any EDS strikers please step forward (if we have any left after a summer of loaning out to 'sister clubs')…
I use the word again – what the HELL were City’s ‘key men’ behind the scenes doing in-putting all of
their efforts into signing Alexis Sanchez from
a stubborn Arsenal; who themselves left it late to try to find (and failed) to get a very
last-minute replacement?! Why-oh-why did ‘our guys’ not see that they needed a
flippin’-good ‘plan B’? Why not go for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang or A.N. Other when it was clear to all that there WERE
serious doubts about getting Pep’s main
target, despite some encouraging signs in the last few days of the transfer
window?
That’s a lot of eggs in just one basket ready
to be dropped at any moment; especially with a long, 4-competition season
ahead…
As for the cups?
Champions League? Quarter finals at best
F.A. Cup? Final…and then “who knows?”
League Cup? Quarter finals at least;
possible the final and then “who knows?”
Is 2nd place and a possible domestic cup improvement on
last season? Of course it is. Will that be enough for Pep and the Manchester City
owners? Not at all. Is it enough for most City fans, myself included?
Frustratingly I’d have to say no, not really - it’ll feel like, to me at least, as a, ‘what could have
been’ season.
Positives…and can we improve on my predictions?
We have added some exciting wing-backs to
our armoury and I’d say that we have some of the best attacking / creative
midfielders in the Premier League. We have ‘strength in depth’ in that department
too.
We also have another opportunity, in
January, of completing the task both in central defence and attack. Of course, typically,
it’s not a great transfer window to do business in but I can see possible
movement on the Sanchez situation as well as, perhaps, the Jonny Evans or
whoever.
And, I must add, I am very, VERY impressed
by the spirit & determination of this talented squad of players, as-has-been shown this season so far.
Apologies…
Sorry if my predictions have ‘irked’ some
Blues and I hope, in the right way, and pray that I’m wrong. I’ll still
remain positive and as-largely optimistic as I often am…as well as being a
balanced, realist.
And I remind myself also that I got ‘top
spot’ in my Premier League predictions wrong last season; when I thought we’d
win the 2016/17 season.
I might, however, stick a sneaky £10-bet on
Manyoo winning the league and hope, very much, to lose that tenner - I don’t ‘do
betting’ in general and rarely do well whenever I do ‘have a flutter’…
As stated in my last 'blog annoucement', I was unsure if I would get this blog-posting out before the weekend. As I had prepared some of it in advance, I managed to finish it off this evening.
However, with ongoing family-health issues, I may not be able to get a pre-match posting out before this weekend's game. Once again, apologies if not...
As stated in my last 'blog annoucement', I was unsure if I would get this blog-posting out before the weekend. As I had prepared some of it in advance, I managed to finish it off this evening.
However, with ongoing family-health issues, I may not be able to get a pre-match posting out before this weekend's game. Once again, apologies if not...
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