Around the start of every season but only when the summer window closes, I try to predict how the final league table will look; how we’ll do in the cups and even a league-match result prediction, both at the start of the season and pre-match.
Here’s how I did…
The (predicted) league table…
1st Liverpool 2 places out in 3rd
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2nd Manchester City Just 1 place out and champions
3rd Arsenal 5 places out in 8th
4th Everton 6 places out in 10th
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5th Manyoo 3 places out and runners up
6th Chelsea 2 places out in 4th
7th Tottenham Hotspur SPOT ON!
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8th Leicester City 3 places out in 5th
9th Leeds United SPOT ON!
10th Wolverhampton Wanderers 3 places out in 13th
11th Southampton 4 places out in 15th
12th Sheffield United 8 places out; bottom side/relegated
13th Newcastle United Just 1 place out in 12th
14th Aston Villa 3 places out in 11th
15th West Ham United 9 places out in 6th
16th Brighton & Hove Albion SPOT ON!
17th Crystal Palace 3 places out in 14th
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18th Burnley Just 1 place out in 17th
19th West Bromwich Albion SPOT ON!
20th Fulham 2 places out in 18th & relegated
Any comments to be had there?
Well, ‘me of little faith’…and it’s not the first time that I’ve got the league winners wrong. Having said that, after ‘Game Day 8’ had played out, which saw us come out of our initial run of games with a W L D W D W D L, I felt sadly confident that I had predicted correctly us-not winning the league…and had a deep-down concern that we might not even finish runners up!
Fast-forward and who could have, then, predicted such a wonderful unbeaten run coinciding with such an incredible slump / implosion on the red side of Merseyside? Other sides ahead of us at the time struggled to gain form / consistency and the rest is history.
I’ve been surprised by how well Manyoo did in the league by finishing 2nd – I genuinely didn’t have them down as-only suffering 6 league defeats - the same number as us in the end! Too many draws were their failing but I’ve even had Manyoo fans agree with me since the end of the season that they won a fair number of games that they didn’t really deserve to win over ‘the 90’ – they just had players who could nick a goal in the end to turn a game in their favour against the run of play. I think that’s a long-winded way of saying they were, in fact, slightly fortunate to finish as high as 2nd…
I think I owe David Moyes an apology – I suggested, after a struggling start, that it might be a good idea to keep the Scottish manager out of the West Ham club; after he was in Covid-19 isolation and, where, his Assistant Manager then-managed to put 2 back-to-back wins together after an indifferent start. David came back and they put a largely consistent run of wins & draws together over the whole season; enough to see them finish in a Europa League spot!
Bit shocked how both Arsenal & Everton underperformed a lot of the time and I was even more surprised to see such a contrasting Sheffield United side from the previous season. The high work-rate was still largely there but not only could they just not score but there seemed an inevitability about them that they would concede in most of their matches. Gave us a hard time though, I thought, on ‘their patch’ but, eventually, they even lost that one 0-1.
I think 4 SPOT ONs is decent, if I can be so bold; as is getting 3 just 1 place out and 3 just 2 places out.
Looking at our fixtures both pre-season and then pre-match?
Pre-season: 55.26% of results predicted correctly.
Pre-match: 65.79% of results predicted correctly.
As for the cups…
League Cup - Final and, therefore, possible winners again.
SPOT ON!
F.A. Cup - Final and, therefore, possible winners.
Just 1 round out
Champions League - Semi-final stage.
Just 1 round out and runners up
So close to getting all-3 right!
Thank you, as always, for taking the time…
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