It’s Christmas so our gift to you is laughing at our own sorry asses for our pre-season predictions, which were particularly rotten this season.
You can read them in full here.
The obvious place to start is with the title predictions; we went 6-2 in favour of Manchester City over Arsenal, and I will take particular pelters for saying ‘the gap will be bigger’. FFS. Nobody even mentioned Liverpool because why would they? Nobody saw this coming. It’s worth noting that no BBC pundit tipped Liverpool either; indeed, only Liverpool-adjacent ‘experts’ even had them finishing second. Oh Arne Slot, you really have done us with your incredibly effective football right off the bat.
It’s fair to say nobody had Nottingham Forest in their top-four predictions. Many of us cocked it by suggesting Manchester United or Tottenham, while actual Chelsea fan Will Ford wrote that ‘Liverpool will struggle, Man Utd will be worse and the less said about Chelsea the better’. Jason Soutar concurred that Chelsea are a ‘mess’. Johnny Nich called the same team a ‘joke’ but still included them, making him the only one to call Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea. How did he not see Forest coming?
‘Predictability rules again: Ipswich, Southampton, Forest’ wrote Johnny in his picks for relegation, along with far, far too many of us. Soutar took a different path and chose Brentford. Nobody mentioned Wolves, which seems frankly bizarre in hindsight.
The answer to ‘which club will be a pleasant surprise?’ is obviously Forest with points available for Bournemouth and Chelsea. Matt Stead gets some credit for the latter as he wrote ‘Chelsea will do well, but while that will surprise some it will not be in any way pleasant. If Brentford can avoid half their squad being unavailable this time they should get back to their nose-bloodying best’. Fair.
There was a bit too much hope for Ipswich, but Ford redeemed his top-four cock-up with this: ‘Bournemouth will be in the mix for Europe before Andoni Iraola has his head turned by one of the big boys.’ Will the second part of that prediction come true?
Golden Boot we expected pretty universally to go to Erling Haaland, though big-ups to Lewis Oldham for picking Alexander Isak, ‘to be different’. No mention of Mo Salah here because, as noted above, we really did not see this coming.
Which new signing will have the greatest positive impact? It’s important to remember here that the predictions are made before the transfer window closed but I cannot possibly use that as an excuse for tipping ‘Niclas Fullkrug to somehow buck the West Ham striker trend’.
The actual answer so far? Probably Nikola Milenković. Not Jean-Clair Todibo (Stead), Amario Cozier-Duberry (Soutar), or Fabio Carvalho (Oldham).
And which one will turn out to be a massive flop? There were calls for Dominic Solanke and Matthijs de Ligt, and you would have to say that the jury is still out at the fancy prices they cost. But credit goes to both Ford and Oldham, who realised that Manchester United signing another non-scoring striker was never going to end well…
Who will be the biggest bloody bargain? Oh hello Steady: ‘Nikola Milenkovic next to Murillo for one season before the latter sods off to Chelsea for £80m will be fun. He solves a couple of Nottingham Forest problems just by being massive.’
Not Ryan Sessegnon. Not Daichi Kamada. Not Fabio Carvalho.
Who will be named the PFA Player of the Year? The odds suggest Mo Salah and the odds are probably right. You know by now that we did not see that coming…
Too many of us thought Nuno Espirito Santo would be the first manager to be sacked. Ian Watson was close with ‘Leicester face a slog of a season and Steve Cooper could be a convenient early scapegoat’ but Ford nailed it with the doomed Erik ten Hag.
We used five words to say what we were excited about. Can I claim some redemption with ‘Liverpool under anybody but Klopp’? Nope. No. Bah.
