The year's predictions - reviewed

                     1st  Arsenal         3rd    2nd 2nd +1

    2nd Manchester City         4th 1st 1st -1

    3rd Manchester United         14th 13th 3rd =

    4th Aston Villa         16th 9th 6th +2

    5th Liverpool         2nd 6th 5th =

    6th Bournemouth         7th 4th 8th +2

    7th Sunderland         17th 10th 10th +3

    8th Brighton         13th 8th 14th +6

    9th Brentford         12th 12th 7th -2

    10th Chelsea         1st 3rd 4th -6

    11th Fulham         15th 15th 11th =

    12th Newcastle         6th 7th 9th -3

    13th Everton         8th 16th 12th -1

    14th Leeds         20th 19th 15th +1

    15th Crystal Palace         10th 5th 13th -2

    16th Nottingham Forest         9th 14th 17th +1

    17th Tottenham Hotspur         5th 11th 16th -1

    18th West Ham         19th 18th 18th =

    19th Burnley         18th 17th 19th =

                           20th Wolves         11th 19th 20th  =

So, this is a summary of the predictions I made over the course of this season as to where everybody would end up. The first batch were made in mid-September, four weeks into the new season. My second attempt to see the future was made at the one-third point, just as we entered December. And the final version was undertaken at the two-thirds point, straight after Gameweek 26 in early February. [The final figure in red shows how far the actual final position differed from my last forecast in February.]

As you can see, by February, things had settled down somewhat, and it was becoming easier to see, in most cases, where teams were going to end up (despite the extreme closeness of the mid-table battle throughout most of the season - which meant that some teams could still have risen or fallen quite some distance even on the final weekend). The great majority of my predictions then were within 1 or 2 places of the team's actual league finish, and I got Manchester United, Liverpool, and - strangely - Fulham exactly right, as well as the bottom three. But of course, that didn't take much doing... My initial predictions at the start of the season, and even at the beginning of December were wildly off in many cases!

At the beginning of the year, I'd thought Manchester City might struggle with their 'rebuild' even more than Liverpool (and that looked quite prescient for a while, as they did get off to a pretty rocky start). But as they started to get their shit together around the middle of the season, and we started to see the potential of Doku and Cherki more regularly, I remained cautiously optimistic that they had the quality to overhaul Arsenal's significant points-lead on them. (I counselled at the turn of the year that it was likely to remain a very close race until the end of the season, and that it would be rash to assume that either of the two front-runners was a clear favourite [although, just five or six weeks later, I was forced to concede that Arsenal may have got decisively on top...]; ultimately, it was City faltering at the death rather than Arsenal finishing especially strongly [well, that, and the unfortunate VAR farce in the final minute at West Ham in GW36!] which clinched the championship.) I maintained that optimism - though with decreasing confidence! - until the last weeks, and ultimately proved to be wrong.

I had begun the year by anticipating that United, under the disastrous Ruben Amorim, could well finish down in the bottom third again; and I think that might well have been the case, if they'd stuck with that failing manager any longer. But the Carrick transformation in January was immediate and dramatic, and I'm pleased that I was so quick to appreciate that, and to start backing them for a much higher finish.

Liverpool, despite their 'rebuild' difficulties, I had expected to be almost as good as last year, and to probably be somewhere in the title conversation again; but I fairly quickly assessed their true level, as the season quickly unravelled for them. (Perspective is important: they had a terrible season, by their high standards - and still finished 5th!!)

I suppose Chelsea was my most embarrassing misjudgement. After their superb performance in last summer's Club World Cup, I was prepared to back them - admittedly somewhat optimistically - as possible title-winners. That fell apart immediately, with long-term injuries for Colwill and Palmer, and Maresca losing his way with his tactics in the Premier League. But there were signs of a possible resurgence initially under Liam Rosenior (remember when everyone was bringing Joao Pedro into their FPL squads around the turn of the year - and the likes of Enzo Fernandez, Cole Palmer, and Marc Cucurella too?); alas, that all fell apart very quickly as well, and Chelsea ended up having nearly as bad a season as Spurs. Now, Spurs were another team I got all wrong. I had quite liked some of their signings. I thought the strength of their backline was a solid foundation for a strong campaign. I thought Frank might suit them better than Postecoglou. I thought Maddison and Simons and Solanke and Richarlison might have big seasons. But everyone got injured - and Thomas Frank proved to be an utter disaster: they ended up doing even worse than last year, and only escaped relegation by the skin of their teeth. I had recognised how much trouble they were in by mid-season, but even in February, I didn't anticipate that they'd plunge right down into the relegation places.

Villa were the other team I got badly wrong at the start of the year: I thought they'd over-performed the previous season, and that without any major new signings over the summer, they were likely to have a big struggle this year. I wasn't entirely wrong; they did have some major fluctuations in form, and Ollie Watkins failed to find his scoring boots for most of the season; but Emery again proved shrewd at wringing the most out of his limited resources. Having rather harshly suggested at the start that Villa might plunge into the bottom third, I progressively revised my expectations for them upward - but even late on, I didn't anticipate them getting up into 4th place. Sunderland were the other team who most strongly out-performed my original expectations for them: I had thought they would struggle to escape relegation, but I soon saw that they were much the best of this year's promoted sides and would probably survive quite comfortably, even rising into the mid-table - though I never foresaw that they would claw their way as high as 7th by the end.

The Three B's, Bournemouth, Brentford, and Brighton, all had somewhat up-and-down seasons which made it particularly difficult for anyone to guess where they might end up - although my predictions homed in on them pretty well. Bournemouth ended up slightly over-performing my expectations, and Brentford slightly under-performing them. But Brighton had such a yo-yo year, they kept catching me out: they had looked so bad in mid-season, I was imagining a bottom-third finish - but they managed to rally again. The same went for Fulham and Newcastle and Everton: a lack of consistency made it impossible to pin down a confident final prediction for them, but I ended up not too far off. Fulham ended up doing rather better than I'd initially expected - mainly thanks to that superb run of form Harry Wilson went on from around the middle of the season. Everton failed to capitalise on their strong start, but ended up doing not too badly - largely thanks to another superb season from Jordan Pickford (who seems to be hogging all of this year's 'Most Spectacular Saves' roundups, again). And I kept thinking that Eddie Howe was going to pull off the mid-season rally that he'd managed with Newcastle the previous year, and that Anthony Gordon was finally going to rediscover his form of the previous year - but somehow, it just never quite happened: another one of my big misses in these predictions!

Leeds I had initially expected to be possibly the weakest of the promoted sides, and they didn't do much to dispel that assessment in the early part of the season; and indeed, their great revival didn't start until December, just after I'd made the second of these sets of predictions; however, by February, I could appreciate the difference in them and was feeling confident they'd now stay up fairly comfortably.

Palace and Forest and Wolves were three teams I'd expected much better from; not surprisingly, after the way they'd finished the previous season. Wolves seemed to have such a good rapport with Vitor Pereira that I thought they'd be strong again this year, despite having lost some big players (they're a selling club: they lose their best players every year, and they've always seemed to be able to bounce back); I couldn't understand quite how they'd unravelled so badly - but as soon as that unravelling became apparent, I accepted the inevitable, that the start of the season had been so bad, they were effectively relegated before Christmas. Forest were undone by a shortage of new signings last summer to help them with their European campaign, some unfortunate injury problems (notably the loss of their talismanic striker, Chris Wood), and of course their owner's perverse decision to sack the manager who'd done so well with them the year before.... and to replace him with the disastrous Postecoglou... and then to have to replace him as well. At least they rallied well again at the end of the season. Palace I'd fancied to be able to withstand the loss of Eze, and to be able to finish comfortably mid-table again; and indeed they started so brightly that. a few months in, I was starting to think they could even nip into the last Champions League spot; but, alas, things progressively fell apart for them after that, with a raft of injuries and the mid-season departure of Guehi to City. Again, I had the measure of them by the start of February.

Burnley I had pegged as plucky-but-doomed, right from the get-go. West Ham too: I felt they'd only luckily, undeservedly escaped relegation in the last few years, and hadn't done anything to strengthen their squad this time; surely, at least one of the promoted sides would this time be good enough to put them in jeopardy - and so it proved.

So, not perfect crystal ball work, by any means - but not too bad. I am reasonably happy with these pronouncements. Let's see if I can do even better next season!

[And sorry, I have no idea what's gone wrong with the formatting up above. It displays as all neatly aligned in Blogger's supposedly WYSIWYG 'compose' screen, but keeps on getting scrambled when posted. Aaarrgh....]