Fantasy World Cup - a lightning guide

 

The rapid onset of the World Cup this year (so soon after the conclusion of the domestic European season...) has caught me rather on the hop.

But here are a few - hopefully useful - pointers on the official FIFA Fantasy game for the tournament (not well promoted: only a few hundred thousand sign-ups so far!), which you can enter here.

As usual, the best free resources seem to be on Fantasy Football Scout, which has both a concise summary of the rules (much clearer and more accessible than those on the actual FIFA site, which you really have to dig around for!), and also line-up predictions (though, take these with a grain of salt - I suspect they're going to be well off the mark with some of them; but it's always impossible to know what selections a coach will make for the opening game). And this is the best injury update resource I've found so far, on Rotowire.

The scoring system is similar to, but crucially a little different from what we're used to with the Fantasy Premier League game. Most notably, all positions get an additional point for a goal, one more than FPL gives us.. There are also additional points for midfielders for every 3 tackles made (successfully, I assume - although the wording of the rule omits to specify this: this is yet another area where there's going to be a lot of obscurity around how Opta is choosing to interpret certain 'game actions') and every 2 chances created (again, no specificity on whether this only applies to 'potential assists' or can include earlier contributions to a move than culminates in an attempt on goal) - so, 'busy' midfielders could well rack up more points than we usually see in FPL; but it will often be something of a mystery how they earned them! Forwards get an extra point for every 2 shots on target - which should be a bit more obvious and straightforward to keep track of. It might be worth keeping an eye out for eager strikers who have a pop every time they get anywhere near the goal, even if their conversion rate isn't great. But there are no points here for 'defensive contributions' - the unwelcome innovation we've had to wrap our heads around in FPL this year. So, it's probably going to make sense to prioritise attacking players, midfielders especially, rather than defenders.

Oh, also, we're spared the vexing randomness of FPL's 'bonus points': none of that nonsense in the FIFA game.

There's also an additional point for a goal scored from a direct free-kick. This is a nice bonus, but probably not something that makes it worth targeting set-piece specialists - unless they're already worth having for their all-around game contributions. It just won't happen often enough to have any significant impact.

I have a similar feeling about the so-called 'scouting bonus': the possibility of 2 extra points if a player of yours scores >4 points in a match while he is owned by less than 5% of managers in the game. This was an intriguing new idea trialled in last summer's Club World Cup fantasy game. And it worked better in that, because although there were fewer teams, there was a generally higher level of quality - so, even some of the low-owned players were still pretty good. In this tournament, I doubt if any of the sub-5% players will be worth much, and it's almost certainly going to be more valuable to concentrate on players who give you a high chance of a big return - rather than players who give you only the modest chance of a fortuitous bonus. Also, of course, it's just so bloody obscure; it's very difficult to check up on a player's current level of ownership, and even more difficult to anticipate how that might change before the next Matchday deadline. If you obsess over trying to find these 'scouting bonus' opportunities, I suspect you're often going to be frustrated in bringing in a player at 4.5% ownership and finding that he's apparently nudged above 5% in the last hour before the deadline. [I think that happened to me with THREE of my 1st Round selections! I wasn't even targeting players at this level of ownership particularly; it was just fortuitous that I was looking for some slightly outside the box prospects, and happened to pick a few that had been ignored by the masses.... I'm pretty sure they were all down between 4.5% and 5% ownership when I picked them, but by early in the MatchDay had all risen to 5.1% or 5.2%; I don't know if that rendered them 'ineligible' for the bonus - because they didn't score enough points to qualify for it anyway!]

And, of course, we again have what has become a standard feature in FIFA and EUFA Fantasy games, 'active substitutions' - and a switchable captaincy. You can manually swap out a player who's given you a disappointing return - or transfer the captain's armband to another player - after each batch of games in the 'MatchDay' (a 'MatchDay' being all the games in one Round of the competition), so long as the new player you select hasn't yet played his game in that 'MatchDay'. (Actually, in this tournament, it appears that you can make such changes continuously, at any time, not just between the end of one day's games and the beginning of the next's; in past FIFA Fantasy games, such changes were 'locked out' while each batch of daily games was in progress.)  [And you'd think that this attitude should extend to allowing you to transfer in and out players who haven't yet played during the course of the MatchDay; but alas NO, there is a deadline of the first MatchDay kickoff for finalising your squad for the entire Matchday. Boo!]

I'm always saying that, even in FPL, you can't afford to go light on your Bench; but in international tournaments like this, with these 'active substitutions' as part of the gameplay, the Bench is part of your playing squad every time, and ideally your Bench players should be just as strong - or even stronger than - your original 'starting eleven'. You are going to have make use of at least 1 or 2 of those Bench players in every MatchDay, and usually - quite often, anyway - you'll need all of them.

The great dilemma with this 'active substitutions' rule, of course, occurs when you have a player who's made a decent score - 4, or 5, or 6, say - and you have to decide whether to 'stick or twist', whether to take the chance on dropping him for a substitute who could do better, but might well do worse. What makes this conundrum all the more challenging, especially in the first round or two, when we're still figuring out how the slightly unfamiliar scoring system is going to skew things from what we're more used to in FPL, and we don't know which teams and which players are most in form, and we don't know if it's shaping up to be a high-scoring tournament or not,... is that we have little idea what we should be satisfied with, what a decent 'above average' score for a player in each position is likely to be; even assessing that is a bit of a shot in the dark, at first. 

The key impact of this unusual rule in international tournament fantasy games is that: a) you have to try to spread your squad out over as many of the days in each MatchDay as possible; and b) you have to remember to arrange the starting eleven not in terms of what you imagine the strength of their points prospects is (as you would in Fantasy Premier League) but simply according to the date of their next game (you can select this as the key feature of your squad players to display under their names when reviewing your MatchDay seleections): the players playing last should be on the Bench, so that you'll be free to bring them in for any of the starting eleven who gave a disappointing return; and it's nice to have all four bench players having games later than any of the original starters, so you can wait to see which of them did worst for you.

A final - cruel, unnecessary - quirk of this rule is that regular automatic substitutions do in theory exist; but in practice, they don't, because the facility is suspended if you make any of these 'active' changes during a MatchDay. This is particularly galling if you forget to - or are unable to - swap out a captain who unexpectedly didn't play; if you made any active substitutions, your vice-captain pick won't automatically take his place, and you will be left without any double points from the captaincy for that round. Don't get caught out by this!

In many ways, a tournament fantasy game like this is even more of a lottery than one based on a full domestic league season; especially in this biggest of all football tournaments. There are just far more outstanding players to choose from - and any of them might have a stunning tournament,.... or an absolute stinker. And, of course, over a long season, we have plenty of opportunity to evaluate everyone's form and gradually improve our squads. Over this much shorter run of games, it's going to be difficult to recover from some 'bad' early choices and disappointing early returns.

In the group stages, I think it's likely to be better to concentrate on teams that enjoy the most mismatched fixtures, rather than on the biggest teams and the star players. With all due respect to Iran, Iraq, Haiti, Cape Verde, Curacao, Panama, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan (they at least have quite a decent defence; but I doubt if that can save them from a last-place finish),.... they ought to be pushovers for most of their opponents; and it is worth targeting players drawn against them in the group stage, rather than just focusing on the big-name players. [OK, I take that back - well, partly. Qatar and Haiti actually look more than half-decent. And that is the magic of the World Cup, that some of the small teams will prove capable of the occasional surprise performance or result. You can't expect that sort of resilience from all of them, though: I doubt if Panama, Jordan, Curacao and Cape Verde will have much in their locker.]

Once we get to the knockout stages, the bigger names may start to shine; and we should have a little more idea about how well they and their teams are performing. While some teams come hot out of the blocks at a tournament (especially if they've got an easy first opponent!), most take at least one game to start finding their feet, and some only start to build momentum as they progress into the knockout stages. (For this reason, I'd be very wary of playing any of the bonus chips on Matchday 1.) But also, after the group stage, the level of competition takes a massive step up, and the results of games become far more unpredictable. (I was just playing around with the bracket, and found that even in the 'Round of 16', almost every match-up I expected to eventuate was looking like a bit of a toss-up! And quite a few of the 'Round of 32' games were looking like they might not be entirely straightforward, either.)  Although the number of transfers increases significantly for each later round, you do have to be very careful to 'hedge your bets' - to avoid taking too many players from a small number of teams; you have to try to ensure that even if you bet wrong on the outcome of every game in a knockout round, you won't need to take 'hits' to rebuild a full squad for the next round. (You do that by taking players from both sides in as many games as possible, especially the games whose results are looking harder to call.)

And of course, just as with FPL and any Fantasy game of this kind, you must avoid getting sentimental about your favourite players, or your home country. Haaland might be the best striker in the world, but Norway are not a very good team all around and might struggle to get the ball to him enough for him to be very productive. England and Portugal don't look - to me - to have quite enough strength in depth to be serious contenders; and they have quite tough opening groups - so, I wouldn't be taking any of their players just yet.

For the chips, as I just said above, I would avoid risking any of them in Matchday 1, as there is just too much uncertainty about who's going to be playing, and how well. I'd say the final round is also probably best avoided, and perhaps also the semi-final round, as these tend to be quite closely matched and cagey affairs, often quite low-scoring. There is a strong case for playing the powerful 'bonus chips' - Maximum Captain (which gives you the captain's double points for whoever is your highest scoring player) and 12th man (an additional player added to your squad for one Matchday, without any of the usual restrictions on budget or country quota) for one of the group games, in which we're likely to see the biggest scorelines - and you might want to hazard one of them in Matchday 1. I think the 'Round of 32' could also work; as indeed could Matchday 3, at the end of the group stage, where the Maximum Captain might be particularly useful, given the unfortunate uncertainties about how motivated teams will be, and how many of their top players will even get minutes if qualification is already assured.

If all the top nations are safely qualified after two games, and thus likely to field their 'B teams' for the final match, that could be a prime occasion to resort to the Wildcard chip. But, of course, it can also be useful to hang on to that for dealing with a possible emergency later in the tournament - if you suddenly get a lot of injuries or suspensions, as well as having wrongly predicted which teams were going to survive into the subsequent round. This could be a further reason for avoiding the big-name players in the early rounds; if you focus on players from more mid-level nations, those nations are quite likely to have qualification still in doubt going into MatchDay 3, and thus will still probably field a full-strength team in the last game - while Kane, Mbappe, Ronaldo etc. are likely to get the day off.

The Qualification Bonus chip (2 additional points for every player who plays in a winning knockout game - even if only for 1 minute!) is probably best used in the Round of 32, because the outcomes at that point should be mostly more predictable, and you'll have been able to optimise your team for the fixtures with unlimited transfers after the group stage, and you can hedge to some extent by spreading your selections across more teams (even if you suffer one or two nasty surprises in the results, it won't make too much of a dent in your overall return from the chip).

The unfortunate complication FIFA is foisting on us is that there is also going to be a 'Mystery Booster' - an additional bonus chip which will only become available for the knockout rounds; and they're not telling us what it is yet. Having 5 chips to cram into 8 Matchdays - in effect, only 5 or 6, as the beginning and end of the tournament are much less promising for them - is already bothersomely cluttered, without the additional aggravation of not even knowing what one of those chips is. Many managers in the game, I'm sure, are going to feel overwhelmed by too much choice, and will end up playing most of these chips more or less randomly. But careful planning in how to deploy these chips could afford a significant advantage; so, don't let irritation at FIFA's muddled game design lead you into rash choices with this.

As for the tournament itself....

Switzerland (who have been blessed with by far the easiest-looking group), the USA (who are a pretty decent team, and should get something of a lift from playing on home soil), Turkiye, Morocco, Japan and Senegal are my 'dark horse' picks - not prospects to win the tournament, but capable of going a lot deeper into it than most people have imagined.

I am anticipating a win for Spain, although it could be a very close-run battle with France - and I fear we might have a 'premature final' if they meet in the same half of the draw. Brazil, Argentina, and Germany can never be discounted, but I feel they don't look quite strong enough this year, and will need a few breaks to go their way. Belgium and the Netherlands (and perhaps England and Portugal too), I expect to crash out quite early this year.

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!!!!

Even if the FIFA Fantasy game is a bit of a mess in some ways, we should be in for a feast of football. Enjoy!!!

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....]

A final peek into the Crystal Ball (25/26)

 

It's about time for a final (foolhardy, doomed...) attempt to gaze into the crystal ball, and to try to imagine how the closing stage of the season is going to unfold. We're just about two-thirds of the way into the season: players brought in during the mid-season transfer window have had a few weeks to start bedding in, most of the season's managerial sackings have now been got out of the way (although Scott Parker, I would imagine, is still not sleeping very easily; and there might be one or two others at risk if results go very much amiss over the next month or so), the League Cup finalists have been determined, and a few teams may have cleared out a little bit of breathing-room in the crowded fixture schedule by contriving to crash out of the FA Cup in one of the early rounds. We're all set for the run-in to the title (and to relegation): the last 10, 11, 12 games of the season are where things, as they say, get real.

Only a couple of weeks ago, when Arsenal seemed to have managed to negotiate their slightly wobbly period through December/January without actually dropping many points (while all of their rivals, especially City, had done rather worse), I was finally prepared to concede that they were now looking almost unstoppable, that the title was theirs to lose. I had thought, in particular, that City's woeful collapse in the second half against Spurs in Gameweek 24 looked as though it might have been the decisive turning-point in this season's title race. But.... City have bounced back from that disappointment quite strongly, while Arsenal's 'minor wobble' is perhaps continuing longer than I thought it would. And so, I'm still not completely convinced by Arsenal's capacity to tough it out during this closing stretch. They do, however, have a particularly inviting run of games in the home straight: apart from Chelsea at home at the end of the month and City away in mid-April, they should be struggling to drop points against anyone else. But maybe they'll still find a way to do so?? [Their double fixture in Gameweek 26, which we're still in the middle of, could prove crucial: they've already had one scare/disappointment, in struggling to hang on to a point and often being outplayed away to Brentford last Thursday; if things go similarly amiss for them when they visit Wolves in a couple of days, then... the race is definitely 'back on'; and City may even feel that the momentum has subtly shifted back in their favour.]

I said at the turn of the year that this race was going to be too close to call, and that it would be prudent to avoid doing so. But when I put myself on the spot here in this post,... I'm going to stick with my original gut feeling that Arsenal still weren't quite good enough to hang in until the end; I fancy they will falter - not much, but just enough for someone to catch them. And I suspect they will falter so slightly that only City have any chance of slipping ahead of them. Manchester United, with the benefit of their remarkable Carrick Bounce, currently look much the best and most dangerous team in the league, and I rather think that if they'd ousted Amorim a month or two sooner, they might have been able to get themselves seriously into the title conversation. But given how ropey things were often looking for them in the first half of the season, finishing third, as I now envisage for them, would be a hell of a result. There won't be much to choose between Liverpool and Chelsea, I fancy. Liverpool, I think, have the stronger squad and the more effective overall team, but Chelsea have a bit of an edge in explosive talent, particularly through Palmer - if he can now get back to something like his best in this closing phase of the season; and so I'm tipping Chelsea to just barely cling on to fourth place.

I was a sceptic about Villa's prospects this year (even before their terrible start), feeling that they'd overperformed last year and would struggle to get anywhere near that level again. Emery's men proved me wrong, with a sterling run of form up until around Christmas. But I worry that their squad has always been a bit too thin for these rarefied heights, and now that they've lost most of their midfield for a while - especially the stabilising force of their linchpin player, Kamara - they might really find these next few months a struggle. I'm betting that they'll just about be good enough to hang on to a top six finish - but perhaps largely because of the absence of any strong challenge from those below them, rather than because they finish the campaign all that confidently themselves.

The next four will also be difficult to separate. I fancy Brentford's recent exceptional form, and the outstanding performances of their new centre-forward Thiago, to keep them at the head of the chasing pack, although Bournemouth could run them very, very close. Newcastle are one of the hardest teams to predict, because they've had such an up-and-down season, and have been hit by so many injuries. I still think they have the potential to rally, and prove themselves to be at least a slight cut above the others in this best-of-the-rest group, but... with the talismanic Guimaraes apparently now expected to be out for several weeks, they might struggle even to hang on in mid-table (I think it will help their cause enormously if they can make a dignified early exit from the Champions League); I think, after such a difficult season, they might settle for finishing - narrowly - above their north-east rivals Sunderland.

The bottom-half are all such spotty performers, with such notable flaws in their squad make-up, that it's hard to see any of them justifiably finishing 10th or higher - but you never know: one or two of them might pull off a surprising late flourish. Fulham have had a mostly pretty impressive season, and are being buoyed in particular by the outstanding form of Harry Wilson (although the likes of Smith Rowe, Chukwueze, and Kevin have also been excellent recently); but they do have a serious lack of firepower up-front, and that makes almost every game a bit of a struggle for them. Everton have a similar failing, although for them the great counterbalancing strength of the side that is keeping them well out of the relegation mess is that they have one of the best defences in the league, rather than one of the best sets of goalscoring midfielders.

I fancy Palace and Brighton, despite their difficulties in recent months (collapsing horribly, to confound the optimistic expectations I had for them back in November), should have the quality to stay above the bottom-third scrappers. Leeds seem likely to mount the hardest challenge to pull them down another place. The Yorkshire team have been one of the big surprises of the season for me: their renaissance had not quite yet got fully under way when I last compiled a set of these predictions at the start of December, and I was still expecting them to be fairly out of touch at the bottom (only escaping dead last because Wolves had had such an improbably awful season). but they set off on quite the charge at that point. They seem to have run out of impetus again a little bit now; but they have managed to make themselves clearly rather better than any of the teams now below them, and deserve to hang on to their current position, if not perhaps scrabble even just a little bit higher.

Spurs and Forest have also had weirdly dreadful seasons, and it remains to be seen how much - if anything - of a positive 'bounce' they may enjoy as a result of their latest change of managers. I think they're both probably in too pitiful a state at the moment to mount any very dramatic charge up the table (though I fancy Forest have more potential for that; they seem a better-balanced side, and have few injury problems at the moment; and Stefan Ortega, for me one of the most promising of the January transfers, could help make them a bit more watertight at the back), but they should be good enough to resist any last-gasp challenge from West Ham and Burnley - who are the 'great success' of my predictions this year, both looking fairly certain to have exactly the kind of season I suggested they would. Wolves, alas, are in a little competition of their own, trying to avoid setting worst-ever Premier League performance records; under Rob Edwards, they have started to look as if they should be able to achieve this - but it's still going to be a struggle for them.

So, here's where I'm now expecting everyone to finish. (My earlier attempts to see into the future, my rankings from the September and December posts in this series, are on the right.)

But yes, it has been an unusually up-and-down sort of season: most of the top sides have been 'disappointing' to some extent, almost every club has suffered wild fluctuations in form, and it is still a very tight contest. With only 11 points between 4th and 12th place, and only 16 points between 4th and 16th, we could well see the current order radically reshuffled again before season's end. At the moment, though, I don't foresee too many more more dramatic changes, most teams will just about manage to maintain their current standing. I think Villa and Everton are likely to drop off a little, and Manchester United will probably close the gap on the front two - without quite catching them. But elsewhere, I think things might remain remarkably static from here on. Oh, surely not? Well, no, probably not. But my crystal ball is cloudy now; if there are more big shifts in form in store, I can't see what they're going to be!