(Photo by Marca)
Another season of football comes to an end, a season full of tremendous matches on the European stage, tense run ins on the domestic stage, as well as some game changing ins and outs along the way. At the midpoint of the season, I made some predictions for the finale of the Premier League season as well as a predicted run in for the Champions League against FIFA 22. Today we are going to have a look at these predictions and see what I got right, what I got wrong, and what surprises were in store along the way.
Premier League
I am a genius. There, I said it. I am Jose Mourinho. Now I’ll give it this, being done at the halfway point in the season you can get a certain sense of how things are going to go, but I had people laugh at me when I said Spurs would beat United and Arsenal to that top 4 spot. Well, you’re not laughing now, are you? Although yes, I will admit I did predict Manchester United would finish in the top 4 at the start of the season (you are going to see a theme here of misplaced trust in the Red Devils). But the top 4 at the time I wrote the article was City, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Arsenal. At the time I wrote the article Spurs were a few points behind but had three games in hand on United and two games in hand on Arsenal, meaning a catch up was entirely possible, hence why I predicted that Spurs would claim that European spot that had eluded them this season. It looked set that Arsenal were going to secure Champions League football for next season entering the last stretch, until a few disastrous results in the final few games, in particular a 2-0 defeat to Newcastle following a 3-0 defeat to Spurs left the door wide open for their north London rivals to swoop in and claim the spot. In terms of the title race itself it came down to the wire a lot more than I initially expected it to, as I suggested that City would have the title won with a game or two to spare, but that wasn’t the case at all. The signing of Luis Diaz from Porto was some of the best business done in the January transfer window for Liverpool, with the Columbian winger settling into life in the Premier League incredibly well and will prove to be an important player for Jurgen Klopp for next season, especially with Sadio Mane looking destined to move away from Anfield next season.
However, possibly the most important signing was Spurs’ acquisition of Juventus winger Dejan Kulusevski on a two-year loan. This young winger combined with the attacking outlet of Son (my personal choice for player of the year) and Kane in order to fire Spurs to Champions League football, contributing 13 goal contributions in 18 games in the league. At only 22 years of age, he will certainly be a big part of Tottenham’s team for the next season as they will try to challenge for the league title and try to go the distance in Europe. With some clever acquisitions in the summer, it is entirely possible that Spurs could be a force to contend with next season, they certainly have the man in charge to make it a reality in Antonio Conte.
In terms of the relegation scrap, my initial prediction was two out of three in terms of who actually went down, with my prediction being Norwich, Watford, and Brentford. Brentford went on to have a pretty decent season all things considered with a respectable 13th place finish, especially with many labelling them as the most likely to get relegated along with Norwich. I labelled Brentford as the biggest surprise after claiming some big results and performances against Arsenal, Liverpool, and Chelsea just to name a few and hopefully they continue to shake things up next season. At the midpoint it looked like a scary scenario for Newcastle and Burnley, sitting 19th and 18th respectively and dragging them into an ever-changing relegation scenario that even Everton ended up only just escaping. After a takeover and the installation of Eddie Howe, Newcastle made some major signings and strung together some critical results in order to fire themselves well away from the threat of relegation, with Howe doing a very impressive job in his so far short stint in the North-East. Burnley however weren’t as lucky. Following the loss of Chris Wood to Newcastle, many thought the immediate impact that giant Wout Weghorst made in his first few games would be enough to keep them in for another season. However, following the still baffling decision to dismiss Sean Dyche, the Clarets eventually faced the reality of the drop on the final day of the season, with a loss to Newcastle sending them down to the Championship. Ouch. Norwich were dead set for the drop early on, with little to no signs of escaping that harsh eventuality. Watford were constantly dipping in and out of that cursed bottom three, with many thinking the scintillating form shown by Emmanuel Dennis, combined with the international flair of Ismaila Sarr and Cucho Hernandez would be enough for a comfortable finish, but alas. Running in towards the end of the season, Everton looked very likely for the drop, but a big comeback win against Crystal Palace was enough to secure their stay in the topflight, followed by a mass pitch invasion, (which is a great time to plug my article about pitch invasions in football you should check it out, thanks.) Gutsy performances by Jordan Pickford and Richarlison in particular were the catalyst to their survival, but a heavy rebuild is needed on Merseyside if they want to be back at the right end of the table next season.
All in all, some pretty good predictions, not entirely perfect from the start but hey, you can’t get them all. Towards the start of next season, I will predict the entire table, top scorers, the whole spectacle. So, watch out for that!
Champions League
The moral of this story is to not ever doubt the most successful team in the history of this illustrious competition. Real Madrid seemingly defied all odds set before them as the triumphantly roared their way towards a record 14th European trophy. Along the way they unbelievably came back from the clutches of defeat against PSG, Chelsea, and Manchester City in the knockouts, before beating Liverpool 1-0 in the final in Paris. In a final that was marred by trouble with Liverpool fans being tear gassed by French police and a delay to kick off due to a magnitude of fake tickets being circulated, Real Madrid still managed to take the lead through Vinicius Jr and round off an incredible run for Carlo Ancelotti’s side.
Now silly Dave thought there was no way that they would come back from the 1-0 loss to PSG in the first round, so I had declared Real Madrid as going out in the first knockout. Sigh. In my defence, after a lacklustre first leg performance and compared to the mega team assembled by PSG, in particular their additions in the summer, it wasn’t unreasonable to suspect that PSG would make their way through to the next round. FIFA 22 also had the same prediction that PSG would advance so at least I’m not the only fool here, FIFA had 2-2 on aggregate but for PSG to advance on penalties. But Karim Benzema had other ideas. He was undoubtably the player of the tournament, with numerous crucial goals whenever Madrid looked down and out; certainly, he is a strong favourite for the Ballon D’or for this year. Looking at the rest of my predictions let’s see what else I got horribly wrong. For the first knockout rounds me and FIFA both predicted all of the same eventual results, so my mistakes are shared with EA Sports. We both got 4 out of a possible 8 correct teams advancing, with us both predicting Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, and Bayern Munich would advance from their ties. However, for some reason we both put faith in Manchester United (I do this all the time for some stupid reason), we both didn’t account for Real Madrid, Villarreal (the surprise package of the tournament making it all the way to the semi-finals), and Benfica would advance. My quarter finals saw Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, and Bayern progress, with 2 of those teams actually advancing from that round in real life so a pat on the back for me. However, the football AI was not so clever, having only 1 out of the 4 teams that were actually in the semi-finals being Manchester City. They again put faith in Manchester United (when will they learn), as well as Juventus and Bayern. In actuality, Juventus lost to Villarreal in the first knockout round and Bayern got knocked out by the Yellow Submarine in the quarter-finals as well, two huge scalps to claim for Unai Emery’s overlooked side. Skipping to the final now and I got at least one finalist correct so again another pat on the back for me, and on top of this I was feeling pretty good about myself at the 90th minute of Real Madrid v Manchester City as I predicted a Manchester City and Liverpool final. And then Real Madrid scored twice in the 90th minute to take the game to extra time and they eventually won. Wow. But still 1 out of 2 isn’t bad. I’ll take it. Meanwhile I’m not sure what FIFA 22 was smoking but they somehow thought Manchester United would get to the final and play Manchester City, a final I would dread to watch. I had City down to win the competition overall and the same with FIFA, so we are both losers I suppose. I may have gotten more results right head-to-head but we both failed to overlook the greatest team in the history of the competition. We’ll get them next year.
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