‘Liverpool will struggle’ and ‘Ipswich will be cushty’ – revisiting our 24/25 Premier League predictions
The Premier League season is over and that can mean only one thing: going back to our pre-season predictions and laughing our heads clean off at the hilariously confident wrongness contained within.
Mocking our ridiculous and frequent inaccuracies in this fashion makes us realise why you lot enjoy it so much in the comments.
Anyway. Let’s crack on. Upcoming highlights include ‘Liverpool will struggle’, Ipswich to stay up ‘comfortably’, Forest to get relegated and Nuno to be the first manager out of a job. Yeah, it’s a vintage year all right – you can read the whole sorry thing in full here.
Let’s get into it.
As is traditional, tell me who will win the league.
A large and at the time pretty understandable consensus for a Man City five-peat here, with plenty of chat about them doing it easily. ‘I think the gap will be bigger’ said big boss Sarah Winterburn; ’12 points to spare’ chirped Dave Tickner.
There were Arsenal shouts from Matt Stead and Jason Soutar, and absolutely no Liverpool talk whatsoever. No shame in that at the time, really – the Liverpool-based shame arrives with the next question…
And the rest of the top four, in order. Which nobody ever gets right.
In keeping with tradition, absolutely nobody got this right. But boy did some get it wrong.
The points in this round go to John Nicholson for at least managing to Eric Morecambe his way to the right four clubs, if not necessarily in the right order, following up his City title prediction with: ‘Arsenal, a long way behind. Chelsea, despite being a joke. Liverpool, despite losing a manager.’
Tickner and Jason Soutar got all their four into the Champions League at least having named Newcastle among their picks and – crucially – not left out Liverpool. Bonus points here for Soutar also saying Villa wouldn’t be as good and that Spurs would prioritise cup competitions. And how.
Who did leave out Liverpool? Pelt Ian Watson with rotten fruit for not only having Liverpool outside his top four but Manchester United inside it, pre-empting his own fate by following that shout with ‘Why do I do it?’ Good question, Watto. A very good question.
The standout answer here, and perhaps ever, surely belongs to Will Ford for his deeply prophetic ‘Liverpool will struggle’, a line destined for infamy and only partially redeemed by the immediately following ‘Man Utd will be worse’. Tottenham in third also didn’t quite pan out.
Dishonourable mentions too for Winterburn for having United in there, and Stead for having Tottenham.
Lewis Oldham also went for Tottenham, while saying ‘Arne Slot-ball will bring Liverpool closer to Arsenal’ which was so right it ended up being wrong but then adding that Arsenal would win a trophy, which was so wrong it remained wrong.
Three picks for relegation please.
Obvious answer is obvious, but plenty eschewed that obviousness so give Winterburn, Stead and a partially redeemed Ford their flowers for refusing to make this more complicated than it needed to be. ‘Sometimes you can try and be too clever’ were Winty’s words of wisdom when selecting the three who’d come up to go back down, and that was advice almost all of her charges went on to cheerfully ignore.
A genuinely hilarious number of those too-clever idiots opted for Forest here, with Tickner, Watson and Oldham all stumbling into that particular trap along with Nicholson who declared ‘Predictability rules again’ as he did so. This season really has been a mad one.
Still, even those who got it hilariously wrong did all manage to send at least two of the promoted clubs straight back down, and Soutar is surely grateful for the even wronger answers elsewhere that allow his punt on Brentford to slip by almost unnoticed.
Which club will be a pleasant surprise?
The age-old problem with this question is not just identifying things that are surprises but also things that are pleasant.
Winty’s shout for Everton to be ‘serenely… in mid-table’ turned out right in the end and the Moyes return just about ticks the pleasant box, we’d suggest.
Stead does well here:
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.
Ford continues his redemption arc from the Liverpool unpleasantness by suggesting ‘Bournemouth will be in the mix for Europe before Andoni Iraola has his head turned by one of the big boys.’ Iraola may not have left, but only time will tell if there was nevertheless some head-turning involved in the way they fell off in spring.
Tickner starts off okay with a Palace 50-point shout but then goes all kinds of wrong by mentioning West Ham. Although with his Spurs proclivities perhaps West Ham being sh*tbone awful was his idea of a pleasant surprise. Who knows what he’s thinking half the time, honestly.
‘No alarms, no surprises. Everything will be as you imagine,’ said Nicholson, who knew even then that Man United and Spurs were heading for the bottom six.
A couple of Ipswich shouts from Watson and Oldham here, with Lewis declaring the Tractor Boys would be ‘cushty between 11th and 14th’. The highest position in which they ended any matchday this season was 15th after six games. ‘Everton will be in a similar spot as they enjoy a decent final year at Goodison’ is much more like it, with the Toffees 13th when the music stopped.
MORE 2024/25 PREMIER LEAGUE FALLOUT FROM F365
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👉 2024/25 Premier League Losers: Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, relegation farce and more
👉 16 Conclusions from the Premier League’s final day: Controversy, predictability, silver linings and more
Who will win the Golden Boot?
All the credit in the world here to Soutar. In a world of ‘Haaland, next’ always be the man brave enough to say ‘Mo Salah, actually’.
Delivers that truthbomb in mic-drop style as well:
Erling Haaland…will not. It’s going to be Mohamed Salah.
Stunning.
Partial credit to Tickner for identifying Alexander Isak as ‘each-way value’ behind Erling Haaland, with Oldham also giving Newcastle’s star man the shout.
Which new signing will have the greatest positive impact?
The correct answer here was surely Nikola Milenkovic at Forest and if it’s not him then it may well in fact be Elliot Anderson also at Forest.
Anyway. Nobody said those.
Winterburn and Watson were both charmed by Niclas Fullkrug. Winty reckoned he would ‘buck the West Ham striker trend’ while Watson noted ‘West Ham with an actual striker should be useful’. He scored three Premier League goals. West Ham were not useful.
Nicholson went for Matthijs De Ligt, which definitely isn’t the right answer and nor was Emile Smith Rowe (Ford), Riccardo Calafiori (Tickner) or Fabio Carvalho (Oldham).
‘Amario Cozier-Duberry could shine if given adequate minutes by Brighton,’ piped up Soutar. Is 713 minutes for Blackburn adequate, we wonder.
And which one will turn out to be a massive flop?
Lots of Matthijs de Ligt here and that’s probably just about fair enough. Also lots of Dominic Solanke, which is a trickier one.
We’re particular fascinated here by Johnny Nic’s contribution here:
Solanke’s nine goals will prove what we all suspect.
Solanke duly scored precisely nine Premier League goals for Spurs. Yet we feel we’re absolutely none the wiser about him in general, and he was vital in the latter stages of that Europa League run. Perhaps it really is just as straightforward as noting that trying to understand Spurs is fundamentally impossible.
Further proof of that in Tickner’s answer where Solanke’s unpredictability was tied to that of a Spurs team that could ‘finish third or ninth’ because the idea of ninth representing a peak Tottenham banter effort now just looks utterly adorable, doesn’t it?
Easier wins come in this round for Ford and Oldham as they pick out Joshua Zirkzee, while Watto’s pick of another nine-goal striker in Iliman Ndiaye at Everton feels neither profoundly right nor embarrassingly wrong.
Who will be the biggest bloody bargain?
Nobody picked him out in the best signing category, but big points to Stead for selecting Milenkovic here.
We’re assuming neither Winterburn nor Soutar were banking on Daichi Kamada having more Premier League red cards (1) than goal involvements (0), while another shout for Carvalho – Nicholson this time – has to go down as a swing and a miss.
Oldham and Tickner’s admirable and noble attempts to manifest Ryan Sessegnon success kind of almost came off in the second half of the season, while Dave was also pretty much bang on with a very safe shout about £8m for Lucas Bergvall looking ‘stupidly cheap stupidly quickly’.
Ford also right about £21m for Savinho, and also about why they were able to get him for £21m. Watto played the long game with Archie Gray and is almost certainly going to get the last laugh there even at £35m.
Who will be named the PFA Player of the Year?
Still technically TBC but absolutely nobody is getting this right because absolutely nobody said Mo Salah.
There’s all manner of different flavour of wrong in here. You’re always a hostage to injury fortune here, of course, and that took out Winterburn (Rodri) and Stead (Saka) early doors.
Interesting that this question prompted different – and wrong, cannot stress that enough – answers from all eight of our intrepid soothsayers, with De Ligt and Martin Odegaard and Declan Rice and Kevin De Bruyne and Cole Palmer all getting nods.
In a grim round for all it’s probably Tickner who emerges with what tiny fragments of credit there are to be had for saying Isak. It’s still wrong, but it definitely feels the least wrong.
First manager to leave their Premier League job?
From least wrong to most wrong for Tickner here as he goes for Nottingham Forest hero Nuno Espirito Santo. Whoops.
He is at least not alone in his shame, with Winterburn and Oldham making the same mistake.
Steady’s Marco Silva punt isn’t much better, really, and nor is Soutar’s rush to judgement on Fabian Hurzeler at Brighton.
Russell Martin (Nicholson) and Steve Cooper (Watson) are much better shouts because they at least didn’t make it to the new year. But they were pipped to the sack race crown by Erik Ten Hag, as correctly and in hindsight really bloody obviously called by Ford. He really would have done quite well here if it hadn’t been for that immortal ‘Liverpool will struggle’ effort.
Pick the Champions League winner.
Six shouts for Real Madrid and one for Bayern Munich after sacking Vincent Kompany means the only person even halfway in the running for any credit at all here is Ford again, who had PSG to beat Real Madrid in the final. If only he hadn’t got cocky by giving us the runner-up as well, he’d now be sitting pretty.
In five words, tell us what you are most excited about this season.
Winterburn was undeniably right – up to you whether it’s in the way she intended or not – with ‘Liverpool under anybody but Klopp’, while the wait goes on for Watson (‘Man City before a judge’) and Ford (‘One hundred and fifteen charges’).
Tickner bloody loves format discourse and in fairness couldn’t possibly have known that ‘Sh*t Champions League format discourse’ would ultimately be overtaken by ‘Should Europa League winners really get a Champions League place if they are actually very sh*t discourse’.
But that’s more than five words, anyway.
