Arteta sacked, Salah sold, Ten Hag stays at Man Utd and other football predictions for 2024
Erik ten Hag outlasting Eddie Howe, Mikel Arteta and Gareth Southgate is on our bingo card for 2024, along with a relegation shout and the title winners.
10) Mauricio Pochettino ends his English trophy drought
A few pieces of meaningless French silverware were never going to convince anyone. Pochettino spent 18 months in Paris seemingly exclusively to collect a handful of medals which could presumably be displayed proudly on his desk alongside some multi-coloured energy lemons. But until he lifts something proper like the Carabao then it is all ultimately for nought.
Pochettino was once roundly mocked for downplaying the importance of England’s two domestic cup competitions but times have changed; while his Spurs side was arguably justified in focusing their efforts on contriving not to win the Premier League and Champions League instead, Chelsea do not have that luxury of choice.
They do, however, have a League Cup semi-final berth. And a Middlesbrough side with one eye on the Championship play-offs should be overcome en route to a Wembley showdown with Liverpool or Fulham – which has 0-0 and a Willian hat-trick written all over it respectively.
Failing that, Pochettino starts his latest crack at the FA Cup at home to Preston. At least one of them will be claimed to end Chelsea’s three-year wait for a trophy, their longest such drought in almost two decades.
9) Aston Villa or West Ham will qualify for the Champions League
Despite the manufactured panic over Newcastle and Manchester United trashing the coefficient points, it remains likely that England will earn a coveted fifth Champions League spot for next season. The favourites to win each of UEFA’s three competitions reside in the Premier League and should at least come close to fulfilling that billing, save for doing anything particularly daft.
One of those clubs might directly benefit, with Europa Conference juggernauts Aston Villa the unwieldy third wheel separating Liverpool and Manchester City from another all-out title slugfest. Unai Emery’s side sit second despite some recent wobbles and have shown enough to suggest they can hold the pace.
West Ham will keep those above them honest as David Moyes continues to flirt with the sack and orchestrate magnificently efficient performances with absolutely no in between, his planned new contract simultaneously both the best and worst possible decision the club could make.
It will be a confusing time for David Cameron either way.
8) Liverpool sell Mo Salah
It is not clear how close the move came, if indeed it was even a true consideration at all. Jurgen Klopp never seemed perturbed and Salah’s camp offered no suggestion he was entertaining joining the Liverpool summer exodus to Saudi. Already installed as the face of one brave new era, the Egyptian resisted the opportunity to lead another.
But the £150m offer made after the Premier League transfer window closed never marked the culmination of Middle East speculation. Salah is the planned crown jewel of another ambitious Saudi Arabia summer and that interest will be revisited at the earliest possible opportunity.
Liverpool were too busy rebuilding their entire midfield last summer to consider simultaneously renovating an attack which continues to rely heavily on their fifth-highest scorer of all time. But with a year remaining on the contract of a player who will be 32 when next season begins, Klopp will give in to temptation and Salah will depart at the absolute peak of his all-round game, completing his Anfield collection with a Europa League.
READ MORE: At what point do Liverpool accept Darwin Nunez won’t be the striker they need?
7) Brentford get relegated
Ivan Toney is precisely the kind of player to embrace the burden and pressure of a club placing their sum total of eggs solely in his basket. The striker will return in time for Brentford’s next Premier League fixture and the visit of Nottingham Forest will be pivotal: a place and a point separates two sides otherwise at opposite ends of the vibes spectrum.
But wonderful as Toney is, he is no panacea to these Brentford problems. Unless he can play in net, at wing-back, centre-half and at least two attacking positions, while avoiding injury in a seemingly plagued squad and having none of his brilliance dulled after an eight-month suspension, the Bees will continues to struggle with or without him.
Seven clubs have scored fewer Premier League goals than Brentford this season, including the two teams directly above and four immediately below them. Toney’s comeback will help but the Bees have lost seven of their last eight matches and about four key players to long-term injuries, with a handful more briefly abandoning a sinking ship for AFCON.
Even before glancing at a foreboding fixture list, Brentford look doomed if enough of the rabble below keep intermittently accruing the sort of points that seem entirely beyond them.
6) The three promoted Championship teams will make history
In replacing Brentford, Burnley and Sheffield United, the teams rising up from the Championship will break new ground.
Sticking necks on the line, Leicester will utilise their 13-point cushion to scrape through automatically. Ipswich are the fly in the ointment here but a five-game winless run has coincided with Southampton going unbeaten since late September to create an inexorable momentum shift.
The third spot is inevitably a little less straightforward to forecast but Leeds have a proud and famously flawless record in the play-offs so will complete the set as for the first time ever, the three teams relegated from the Premier League immediately return together the following season.
5) Eddie Howe to leave Newcastle
There is more than an element of manifestation surrounding Howe’s plight at Newcastle. Until the festive period, the suggestion his position as manager might be in jeopardy was never entirely serious in most circles, more a pointed comment on the proclivities of billionaire football owners, the fragility of such elite-level projects at the first sign of trouble, regardless of how differently they proclaim to do things, and the humour of pretending Jose Mourinho might soon rock up.
Then they lost to Luton and Nottingham Forest and were hammered into xG oblivion by Liverpool during a run of one win in eight games which has included them exiting the Champions League, Carabao Cup and very possibly the race for European qualification. Howe subsequently started saying weird stuff, like complaining about penalties claiming the Magpies were not defensively “open” in a game that saw them concede 34 shots. Never a great sign.
And their upcoming schedule offers little hope of respite. The second-worst team in the Premier League this season based on away form make the short no-win trip to Sunderland in the FA Cup, before facing Manchester City and Aston Villa before the end of January.
The Newcastle hierarchy remains outwardly steadfast in their support of Howe but this is starting to feel like a slide from which he cannot pull players who are looking every bit as ordinary as when he inherited them.
4) Gareth Southgate wastes his last chance with England
Plotting any sort of coherent post-groups path through Euro 2024 has been rendered futile by the advent of play-offs and third-place spots so the specific point can hardly be foretold to any meaningful degree. But Southgate’s final steer through a major tournament will end much the same as the rest: with England crashing out in a blaze of infuriating glory.
Slovenia, Denmark and Serbia will be handled adequately enough – two wins and a draw with handbrake and clamour discourse littered in between – before England’s eventual avoidable stumble. And the six-month transitional cooling-off period built into Southgate’s contract will subsequently be received favourably by all – even a seething Henry Winter.
3) Erik ten Hag to remain Manchester United manager
“I want to work with them and they want to work with me,” Ten Hag said of incoming Manchester United investors INEOS last week. It reads a little like the Dutchman trying to convince himself but even in the face of a historically bad half-season, the manager’s faith in the journey has not wavered.
There should certainly be a removal of the right of veto of any individual who has influenced any aspect of Manchester United’s transfer strategy in the past decade; Ten Hag is kidding himself if he wishes to retain such power in a new, more defined and refined structure after bringing in Antony.
But with Sir Jim Ratcliffe and friends installing actual specialists in genuine roles necessary for any club to function properly in the modern game, Ten Hag will cling like it’s an Eredivisie signing to his foundational work in trying to change the culture at Old Trafford as proof of his worth. With so much upheaval already unavoidably necessary, the manager sacking solution can be kept in the back pocket for future use.
The injury situation provides enough mitigation, with Ten Hag already threatening to reach Ole Gunnar Solskjaer levels of corner-turning followed immediately by dead-ends. It kept the Norwegian in a job far longer than it should have too.
2) Manchester City to win the Premier League
The assumptions are hardly backed up by a fine Club World Cup, 40 or so excellent minutes at Everton and a routine win over Sheffield United. Those prophesising a long sequence of Manchester City victories over the second half of the season are basing it on such runs in previous campaigns, when Pep Guardiola’s machine would either pull clear of their rivals or hold off a belligerent Liverpool.
“What we have done in the past doesn’t mean that it’s going to happen in the future,” was Guardiola’s own response to that suggestion. But Manchester City have already got their jitters out of the system with three defeats and four draws, yet the gap to the summit is five points with a game in hand. The champions have been uncharacteristically poor and should still be within a win of going top, while Kevin De Bruyne and Erling Haaland wait impatiently on the sidelines.
It will require a lower champion points total than usual, but Manchester City will nevertheless make it an unprecedented four in a row before reverting back to self-destructive type in Europe, defending one crown but not another.
1) Mikel Arteta to leave Arsenal
“The first thing you have to do is look in the mirror and understand – is there something that you should have done better or differently? If that is the case then learn from it. Judge yourself: ‘Are you still the right person to drive the club, the team, forwards in the way that you want and do you have that energy and that belief that you want to do it?’. It took a big reflection, but the answer is yes and I feel with a lot of energy and positiveness.”
The thought of Arteta quitting in the aftermath of a title collapse like some sort of immaculate, brooding Kevin Keegan was enticing for how ludicrous it would have been. The Newcastle icon stepped down midway through the next campaign after a pronounced championship bottling when he discovered the magic was long gone. Arteta won’t convince anyone that he genuinely contemplated leaving Arsenal in pre-season after missing out on the title by five points, the groundwork on a potentially transformative club-record transfer made.
But once another trophyless season is recorded, those ideas will become more pervasive. Arteta cited “the belief they have in myself, the coaching staff and what we’re doing” when signing a new three-year contract in May 2022; falling short of the title again is unlikely to challenge that internally but the Spaniard himself will be drained and done for the time being as he takes a well-earned break.
Gary Neville had it right all those years ago. Fourth really might be “‘the best I can do there’,” so “‘I’m going now and getting my next job'”, as long as you ignore Arsenal finishing second and being Manchester City’s excellent main challenger for a prolonged period. But Liverpool are back again so Arteta can bow out gracefully (or get sacked in November).
