We’re heading for the finishing straight of the Premier League season and that means predictions, at least 70 per cent of which make us look damn fools in three months’ time. Those are the rules.
But the real fun lies in which three turn out to be spot on. We’re supremely confident about the identity of at least two of these. See if you can spot which ones, maybe? Add another layer of fun? Why not, yeah?
Here are the 10 things that will definitely maybe happen this season.
Arsenal don’t bottle the league
The amount of confirmation bias in how we all view football is a striking thing. All clubs have their little pigeonholes and it takes a lot to bust out of them. They are cliches, essentially, rooted in truth. But applied unequally and unevenly.
When Fulham snapped a three-match losing run at the Stadium of Light, nobody talked about Dr Sunderland, did they? It would sound absurd.
We’re all guilty of it, of course. It’s easy and comforting and stops you having to think too hard about things. We’ll do unhealthy amounts of this very thing ourselves before this piece is through, don’t worry about that. Classic F365 cake-and-eatism. This site used to be good.
It is, in essence, far harder to earn a reputation than to shed it. Every time you do the thing people expect of you, it reinforces the idea so firmly that it takes countless examples of you not doing the thing for the strength of the association to dissolve. Spurs, for instance, now need to win their next 127 consecutive games against teams in terrible form.
And Arsenal? They need to win the league this season. And probably about another eight in a row after that to shift the narrative needle.
Because there is still the idea around this title race that Arsenal are Bottley McBottleface who are going to hand the trophy on a platter to Man City, who as we know are relentless winning machines who cannot be stopped once the run-in hits.
Arsenal’s 2-2 draw at Wolves was undeniably honking, but the way it’s been treated as all the evidence required that the Gunners are about to do another (note that word, by the way) bottling is wild. Not least when presented in contrast to Man City, a team who have themselves shockingly blown a serene 2-0 lead at the home of one of the worst Premier League teams this very month.
History is relevant. Past mistakes are pertinent. But they don’t override the evidence of your senses right now. Arsenal haven’t been flawless this season. But they have been and still are the best team in the league, with a five-point advantage over a work-in-progress Man City who bear few hallmarks of their all-conquering predecessors.
Arsenal will be fine. This is a different Arsenal and, just as importantly, a different Man City. No matter how hard everyone tries to cram them into their accepted roles.
But Arsenal do bottle the quad
They won’t win everything, though. Because they are bottlers. It’s in their DNA, isn’t it? Classic Arsenal, I’m afraid.
Our preferred outcome now this season is for Arsenal to win the Premier League, but only the Premier League. Just to see how the world reacts. We strongly suspect there will be a powerful quantity of “is that enough?” type of mischief presented as “just sayin'” devil’s advocate pondering in an attempt to minimise Arsenal achieving the one specific thing those people have spent the last three years saying they must do.
Defeat in the Carabao final will be compelling evidence that Arsenal simply don’t have the minerals rather than losing a one-off game to a good team. Failure to win the Champions League will be painted as moral failure rather than just accepted as it should be: with a shrug of the shoulders and a “Listen, fair play” acknowledgement that Tottenham are simply an unstoppable force of nature when it comes to European competition.
And when they lose the FA Cup final, you won’t be able to move for use of the word ‘anticlimax’ even as they plan their Premier League trophy parade. And we’ll be right there joining in because it’s all any of us will have.
Tottenham relegated
No longer banter, is it? Just a sane reading of current events. It’s not even Spursy, it’s just sad. Sad, and very, very funny.
There has been a wild overreaction in the media generally to Spurs’ 4-1 paddling by Arsenal. Much of it because, as outlined above, a great many people genuinely seemed to think that a very good Arsenal side were about to get turned over by an execrable Tottenham because narrative. That was always deeply unlikely to be enough.
The only team that could beat Arsenal on Sunday was Arsenal. Spurs were effectively spectators.
The other reason, of course, is that vast swathes of the football media have been in complete denial about how bad Spurs actually are because Thomas Frank is their king, a man viewed entirely uncritically at all times because he is very rarely rude to their faces and that is the real quiz.
With him gone, scales have fallen from eyes and the groupthink-addled press pack have as one suddenly noticed something. And that something is that Spurs are sh*t.
We’ve been saying that for absolutely ages, so know that this is not a kneejerk response to the weekend. It is a studied and careful move of the knee based on about four months’ worth of weekends. Spurs are sh*t and what is more, Spurs are going down.
Strip everything away, consider the contenders for the final relegation spot and their current state, and tell us you don’t agree. Which of these teams would you fear for most?
Team A, currently inside the relegation zone but now only two points from safety after a run of 11 points in their last six games.
Team B, currently two points above the line, inconsistent in both performance and results after a string of misjudged managerial appointments but with early reasons for optimism under a manager who proved last season he can deliver striking transformation to an apparently sinking ship.
Or Team C, currently boasting a four-point cushion but who had been 13 points clear at the start of a year in which they are still yet to win a single game, extending a wretched run dating back to October that now reads two wins in 18 having also finished 17th last season.
Team C also sat on their hands during the January window and called it sensible grown-up refusal to panic even as their number of available senior players dwindled towards single figures and panic became the only sane response.
Team C also inexplicably delayed sacking their obviously failing manager – let’s call him Thomas F… no, that’s too obvious, let’s say T Frank – until things had reached full emergency status and have now replaced him with a firefighter interim who has no experience of Our League and who, after one abject game, appears to have just realised with abject horror quite how big a mess he’s stumbled into.
It’s all very Team C-y.
Michael Carrick named permanent Man United manager despite everyone knowing what comes next
They’re going to have to do it, aren’t they? Even though we all know what will happen next. Even though they know what will happen next. Even though they know we all know what will happen next.
There is no escape now. This was always the risk when United went for Michael Carrick, a man whose only serious qualification for being Man United manager was the fact he was a very good Man United player, over Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, a man whose only serious qualification for being Man United manager was the fact he was a very good Man United player.
Converting a second Solskjaer interim stint, however successful, to permanent status would have been much easier to resist because we already have concrete proof of what happens once he’s made full-time manager.
Once United decided to go down the identically themed Carrick road, this was always the risk they took. That he would make it impossible for them not to give him the permanent job.
Maybe he actually is just this good. Maybe it won’t happen again. But our confirmation bias senses are tingling. He’s Solskjaer Mk II, and that’s that.
Nottingham Forest sack Vitor Pereira
Just playing the percentages here really. Nottingham Forest have, on average, sacked a manager every nine Premier League games this season and therefore maths tells us there is still time for one more.
No idea who they appoint as his replacement, though. The great thing about Mr Marinakis’ managerial appointments is that with their increasing frequency has also come increasing confusion. The overarching objective gets harder to follow, the plan fuzzier rather than clearer. There is no coherent line to draw that takes you from Nuno Espirito Santo to Vitor Pereira via Ange Postecoglou and Sean Dyche.
So Nottingham Forest’s final few games of this season will see them under the temporary stewardship of, oh, let’s say… Ian Woan.
Liverpool miss out on Champions League
Someone has to, because four into three doesn’t go. We’re not willing to entirely rule out the tempting ‘Aston Villa collapse on the run-in having been in title contention for so long’ narrative, but it takes two to tango. A very plausible Villa collapse is only any use if all three of the Big Sixers currently lurking behind them are able to capitalise upon it.
Liverpool don’t currently appear to be such a team. We reserve the right to entirely change this opinion after they’ve sorted out relegation-haunted West Ham, Wolves and Spurs in their next three games, but then to entirely reverse our position once more after they come unstuck against Brighton and Fulham before the traditional draw at Everton.
The most compelling section of Liverpool’s fixture list is the final run-in itself, though. They are scheduled to play all three of their Champions League rivals back-to-back in May, at a time when they may well have all manner of additional cup commitments both continental and domestic to consider.
Chelsea win the FA Cup
No real coherent thought process here, to be honest. We just have a hunch it will be them rather than any of the other good teams still in it that could win it.
And surely we’d all enjoy a post-match interview with a triumphant FA Cup-winning manager in which he talks briefly about his players and then at punishing length about what the cup run has taught him about B2B sales while matchwinner Cole Palmer stands alongside him staring blankly into the middle distance.
Bournemouth have another run of relegation form just as Andoni Iraola gets linked with a big job
Don’t think we will ever tire of Bournemouth finishing mid-table every season via the medium of always being in either Champions League form or relegation form but never, ever just middling form.
We’re certainly not bored of it after three years anyway. So far this season, Bournemouth have taken 18 points from their first nine games, then five points from a winless 11-match run, and are currently on a seven-match unbeaten run that has delivered another 15 points.
So there’s still plenty of time for a cheeky little eight-match run without a win to close out the season, ideally one in which the only games they take a point are against Arsenal, which is evidence that Arsenal will bottle it, and against Man City, which is evidence that Bournemouth are quite good.
The key, though, is that this run starts just as Iraola is being linked with bigger things. And, by sheer happenstance, the eight-game winless run will begin against Manchester United, with whom he will be strongly linked in the build-up on the back of what is by now a 10-match unbeaten run before a chastening 3-0 defeat sparks the Cherries’ latest switch-flicking change in form.
Sunderland finish above Newcastle
We’ve got a proper title race, a compelling scramble for European qualification with familiar faces going for the Champions League but a huge opportunity for an unlikely name to wind up in the Europa Conference spot, and at least a three-way fight – possibly more – to avoid the final relegation spot which could end up with the loss of a Premier League ever-present.
But the real quiz is to be found in mid-table, where Newcastle and Sunderland are locked together on 36 points and miserable form. Both have one win and four defeats in their last five games.
The worry for Sunderland is that they’ve started losing home games. The worry for Newcastle is that the only Premier League team they’ve beaten since the first week of January is Tottenham which barely counts.
It’s not shaping up to be a sprint for the finish line, but that doesn’t mean this slow-moving battle for local bragging rights won’t make for compelling viewing.
VAR inserts itself into at least one major battle
Might be the title race, could be the relegation fight, perhaps the Champions League squabble. But one of those will feature at the very heart of its most significant moment an enormously divisive, opinion-splitting VAR decision that reminds us all yet again of what we threw away in order to have a system that exists on the back of a lie: that unanimously-agreed 100 per cent correct decision-making is an achievable aim in football, the messiest and greatest of all the sports.
While centrists will argue, reasonably but uselessly as is their wont, that actually you can’t just pin the whole course of a season on one VAR decision, everyone else will loudly and righteously call for its scrapping because it isn’t doing anything to reduce controversy, is if anything only making things easier for those who see corruption in every call against their team, and has caused untold damage to the greatest moment football offers: celebrating a goal.
The response from the wider game to renewed and increased calls to scrap VAR altogether on the basis that not only is it not working now but that it can in fact never work – not the way they say it can – will be “We hear you, we understand, but what about this solution, guys – what if instead of scrapping VAR we gave it more powers? That might work?”