I have been fortunate to attend a lot of football matches in my life, including a great many on the last day of the season. It's up there with me as a special football match - I seemingly start every season with a wistful paragraph about summer days, short sleeve shirts and sunglasses and the last game of the season is the other side of this emotional coin - not necessarily filled with hope and optimism for what will transpire, but reflection on what has passed.
It's always a lovely day weather-wise, like the FA Cup final. I love the 10 games simultaneously. Whether there's something riding on it or not, it's always a highlight for me - helped admittedly by the ridiculous record Arsenal have in these games (17W, 2D 1L in the last 20 years....). This was also my son's first (mens') game which holds special emotional weight for me too.
Would it have been better if something else had happened? Sure. Would it have been as fun? Probably not. That's the flip-side of massive highs - massive lows if the highs don't arrive. So maybe, from a fun perspective, it's better that way...
Everything else sort of unfolded as expected. Everton won with a screamer to stay up, and Leeds very much did not but, as Villa did, Spurs's points were in vain. Unless I suppose you count them staying in 8th rather than dropping below Brentford into 9th. Congrats all round.
But you don't want to hear about all this. You want to find out who won and stuff. So without further ado, let's get statty
This week, 18 people played
Most popular predicted result: Arsenal WIN (17/18)
Most disputed prediction: Leicester vs West Ham (6-5-7 split)
Highest odds: Steven Daniels (2734/1)
Lowest odds: Josh Daniels (45212/1) - needing to beat ECI by 3 this week to win the title, he went a bit Hail Mary
Average odds: 23973/1
Best predictor: Massey Rating (6/10)
Worst predictor: David Silverman (2/10)
Average score: 4.17/10
Best predicted result: Arsenal WIN (17/18)
Worst predicted result: Brentford WIN (1/18 - well done Zoe Daniels)
Everyone's results:
The leaderboard of those who didn't play enough is here too:
Pretty good stickiness this year - Eli needs to play a bit more but pretty much everyone else stayed the course enough to stay on the main leaderboard so thanks all!
So congrats to the ECI (I'm going to find out who I can actually notify this summer) and all that remains is for me to review the pre-season predictions....
A mixed bag.
Let's start with Champions. 6 of us went for Man City - JA, NK, NJSPTC, RD, RK & SD. 3 people thought the Liverpool momentum would continue - AK, DG & DSIL, whilst blind club loyalty came in to play for JD (Arsenal ) & DB (Spurs). One was closed than the other.
For runners up, the 3 who thought Liverpool then put City, as did JD- so he could have nailed it. Nearly. Raffi Kleiman put Chelsea to finish second, which was sweet but hilariously wrong and everyone else put Liverpool. Nearly....
NJSPTC did actually call Arsenal to come second. 5th place in the leaderboard and a great pre-season predo set so far. 2/2. Set up a tips hotline for some sidegig income...
This is where it all starts falling apart. 3rd place - DB, DSIL & me went for Arsenal - #trustingtheprocess. DG & JA thought £600m+ of Private Equity money would propel Chelsea to, er, standstill and AK & NK sweetly thought Conte would build on Spurs's 4th place finish. JD, NJSPTC & RK saw the Liverpool slide starting....but not as dramatically as it ended up. So no points for Erik Ten Hag's revival.
4th place had the same constellation of clubs with the introduction of Man Utd - as an aside, we really are boring if we basically thought the top 4 would remain the same + some Arsenal bias. JA, RK & me thought Spurs would get 4th. This was not ridiculous even at the time Conte went, although it clearly looks bad now. David Brickman hates Pep, which can be the only reason why he went for City to finish 4th. AK & SD thought Arsenal would sneak back into the CL via 4th place and DSIL, NK & NJSPTC thought it would be Chelsea's. Only DG & JD thought Man Utd would get Top 4.
So to EL & the Europa League places. JA & NK thought St Totteringham's day would be upon us and put Arsenal in 5th. AK, DB & JD all saw Chelsea tears and went for EL. NJSPTC & me thought it'd be 5th for Man Utd & DG, DSIL & SD all went for Spurs. I've saved the second funniest prediction for last - RK saw Leicester finishing 5th. Nearly right.
6th I might skirt over. 5 for Man Utd, 1 for Arsenal, Spurs & Chelsea. NK thought West Ham would get 6th - they might yet get EL by another route but their league formw as poor. NJSPTC again with a great predo going for Villa who finished 7th with sensational form once they'd replaced Gerrard with Señor EuropaLeagueExceptAtArsenalTheFraud.
Relegation was for the most part a shambles. Firstly, kudos to JA & NJSPTC who thin only one club go down each year. Fulham (JA) & Spurs (NJSPTC) both stayed up. Unsurprisingly, Forest (7) & Bournemouth (5) were popular choices but incorrect. Fulham too were chosen by 7 people. DB & AK both picked Brentford to have 2nd season syndrome whilst DSIL saw Everton's struggles coming. Nobody got Leicester, Leeds were chosen by SD, AK, NK & DG. I picked them to be in the mix but ultimately survive as I did all season in the blogs - clearly I have too much bias there. Only JD & NK got Southampton too. NK cannot predict the good clubs for toffee, but knows his onions at the bottom.
Cup competitions:
The League cup was to remain in City's hands (SD, DSIL, DG, NJSPTC, AK) or Liverpool's (JA, RD,DB). NK thought Spurs might win a trophy, RK really likes Chelsea....and JD thought this might be the next piece of silverware collected by Mikel Arteta. So - no votes for Man Utd or even Newcastle. Whoops.
The FA Cup is similar. Arsenal obviously always win the cup said SD, JD, NJSPTC & AK. Leicester are a good side said RK & NK. Liverpool can't be discounted said DSIL & DG and DB thought this would be a LEAGUE AND CUP DOUBLE FOR SPURS. Whatever he'd been smoking last summer, I'll have some of that.
Only JA & me thought Man City might do it - nobody for Man Utd. UPDATE: We were right.
Europa League was an interesting one: JA, RD DSIL, JD & AK thought Arsenal would win it this year. JD in fairness thought Arsenal would do the Quadruple, but the other's thought this might still be a late season priority. As it was - they sort of threw the EL tie whilst also being strong enough to hole the rest of the league tilt. NJSPTC & NK thought Barca would take it, RK thought Olympiakos would do it - they finished bottom of their group with 2 points (Nantes, Qarabag & Freiburg). So....close. DB showed his skills aren't only a league thing, choosing Sevilla.
Champions League - let's start by suggesting RK had a bit too much absinthe whilst doing his Euro predos - suggesting Spurs would win the CL alongside Olympiakos (above) and Maccabi Tel Aviv (below). JA, DG, & NK thought Real Madrid would win again, DB showed his skills only extend to second tier comps by choosing Liverpool, whilst NJSPTC & Sd both went for FC Bayern München. Everyone else went Oil. AK thought it'd be PSG, but RD, JD & DSIL all correctly went for Man City. Money talks.
I was also the only person to predict a City Treble. Applause.
ECL Winner - "who cares" and "what is this" were 2 comments. 3 shouts for Villareal, 2 for Roma, 1 for Maccabi Tel Aviv were all wrong, but SD & DSIL did both go for West Ham. UPDATE: They were right.
PL top scorer - Plaudits to me who said Haaland. JA & AK thought Salah would be in the mix. Only DG & RK thought Kane, whilst NK thought Son would win another Golden Boot. Ouch. SD, DSIL, JD & NJPSTC thought Gabi Jesus would do what he has never done and score lots of goals so good scouting guys and only DB thought Darwin Nunez would be top scorer.
Golden Gloves: All wrong again. Allison got 4 nominations, Ederson got 3, Ramsdale 2, Mendy 1 (dropped after 3 minutes) and er....Bernd Leno. At Fulham. NJSPTC expected newly promoted Fulham, with Tim Ream and Tosin Adarabioyo at CB to get more clean sheets than any other team. I take back what I said about his tipline.
Best & Worst New signing - taken from their WSC scores:
4 candidates - DB & NK thought Darwin Nunez would do a madness (6.79). NJSPTC really Lent into Leno (6.94). RD, SD, DSIL, JD & Ak saw the quality and importance of Gabi Jesus and made a decent shout (7.42) but the winner was Haaland (RK & JA) with 7.54.
Worst signing again a mixed bag. Let's get the Alf Inge Haaland humour out the way first, eh NJSPTC? He actually provided one of the moments of the season at the Bernabeu winding up all the Madrid fans, so absolutely not. DB also correctly called Dele Alli as being done (5.96 in 2 sub appearances) but he technically joined Everton in January 2022 and then left to Besiktas this season so outside the scope of this prediction. I went for Tarkowski (6.97) unfairly and Scamacca (6.50) more fairly. JD awkwardly went for Lisandro Martinez, who was in fairness, very good (6.84) but only marginally better than Koulibaly (6.83), the choice of DSIL. That was not the eye test but maybe Chelsea's problems lay elsewhere. Similarly, JA & AK thought Sterling would flop, which is probably fair given the price tag (6.74) and NK thought Andreas Pereira would be bad at Fulham (6.73) which I dispute. So we're down to the final two - RK said Yves Bissouma (6.29) and SD said Kalvin Phillips (6.27). Both injured, both discarded by managers, but KP is worse on score, cost twice as much and played much less - with nearly all his minutes coming after City had already won the league. Not much in it though
Prediction totals: 1 point for correct, 0.5 if a prediction was 1 place out
I'll take it as a win....I've always been a Macro guy.
So that's it for another year - other than the update blog after the CL final. Thank you all once again. We'll be back in later July with some new changes but until then, have a lovely summer
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