Alright, so I figured I’d share a bit about what I got up to this season regarding the Premier League. I tried my hand at predicting who’d be going down. No crystal ball or fancy algorithms here, just me, my observations, and a bit of a hunch now and then.
My Early Season Scribbles
You know how it is at the start of the season. Everyone’s full of hope, even the teams that, if we’re honest, look like they’re going to struggle. I always take a good look at the newly promoted sides. It’s a massive jump, the Prem, and some just aren’t ready. I jotted down a few names back in August, thinking, “Hmm, these guys might be in for a long year.” Didn’t spend ages on it, just initial thoughts, really.
Getting Into the Nitty-Gritty
Once we were a dozen games in, that’s when I started to pay more attention. The table starts to take some shape, doesn’t it? I wasn’t just looking at points. Nah, that’s too simple. I started keeping a little notebook. I’d watch games, or at least highlights, and make notes on how teams were actually playing. Did they look like they had any fight in them? Were they creating chances, or just hoofing it and hoping? Little things like that.
I also started looking at their run of fixtures. If a team in trouble had a string of games against the top boys, you just knew their confidence was going to take a hammering, even if they nicked an unlikely point.
The Stuff I Really Focused On
So, what was I tracking? Well, it wasn’t super scientific, more like a checklist of common sense things, I guess.
- Recent Form: This one’s a no-brainer. If a team goes five, six, seven games without a win, alarm bells are ringing. Loudly. You can see the belief just drain out of them.
- Goals For and Against: Not just winning or losing, but how they were losing. Were they getting thumped every other week? A shocking goal difference is like an extra point lost sometimes, and it tells you a lot about their overall quality, or lack of it.
- Managerial Changes: Ah, the good old “new manager bounce.” Sometimes it works a treat, a fresh face, new ideas. Other times, it’s just papering over massive cracks. I’d always watch to see if there was any real change or if it was the same old story with a different bloke in the dugout.
- Player Body Language: This was a big one for me. You can tell a lot from how players carry themselves. Are heads dropping after conceding? Are they arguing amongst themselves? Or are they still chasing every ball, even when they’re getting beaten? That told me more than stats sometimes.
The Squeaky Bum Time
As the season wore on, especially after Christmas, things got really tense. Every weekend felt huge for the teams down at the bottom. I’d be checking scores constantly. If a team I thought was dead and buried pulled a rabbit out of the hat with a surprise win, it would throw all my thoughts up in the air. I actually found myself getting quite invested in some of those relegation six-pointers, even for teams I don’t support. The drama is something else.
I specifically looked at who they had left to play. A “winnable” run-in on paper could give a team hope, but the pressure can make those games even harder.
So, How Did I Do?
Well, I wasn’t miles off, I’ll say that. I got a couple of the relegated teams right from fairly early on. One of them, I kept flip-flopping on, and they ended up surprising a few people by staying up – or maybe another team just collapsed worse. It’s a mug’s game trying to be precise, isn’t it? Football’s just too unpredictable. There’s always one team that defies logic, for good or bad.
Final Thoughts From My End
At the end of the day, it was just a bit of a personal challenge, something to make the season a bit more interesting beyond my own club. It definitely made me appreciate how tough it is down there. You see the stats, you see the pundit predictions, but until you really try and follow the narratives and the little momentum shifts yourself, you don’t quite get the full picture.
It also reminded me that while data is useful, sometimes a team just has a bad run of luck, or key injuries, or they just… lose their nerve. I’ll probably have another crack at it next season. Why not? It’s all part of the fun of following the Premier League.