Reacting to 'My Premier League Predictions for the 2022/23 season' - The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
Reading this back I both felt like a genius and an idiot.
The 2022/23 season is nearly over and of course, as we all suspected at the start of this campaign, Manchester City have won once again, even if Arsenal did give them a good run for their money.
Like a veteran racehorse, City kept pace for the majority of the season before showing their pedigree at the end and bursting into the lead to cross the line first.
However, despite the inevitable happening, this Premier League season has also been one of twists and turns and at the start of the campaign, I tried to predict some of them, which you can read here.
So with one game left and not much that can change, I decided we would reflect on the 10 predictions I made at the start of the season - the good, the bad and the downright ugly.
So let’s get started with:
Jack Grealish will have a ‘breakout’ season at City (Win)
“There are two major factors I think will contribute to him getting more goals and assists; players seemingly always find their feet under Guardiola in their second season and City now have a striker and focal point, Erling Haaland.
“As a more traditional creative player, I feel Grealish will thrive with Haaland to play off and because of that, he will maintain good underlying numbers by getting the goals and (mainly) assists that contribute to a ‘breakout’ year.”
With five goals and seven assists, some people may still have question marks over the ‘output’ of Jack Grealish, but there is no doubt that he has been one of Manchester City’s best players this season.
He is critical to Pep Guardiola’s system. He carries the ball forward reliably and crucially, when City need to slow the game down his teammates can give him the ball and he can hold it out wide.
I think he has had an outstanding season and with another Premier League title under his belt and a possible treble on the horizon (pain), I doubt anyone will be holding that £100m price tag against him any time soon.
Spurs will make it a three-horse race (Lol. Lmao.)
Well, at least we’re getting my most disastrous prediction out of the way early because boy this was a bad one.
They have the manager to help them overcome their ‘Spursy’ mentality, they have Harry Kane and Heung Min-Son, they have a good core squad and they have a decent amount of depth.
And who knows once you are in the mixer, a bit of luck or a slip up from your rivals and anything can happen (it probably won’t but it’s nice to think that it could).
Not only was it not a three-horse race this season as Liverpool’s form fell off a cliff, Tottenham Hotspur never even saw the brake lights of City and Arsenal racing off ahead of them.
The Antonio Conte project failed spectacularly. He had multiple meltdowns in press conferences and seemed like he was going to be sacked for months before his eventual departure.
None of Tottenham’s signings have hit the ground running. Richarlison has only scored one goal and played under 1000 minutes, Christian Romero has been inconsistent, Yves Bissouma looks like a shadow of his former self and though Ivan Perisic has been effective going forward, he has been horrible defensively.
Even the January signings of Pedro Porro and Arnaut Danjuma have failed to steady the ship. Combine this with the underperformance of Heung Min Son and the wheels have well and truly come off and flown off down the hill.
On paper, many thought that Tottenham had all the tools to mount a challenge, but now with one game left, there is a chance that they will miss out on getting any European football next season.
Darwin Nunez won’t be ‘good’… but he’ll still probably score 15+ NPGs (Kinda)
Chaos reigns and its face is that of Darwin Nunez. If intrusive thoughts were a person it would be the Uruguayan forward who Liverpool signed for £85m this summer.
My general argument was while he’s not the most technically sound forward and his decision-making leaves. a lot to be desired, Liverpool’s system would create enough chances for him to score 15+ goals in the league. So how did he get on?
He has scored nine BUT he has scored 15 in all comps, so I am taking it as a partial win, especially since how he has played is along the lines of what I described in my predictions.
If we look at his xG on Understat, Nunez’s sits at around 14.37, so he has underperformed it by about 5 goals this season. He has spurned a lot of good chances but also scored some chances you would not expect.
I was expecting this sort of variance between his xG and goals scored, but I thought Liverpool would create a lot more (their upturn in form has coincidentally coincided with Cody Gakpo arriving and Jota’s return from injury, reducing Nunez’s minutes).
All I’m saying is, never change Darwin Nunez.
Salah will contribute to 43+ goals (L)
In the 2017/18 season, Salah contributed to 42 goals, I thought with a nice break in the middle of the season due to Egypt’s absence from the World Cup the 30-year-old forward may be able to better that.
I was wrong.
Salah has still had an impressive season by all accounts, contributing to 30 goals (19 goals and 11 assists) but what derailed this prediction completely was Liverpool’s post-World-Cup form.
Across January and February, Salah only registered one goal and one assist in the Premier League. He has made up for this in the backend of the campaign, but this made the prediction impossible.
One thing I have learnt ahead of next season’s predictions is not to anchor too many around the assumption that one team will be good, especially when I expressed my doubts elsewhere about certain parts of their team.
Chelsea won’t get Top 4 (Boy I didn’t know it would be this bad)
“Chelsea drew 11 games throughout the season. Despite their solid defence, they lacked the cutting edge on offence and they haven’t yet rectified this in the transfer market.
“Raheem Sterling is a good addition, but most of the club’s transfer business has surrounded reconstructing their defence after the departures of Antonio Rudiger and Andreas Christensen. But with Romelu Lukaku flopping and then leaving on loan they need a striker.”
Chelsea’s top scorer this season is Raheem Sterling with 9 goals… in all competitions.
Yes, their problems stretch much further than just needing a guy who puts the ball in the back of the net, but having someone who can reliably finish his chances gives you some time and breathing room to sort out your other issues.
With £600m spent and no clear strategy, it just never seemed like it would work for Chelsea this season, and as expected Thomas Tuchel was a casualty of this (though much earlier than I thought).
Graham Potter was unable to do any better and was also unceremoniously sacked and Frank Lampard’s interim spell has been hilariously bad.
When I said ‘Chelsea won’t get Top 4’ I was expecting them to finish in the Conference League places at worst, not in the bottom half of the table. Still, you can’t say that this is anything less than they deserve after a comedy of errors, and there is no guarantee it will get any better in the 2023/24 campaign.
Scott Parker will be the first manager to be sacked (This was just a given)
There’s not much I can say about Scott Parker’s sacking, because we all expected it (I was wrong about it being between him and Marco Silva, but I picked right in the end).
I’ll just take this section to praise the work Gary O’Neil has done as his replacement; his management has seen his team survive comfortably and he should have been nominated for the manager of the season for his work.
Southampton will be relegated (Yeah I’m a genius)
This was probably the best prediction that I made before the 2022/23 season.
I was not convinced by the existing Southampton squad under Ralph Hassenhuttl and I thought while their summer signings showed a lot of long-term planning, in the short term they weren’t of the required standard to keep them up.
I could not have predicted the calamity that was Nathan Jones as Hassenhuttl’s replacement, but in some way, I think this appointment was just representative of their downward trajectory that started in 2017.
2017/18 - 17th place, 36 points (3 points off relegation)
2018/19 - 16th place, 39 points (5 points off relegation)
2019/20 - 11th place, 52 points (18 points off relegation aka a good season)
2020/21 - 15th place, 43 points (15 points of relegation)*
2021/22 - 15th place, 40 points (5 points off relegation)
The Southampton that flew high under Mauricio Pochettino and Ronald Koeman is now but a memory, and they will have to spend the next few seasons rebuilding their squad to get it back up to scratch.
I would like to say that I think Russell Martin is a good appointment. He played a strong brand of possession football at Swansea and at a stronger side like Southampton who will be able to dominate the ball, he will be able to truly implement it.
Everton will survive but Frank Lampard won’t (50% right currently)
“Everton may have avoided the Championship with him in charge, but at times it seemed like it was in spite of him instead of because of him as they made hard work of their final run of games.
“The team struggled with injuries throughout the 2021/22 season and a number of players seriously underperformed (or were not used correctly by Lampard), but with someone like Sean Dyche taking the helm part way through the season they should finish comfortably above the relegation zone.”
Lampard is not a good manager and for those who disagreed, I’m glad he’s given me two opportunities this season for me to go ‘I told you so'.
He sits with a 14% win rate this season (with one game left to play), only a single per cent higher than the aforementioned managerial calamity himself Nathan Jones and I doubt he will be getting a Premier League job again any time soon (though stranger things have happened).
So it was no surprise that Everton sacked him, though I believe they should have done it earlier.
I’m also glad my mini-prediction that Sean Dyche would take over also came to fruition and he has done well to salvage this season somewhat for The Toffees.
They currently sit just above the relegation zone with one game left to play and everything in the balance. Hopefully, they have enough to stay in the league this season and prove my whole prediction correct, but with how badly they are run they would deserve relegation at the end of this campaign.
Newcastle will stall in midtable (Another Ugly One)
Yeah, the less I say about this one the better.
I have a few excuses - I cited in my article the lack of signings that Newcastle had made and they did make a few more after the article, including one Alexander Isak who has been excellent for the Magpies this season.
Also a number of teams I expected to do much better just haven’t - Liverpool, Tottenham, Chelsea, West Ham and to some extents Crystal Palace.
But excuses aside, I did underestimate them and that was my mistake. Newcastle have been excellent this season and Eddie Howe has done a fantastic job with the players he’s had at his disposal.
The Toon will be enjoying Champions League nights next season while I’m sat here with egg on my face.
United will have the second-most creative ‘defender’ in the league after Trent (Ok, ok I did say this was a Hail Mary)
Yeah I was wrong on this one too. I expected Manchester United’s defenders to be more involved this season under Erik ten Hag, but the team didn’t score enough goals and United scored a lot in transitions so the full backs weren’t involved as much.
Trent was still the most creative defender in the league, but he was joined on eight assists by Andrew Robertson (and Ivan Perisic technically).
Diogo Dalot and Luke Shaw both managed two assists so they weren’t even close. My Hail Mary did not pay off at all.
So that’s how I fared on my predictions for the 2022/23 season, some good, some bad, some we will never speak about again.
I will be doing some more ahead of the 2023/24 season and hopefully I will have a better success rate next time around.