The Christmas period marks the halfway point of the football season, and as always, it has been full of drama and unexpected moments. Today, I will be deciding the winners and losers of the season so far and how they matched up with my pre-season predictions.
Before I start, it is important that you know that at the start of every season, my dad’s friends and I partake in a little wager predicting every West Ham result. I am currently hovering around the 40% correct result line, so some of my wildly incorrect pre-season picks won’t come as too much of a shock.
We’ll start in the Premier League, and the easy winners so far are Arne Slot’s Liverpool, who at the time of writing, sit seven-points clear at the top of the table. Slot has come into English football, and settled immediately, and impressed with his style of play and the way he has got a song out of a Liverpool side who were falling away under Jurgen Klopp last season.
Mohammed Salah looks back to his best, and now seems set to stay at Anfield following speculation that this would be his final season at Liverpool, and they seem to be the team to beat this season.
My pre-season prediction for Liverpool: I had the Reds down to challenge for the top four but would ultimately settle for fourth place while the hangover of Klopp’s emotional departure hung over them. At the halfway stage, this is being proven completely wrong, with Slot taking the reins with ease so far.
As for Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City, they were dealt a key early season blow with their Ballon D’or winning midfielder Rodri picking up a season-ending knee injury. Despite starting the season with their normal dominance, since the Spaniard has been out missing their Citizens campaign has fallen apart, they have been on their worst run in the Premier League under Guardiola and have fallen nine points adrift of Liverpool after 14 games.
There was recent relief for the club following their 3-0 success over Nottingham Forest which saw them end a seven-game winless run. They are also struggling in Europe finding themselves 17th in the new Champions League format and as things stand will be forced to play in the round of 16 knockout fixture.
My pre-Season prediction for Manchester City: Whilst I was concerned with their recruitment and their ageing squad, I felt that with Haaland and De Bruyne, I expected them to be competitive in all competitions, and likely to win the Premier League again albeit again narrowly.
I will briefly touch on West Ham, though I am sure that you are fed up with having to think about our beloved Hammers at this point. It is safe to say that whilst perhaps the league position (14th at the time of writing) isn’t much of a shock, the manner of the performances has been deeply disappointing to date.
There has been little improvement in terms of style of play under Lopetegui and the club feels rotten to the core with players falling out with the manager, fans turning on the manager, and owners so afraid of taking risks and showing ambition that the club is risking becoming the laughing stock of the league again. Indeed, the whole 72 hours to decide whether to sack Lopetegui or not felt very much like deja vu from the Avram Grant incident in 2010, whilst I don’t think we will suffer the same fate come May this season, you fear that the board aren’t learning from their mistakes of yester-year.
My West Ham United pre-season predictions: As optimistic as ever, as displayed by my 40% success rate in the wager, I had the Hammers hovering around the upper mid-table, and whilst the league is still tight, this is still achievable. It is easy to see why our faithful feel as though this is miles away from being achievable.
Southampton go down as the losers of the season so far, with just five points on the board to date, and looking extremely porous defensively, it looks like an uphill struggle for them to survive. Russell Martin’s stubbornness to play the way that saw them promoted to the Premier League last season is admirable but it is likely to be their undoing if he remains at the club.
It is easy to play out from the back and look good when you have one of the better squads in the Championship, but when you move up a level, you must be brave enough to adapt. The Saints find themselves already seven points adrift at the foot of the Premier League table and seem certain to return to the Championship at this stage.
My Southampton pre-season prediction: I think this may be my first ‘hit’ on the prediction front, whilst I hoped I would be wrong as I know a fair few Southampton supporters, it just seemed to me that their recruitment was poor in the summer and their style of play was always likely to cause them issues in the top-flight.
Moving to the Championship, you will see the usual suspects competing for automatic promotion with Burnley, Sheffield United and Leeds currently sitting in the top three. However, perhaps the surprising team to see in the playoff mix is Sunderland, after ditching their Netflix documentary “Sunderland Till I Die” they are finally seeing success.
It is a nice story too with some West Ham links at Sunderland, I hope they make it back to the Premier League. They are a massive club and it would be nice to see someone different back in the top flight.
The biggest underachievers have to be Luton, after receiving their Premier League money and then parachute payments, you would expect them to be vying for promotion. The Hatters though are currently languishing in 19th place just three points above the relegation zone.
Turning to the newly-formed Champions League, which for me, is utterly pointless. Players were already complaining about playing too much football and now they are being crammed with more games in this new format. It is the reason why decisions like scrapping replays for the FA Cup are so ludicrous just so they can play more money-making fixtures in Europe.
The biggest overachievers in this for me are Brest. The French side were in Ligue Two as recently as 2020 and are now mixing it with the big boys in Europe and sitting above Bayern Munich, and Manchester City in the early stages of this new format.
Whilst they have had arguably the hardest set of fixtures, the fact that star-studded Real Madrid are clinging onto the final knockout place is staggering to me. They recruited Mpabbe in the summer, and whilst he has flattered to deceive so far, missing a penalty at Anfield, they would surely be hoping to be competing towards the top of this new league format.
In the Europa League, Rangers have impressed and are currently sitting in the top eight, which would give them a bye through to the last 16. They picked up a superb 4-1 away win against Nice in their most recent European fixture and will hope to cling onto that automatic bye as there are some very good teams currently sitting below them, such as Tottenham, Manchester United, Roma and Porto.
In the Conference League, a competition that I feel should be won by an English team every season giving the Premier League’s reputation, Chelsea have to be runaway favourites for this competition. It is hardly surprising to see them top of the Conference League table with four wins from four.
They were my easy pick to win the competition pre-season, so I feel like it will be my second hit. So I will mix it up with the “winners’ so far of the group stage being Slovenia outfit O. Ljubljana who find themselves in the top-eight of the League phase table with three wins out of four.
In truth though, there are a lot of poor teams in the Conference League this season and you feel as though it could be a Chelsea vs Fiorentina final come the end of the season.
To end things, I will mark it with one surprising prediction in each competition:
- Premier League: Chelsea will finish above Arsenal.
- Championship: Middlesborough will get promoted.
- Champions League: Bayern Munich will finally win something for Harry Kane.
- Europa League: Tottenham will get knocked out before Manchester United.
- Conference League: Fiorentina will beat Chelsea in the final.
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