EPL 24/25 PREDICTIONS
Time flies when you’re having fun and for this to be the second year in this series already feels so quick. I have a lot more articles planned/in the edit stage to delve deeper in to the tactical side of the game but these opinion ones are fun too in the meantime as those take longer. I just wanted to say thanks to all the subs who have been there from the beginning as I recently got my first sub that isn‘t someone I know which shows traffic is picking up. If this is you from Burkina Faso please ping me a message from the consulting page as I’m interested to hear how you found me 😊
As a little recap from last year I have a bet with my Dad and good friend Josh to see who can predict the table the best. Josh ended up winning last season wth 27 points then it was me with 23 and Dad with 19. Three points for a correct pick then two for one place away and one for two places away. Last season I started with the league table from 22/23 then added the influence of three main factors being; manager change, transfers or squad change and change in European commitments.
There are four clubs that have changed managers from the existing sides; Brighton, Chelsea Liverpool and West Ham. Chelsea changing also forced newly promoted Leicester to bring in Steve Cooper along with two unknown (to the Premier League) managers in Kieran McKenna with Ipswich and Russell Martin with Southampton. Palace and Forest will also get the benefit of a full preseason with managers who joined them partway through last season.
The way I accounted for these three factors last season was with an ordinal ranking. For example a team that got a better manager would go from 10th place finish to 9th. The ranking in the table is technically ordinal as it is about overtaking or being overtaken. However this doesn’t account for the size of the gaps teams have to make up. For example 9th to 14th last season was only eight points so if you get boosted by manager or squad improvements if I did ordinal and only boosted plus two that would not probably be enough of a boost as a 14th placed team with a better manager and better squad could easily climb eight points. This year I am going to try points added or removed as I think this allows me to greater fine tune how much each factor can be worth.
