Looking back on preseason predictions
How did I do?
A week before the Premier League season begins you will undoubtedly be inundated with a million “season prediction” articles where every author tries to predict everything that’s going to happen during the season. A week after the season where are all those articles? No one brings them up because no one wants to see everything they got wrong. It fuels the fire into the lack of accountability media where you can just say whatever you want without worrying if you’re ever wrong.
We don’t like that here. At Kwest Thoughts, we like accountability and therefore at the end of the season we like to revisit our preseason predictions to see what we got right and what we got wrong.
In this case the preseason preview was mostly just a team by team preview of the top four race. Additionally I got bored during Christmas week so I checked in on those predictions at the halfway point, so we already have some idea how these turned out, but we’ll evaluate what we said back in December as well.
All numbers are from Fbref unless noted otherwise
Arsenal
How’d we do? A
Arsenal got incrementally better. Their non-penalty expected goals against (xGA) xGA went from 38.69 down to 25.6, by far the best in the league. Unfortunately it likely pulled away from the attack as their non-penalty xG stayed pretty much the same, though this was a bit offset by them winning a few penalties. Those incremental gains earned them an extra five points.
Unfortunately for them, they needed an extra seven points. Though not only were Arsenal still playing for something on matchday 37, they kept the title race going until the final day of the season.
Manchester City
City have played one fewer match thanks to the club World Cup. They’re sitting in fourth place but they’re still only five points off the top with a game in hand. A few things have happened to City this season that have put them in this position:
Erling Haaland is scoring fewer goals
Rodri missed a few games
Kevin de Bruyne has missed all but 22 minutes of the season
Number 3 might be having an impact on number 1
Nevertheless, I don’t think anyone expected City to be this poor (which is pretty relative). Or is that exactly what they want us to think before they go on a run in the second half of the season?
How’d we do? C+
Swing and a miss as City only won 16 of their last 19 matches (and 19 of their last 23). We get a passing grade as we snuffed this out back in December.
Liverpool
Transparency is important. I cut out the first paragraph because the screenshot would be too long. The first paragraph was all about how I expected a more settled Darwin Nunez to really be banging in the goals. Swing and miss there.
As for Liverpool, they didn’t quite rebuild their midfield but they’ve sort of made it not matter? They’re top of the league at the halfway point, they’ve scored the third most goals but more importantly have conceded the fewest. And they’ve done that without really replacing Fabinho?
They’re only third in expected goal difference, so a legitimate title challenge may be a bit too much, but they’re well on their way back to the Champions League.
How’d we do? B+
#DarwinSZN never got going this season. Liverpool ended up firmly being a top four team but their title race fizzled out at the start of April. We get some points for sniffing that part out at the midway point.
Brighton
How’d we do? A+
Yea we nailed this one. Brighton won five of their first six games but then won just seven more games the rest of the season! There were some injuries that played a role in that, but mostly it was just the loss of several key players that did them in.
The one thing we missed was the difference between 8th and 11th being just 4-6 points. We were one place off. 8th place Manchester United finished eight points clear of West Ham, however the gap between 9th and 13th was just five points, with Brighton finishing right in the predicted range of 11th.
Tottenham
Ange Postecoglou is fun and great vibes, but since the hot start the same questions are still present. Where are the goals going to come from? On paper Son seems to have rediscovered his form to lead the way, but five of his 11 goals have come in two games and there’s no secondary scoring.
Spurs have also been decimated by injuries, which would should have seen coming considering this happens to every single team that goes from a manager who doesn’t press to one who wants to press high and run alot.
The good news for Spurs is that hot start got them the most important thing. Points on the board. They can’t take those away from you. If 70 points is the target for a top four finish, they’re already more than halfway there.
Do I think they’ll get another 36 points over the second half of the season? No, but they’ve got plenty in the bank for a European spot.
How’d we do? B+
What a weird season for Spurs.
They won eight of their first 10 matches. Then in the month of November they were absolutely horrible, losing four of their next five. They then went 10-3-3 over their next 16 matches through mid-April. That’s a 78 point pace, which is pretty damn good, until the wheels came off and they lost five of their last seven.
The thing was, during that 16 game run Spurs fans were still convinced they were terrible. They started talking about Ange being on the hot seat and possibly being gone by Christmas. Their underlying numbers were better over those 16 games then they were in the first 10.
Yes the wheels came off at the end but they were undone by exactly what the biggest concern was, where are the goals going to come from?1 This team lost Harry Kane and never replaced him. They got younger, and their fifth place finish is backed up by the 6th best expected goal difference in the league. They’re right where they should be, it just feels worse because Aston Villa finished fourth.
Newcastle
Here’s the question about Newcastle this season. Can they replicate what they did last year? I don’t think they’re getting 18 goals out of Callum Wilson again, but I do think they get much more from Alexander Isak.
It’s easy to see a drop off coming for Newcastle but it’s also easy to see the path for taking a step forward. Newcastle drew 15 matches last year. Seven of those 15 draws ended 0-0. Add just a tiny bit of goalscoring and you can convert those seven 0-0 draws into some wins. Cut the total number of draws in half down to seven and turn those other eight matches into say five wins and three losses6, and right there you’re looking at at least seven more points.
For the Magpies it all comes down to whether they’re going to runback their Atletico Madrid level mastery of the dark arts to keep the ball out of their net - or are they going to try and play more football?
It’s hard to make anything of Newcastle this year. They’ve added some goal scoring, but it’s come in bunches. They’ve had four matches with four or more goals, including hitting Sheffield United for eight. They’ve had far too many others where they’ve gone barren.
They’ve had injury issues. They’ve had to deal with Europe. Perhaps that’s contributed. They’re still fourth in the league in expected goal differential so perhaps being out of Europe will see them make a run up the table in the second half, but will it be enough to get back into the Champions League?
How’d we do? C-
Poor grade because a sharp reader will see, I didn’t exactly make a prediction about Newcastle at the start of the season. I just asked a bunch of questions. Then in December I just asked a few more.
Newcastle definitely had a learning experience being in Europe the first half of the year. There are definitely still “Atletico Newcaslte” elements to their team. They faced a big injury crisis and frankly looked done and dusted when they were sitting in 10th for the March international break just before the run in.
Their manager should be commended for putting his head down and figuring it out. Amidst all the chaos Newcastle won seven of their last 12 to finish seventh and likely qualify for Europe next season2. (UPDATE: They did not)
Aston Villa
Unai Emery may be able to do something in the Europa but as for this team making a step up to the Champions League. Just no.
They’ve done that by winning eight of their nine home games. Away from home though they’ve only won four of 10.
If they want to finish in the top four they’ll need to keep playing at this absurd pace at home and probably improve just a tad away from Villa park. The latter is far more realistic than the former. That’s not going to get it done.
How’d we do? F
They didn’t continue playing at that absurd pace at home and didn’t really improve their away form but that’s just grasping at straws. Not only did we completely whiff on the preseason prediction but we even doubled down on it at the halfway point.
I get zero points on this one.
Chelsea
How’d we do? B-
Mauricio Pochettino actually did a pretty good job with Chelsea. They hovered around fourth in the league in expected goal difference most of the year, just undone by some poor finishing. Of course right after the season ended Chelsea went ahead and went full Chelsea on themselves, which makes predicting anything with them almost impossible.
They did put it together late to make a run up the table and finish sixth. Usually that’d be good enough for the Europa League if not for Manchester United magically winning the FA Cup and bouncing them to the Conference League.
Manchester United
I’m not going to quote what I said here because obviously these were the biggest sections and we’d be here all day. You’ll have to actually go back and look at the August prediction and December updates.
How’d we do? B
We were pretty bullish on United entering the season however the main theme was, there’s a lot to be concerned about.
The concerns started with three metrics that have proven to be pretty good predictors of whether a team will repeat their top four performance the following season:
Deep completions allowed
Box entry difference
Expected goal difference
In the seven seasons prior to the 2022-23 season only three teams finished in the top four when allowing more than five deep completions per match. None finished in the top four the following year3. United averaged 6.66.
Only four teams finished in the top four with a box entry difference less than plus five. Three of those teams failed to finish in the top four the following season, while 2019-20 Chelsea can thank a late Leicester collapse for getting them in. No team had as low as United’s +2.87 last season.
Finally there’s old faithful, expected goal difference. 2022-23 Manchester United were only the third team since 2017-18 to finish in the top four of the table without being in the top four in expected goal difference. Unsurprisingly, none of those teams finished in the top four the following year.
Here was the most important thing from August’s preview.
In all likelihood, United are going to need to improve just to tread water in the table.
Simply put, United didn’t get better. They got worse, in every conceivable way.
How did that happen? As we touched on in the December update, there were obvious tactical flaws to this team that have been highlighted throughout the season on The Busby Babe. A bigger issue was since Erik Ten Hag arrived United have not built a particularly good team, and while Ten Hag has spoken about building for the long term he definitely didn’t do that.
There’s been a lot of talk about Ten Hag needing to get his own players in the door. The problem is those players have not featured enough over the last two years.
That every player who was signed in 2022-23 played even fewer minutes their second year in the team would be bad if you were trying to build a team for the short term. If you were signing these players with a long term plan this is downright horrific.
United had major injury issues this season but that doesn’t absolve them completely here. Taking a look at how often were actually available it’s amazing how many of them still spent most of that time on the bench.
Other than Lisandro Martinez and Tyrell Malacia, most of Ten Hag’s outfield signings were actually available for a good chunk of the season. Yet most of them spent more than half their available minutes on the bench (and frankly Jonny Evans should have). That’s really bad.
We lose some points because at the start of the season I thought United had gotten better. They didn’t. A lot of things broke their way in 2022-23 and I didn’t think as much needed to break their way this time around, I was wrong about that too.
All in all INEOS has their work cut out for them. As for the rest of us, it’s time to put this season behind us.
And set pieces
Provided Manchester United don’t beat Manchester City in the FA Cup final
Arsenal (5.24) and Newcastle (5.66) also finished above five. Newcastle dropped out of the top four while Arsenal cut that number down to 3.97 this year. The first team to do so