10 games to go.

Just 10. Or 11 if you’re Spurs. Chelsea too have 11 to play. As do Leicester. But if Leicester were given another 15 as well, they’d still end up bottom.

And now we have ‘predictions’. Ok, we’ve been having them all season. Chelsea ‘won the league’ back in November really. Then got hammered by Spurs on New Year’s Day but otherwise they’re pretty unstoppable. Yes, they could ‘slump’, they could ‘have a bad streak’, much like Jihadi John might become a nurse for a Christian charity. Unlikely.

In one prediction yesterday, based on loads of (meaningless) statistics, Chelsea indeed will end top, with Manchester City 2nd, Arsenal 3rd. And…

Liverpool 4th.

Its all about that hallowed ‘top 4 place’, entry to the Champions League, the path to glory, to riches, to Nirvana.

Aussie Johnno knows fuck all about football, but loads about statistics. So he produced a ‘prediction’ based not on feelings and emotions (as my predictions are) but on pure numbers, patterns, likelihoods. Because he’s like a Rain Man for the digital age. And he predicted the same top 3 but…

Manchester United 4th.

I made a prediction on what would be predicted. And that was wrong too. Because its all about assuming some kind of regularity, consistency, normality, and football just ain’t like that. Its very rare for results to run pretty much true to form, as happened last night. There were no surprises in 7 matches. All went with the odds. A good night for the bookies. And for the predictors.

I even predicted that Johnny Evans and Pappas Cisse would gob in each other’s faces. The grossest thing to happen in football since Suarez took his teeth to Spain.

So here is my very own prediction for the league. Based on many tests and methods of analysing variance, loaded for the sheer volume of unpredictability inherent in the nature of the game, taking into account possible injuries, people fainting on the pitch, attacks of diarrhoea and suspensions for under-age sex.

1. Spurs… 97 points (some may say impossible, I say: never limit your aspirations)
2. Liverpool… 84 points
3. Manchester City… 82 points
4. Southampton… just enough points to squeeze in
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18. Arsenal… 14 points (after deductions following a child abuse scandal in April)
19. Chelsea… 12 points (if only)
20. QPR… (sadly, nothing can save them)

(West Ham are banished to League 2 because of financial improprieties, never to return)

Happy Thursday

A xxxx