I Make Predictions (Round 32 plus)

Last round Mark Lawrenson got five games right for seven points.  His celebrity guest got five games right for nine points.  Merson got six games right for eight points.  I got four games right for four points.

Since I started making these predictions I have predicted 105 out of 199 games correctly for 154 points.  Lawrenson predicted 104 games correctly for 136 points. Merson predicted 97 games out of 195 correctly for 133 points. 

There is a single mid-week game which I would be entitled to predict separately and then make my weekend predictions based upon that information.  However, due to the way my system works that game would not affect any of the weekend predictions—I am still going to predict Spurs to beat Aston Villa and Chelsea to beat QPR no matter what they do against each other on Tuesday.  Admittedly, if QPR scores 17 goals against Aston Villa that would change the predicted score against Chelsea, but I feel I can ignore that possibility.

I will link to Lawrenson’s and Merson’s new predictions when they are published. They will be found here and here. I don’t know if they are going to make predictions on the mid-week game.  It they do, their predictions will be found here and here.

Here are my predictions using the same rules outlined here.    Once again, my modifications for clubs that have played a different number of games do not matter.

Aston Villa-QPR              2-1

Swansea-Everton           2-1

Southampton-Hull         1-0

Sunderland-Palace         1-1

Spurs-Aston Villa             2-1

West Brom-Leicester     2-1

West Ham-Stoke             2-1

Burnley-Arsenal               0-1

QPR-Chelsea                     0-1

Man U-Man City              1-0

Liverpool-Newcastle      2-1

MAGIC NUMBERS

Here are our magic numbers for the entire League as explained here:

I have left the clubs in the same order from when I first posted this list because I find it more interesting that way.

Strictly speaking magic numbers do not go negative—when the number reaches zero you have clinched finishing ahead of that team—that is why the number is magic.  Nevertheless, I am going to continue calculating negative magic numbers because that information is useful to me in comparing the various clubs.  Anyone who is bothered by this can just treat all negative numbers as zero.

Chelsea              42

Man City            30

Man U                31

Arsenal               32

Tottenham         23

Liverpool             23

West Ham           11

Swansea              16

Stoke                    11

Newcastle           4

Everton                 6

Palace                   8

Sunderland         -2

West Brom           2

Aston Villa           -3

Burnley                 -5

Hull                       -3

QPR                       -6

Leicester              -6

The points total mathematically needed to avoid relegation dropped is now 47. 

We have still only clinched 14^th place.  If everything goes right we could clinch 11^th place this week.  However, that is using the term “goes right” very loosely since it involves Newcastle losing to or drawing with Liverpool and, obviously, that would be something going wrong for us.  For that matter, we probably would prefer that Everton beat Swansea.