Pre-season Previews

Pre-season previews are starting to come out. Post any you spot, I'll update this post and we can decide which ones we like best.

Guardian - 12th
ESPN - 13th
Action Network (betting) - bottom half
Sky Sports - ? but I'm guessing MLT thinks we'll be ok
Last Word on Football - 10th
Statsbomb - "another difficult year"
WhoScored - bottom half
The Times (paywalled) - 15th
NBC Sports - 12th/13th
BBC - 16th
Mirror - 15th
FiveThirtyEight - 9th
Sun - easily avoid relegation
Independent podcast - we will struggle
Totally Football Show - totally forgot we exist, which I guess means lower mid table
Guardian podcast - Max Rushden thinks we are down

 

Vertically all pundits on talkSport have us relegated

 

The BBC have 24 pundits predicting the top 4 finishers.

Southampton did not feature.

 

They would be correct imho .

 

And in the Times, George Caulkin says down (but he's a geordie), James Gheerbrant says "Southampton’s underlying performance was far better than their league position last season — they’ll rebound emphatically."

 

I think we're at that point where predictions for sides outside the big six should just fall into two camps: "7th place challengers" and "Relegation battle".

10th, 14th, 17th. It's all just mushed together these days. If you pushed me, I'd say Cardiff will be one of the three to go. But good luck picking the other two. Might as well put names in a hat.

Anyone who doesn't think we're at risk of going down (although it's still possible to be confident of us having a much better season than last, whilst acknowledging that such a risk exists), is crackers.

 

I really like that, so will believe it implicitly.

 

How did it look horizontally?

 

Betfred has us 9th in the betting to go down......so 11th then.

 

We aren't the team we were, but some predictors are basing their opinions on one bad season and assuming the worst. They might be right, but I'm basing my hope on my opinion last season....we were under performing and not many points from being much higher up the table. The situation where only a few points separates a lot of teams is likely to be replicated this season....the answer is no dropping of silly points, no losing focus and hope that luck favours us and those balls hitting woodwork go in for once. We need a good strong start, so heads don't drop and we will be fine.

 

Not one sky sports "pundit" has us going down.

 

We're doomed, doomed I tell you.

 

That's all in the betting as well. About 10 points between 8th and 18th, which is basically a minor amount of luck/randomness.
https://www.sportingindex.com/sprea...4d-925da5f6175a/premier-league-points-2018-19

 

12th

 

I like that NBC one. It's basically saying "we have no bloody clue", which is kinda where I sit with it too...

 

Not even the World's worst forecaster, Merson?....I'd have been more comforted if he had tbh.

 

As I said the other day, it's a totally blank book waiting to be written, i'm just praying that there isn't a cliffhanging ending in May!...

 

FiveThirtyEight's prediction has us 9th .
Five points clear of relegation .
edit: better link - https://fivethirtyeight.com/feature...whos-a-sleeper-in-the-english-premier-league/

 

I can live with that...shows how every point counts. Important to upgrade draws to wins and losses to draws....in fact the opposite of what we did last season.

 

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/robbie-savages-premier-league-predictions-13062142

Robbie Savage has us to finish 15th.