Premier League predictions: How accurate were BBC Sport pundits?

BBC News

26-05-2025

Did anyone see Liverpool's Premier League title triumph coming? We didn't.Not one of the 30 BBC pundits we asked to pick the top-flight's top four before the season started predicted that the Reds would be champions - the closest were Stephen Warnock and Fara Williams, who both said Arne Slot's side would finish second.But they were not alone in getting it wrong.Opta's 'supercomputer' can tell you your team's exact chances of winning any competition at any given time.It is actually a complex algorithm that uses a model based on betting market odds and the sports analytics company's own 'Power Rankings', which are calculated using past results. Last summer, before a ball was kicked, it simulated the outcome of all 380 Premier League games 10,000 times and calculated that Manchester City had an 82.2% chance of a fifth-straight title, with Liverpool down in third.In fairness to Opta's algorithm, it did choose all four teams that finished in the actual top four and, position-wise, it was correct about two of them - Arsenal in second and Chelsea fourth.Williams went with a hunch rather than crunching any data, but still matched that pretty impressive feat.She was one of five BBC pundits to include all of the top-four teams in their predictions and, although she went for Arsenal to win the title, she had City in third, one place above Chelsea.Matt Upson, Glenn Murray, Chris Waddle and Ashley Williams did the same, but with only one team, Chelsea, in their correct position.
Warnock, who aced this task last season when he picked the top four and in the correct order too, only got three of the four teams right this time, and all in the wrong order.Still, he can point to Aston Villa's controversial last-day defeat at Manchester United as evidence of the fine lines between being last year's star predictor and one of this season's also-rans.Villa, Warnock's pick for fourth spot, went into Sunday with the chance of finishing as high as third, but ended up sixth and missed out on the Champions League places.That race was part of the point of this exercise because, as well as wondering who would win the title, we wanted to know who everyone thought would earn a place at European football's top table too. At the start of the season, only the top four were certain of that.In April, however, it was confirmed that the team finishing fifth would make it as well, so six of our pundits deserve some credit for saying Newcastle would qualify.Some of our experts were admittedly a little further out with their predictions, however, especially the ones who included West Ham, Manchester United or Tottenham in their top fours.Spurs did make it into the Champions League too, of course, but through winning the Europa League rather than their final league position of 17th. You can see everyone's pre-season top-four predictions in full below.
Nine teams featured in the forecasted top fours, but only Manchester City and Arsenal featured in all 30.The overall predicted ranking, using all 30 BBC predictions was:Manchester City (108 points)Arsenal (99)Liverpool (54)Tottenham (12)Manchester United (8)Newcastle (8)Chelsea (8)Aston Villa (2)West Ham (1)(Using a system of four points for a first place, three points for second, two points for third and one point for fourth. When points are tied, position is in order of the highest individual prediction for each team.)The Opta supercomputer's prediction was 1. Man City 2. Arsenal 3. Liverpool 4. Chelsea