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Welcome to week four of The Athletic’s Premier League predictions challenge, where I have spent the international break stewing over my disastrous performance last time out.
Hear me out, readers. Was it really so short-sighted of me to pick away wins for Newcastle and Manchester City at Leeds and Brighton respectively? What about Tottenham to beat Bournemouth? Aston Villa to beat Crystal Palace? Nottingham Forest to beat West Ham United was a banker, surely? And even if tipping Arsenal to win at Liverpool looks quite naive in retrospect, it was hardly an outrageous suggestion, given that game hung in the balance for 83 minutes.
And yet nothing from those six matches. Nul points, not a sausage. I got a measly total of three points from the entire weekend, which is the lowest return of any of us — our guest subscribers, six-year-old Wilfred, a data algorithm, and me — have managed so far. The shame of it.
All season long, we’ll be predicting the 10 Premier League scores, with three points awarded for each correct scoreline and one point for each correct result. There’s also a bonus point for any correct “unique” prediction, so the algorithm got a bonus point as the only one to predict a draw between Leeds and Newcastle. Boring, boring algorithm.
