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Win a signed Manchester United shirt with Predikta

By Jim Knight May 22, 2015 21:18:00 Carlo Garganese gives us his Premier League selections for Goal’s Predikta league and there’s a great prize on offer for the highest points scorer this weekend The final Premier League weekend will see a winner crowned in Goal’s Predikta league, and to add to the excitement there’s a replica 1999 shirt, signed by Phil Neville, to give away. The prize…

The games are starting to come thick and fast, and there seems to be no let up in the Barclays Premier League as the teams play their third game in seven days this coming weekend.

Nevertheless, Louis van Gaal’s boys found time to spend Wednesday night enjoying the Man United Christmas Party® at Carrington (otherwise known as the party capital of the world).

Robin van Persie, ever the joker, came dressed as Marouane Fellaini in 40 years’ time.

As for this weekend’s matches, there’ll be no party games as the teams battle it out for another all-important three points. If you’re feeling unsure about what to make of a number of the tricky ties, Predikta players, fear not – we’ve done the crunched the numbers so you don’t have to.

Newcastle vs Chelsea

Whispers of an unbeaten season have been circulating round Stamford Bridge in recent times. It’s possible that those whispers have become audible murmurs this week as Chelsea cruised to a comfortable 3-0 win against Spurs on Wednesday night.

Newcastle, though, have won 3 out of their last 5 games against Chelsea. Loic Remy scored a fabulous second in Newcastle’s 2-0 triumph in last season’s corresponding fixture – clearly a rather emotional occasion for one fan – but he’s now playing for the league leaders and will surely be buoyed by his goal mid-week. You wouldn’t bet against the Frenchman finding the back of the net again against his old side this weekend.

Predikta verdict: a narrow 1-0 win for the visitors, who’ll hold off a late Newcastle surge.

Liverpool vs Sunderland

Liverpool have seriously struggled when playing away against the so-called ‘lesser’ sides this season – West Ham, Newcastle and Palace spring to mind – so Brendan Rodgers will be relieved that his side will face Sunderland in front of the Kop this weekend.

The Black Cats, however, despite taking a thumping from Man City earlier this week, will certainly have taken heart from last weekend’s well-deserved point against Chelsea. We spoke about their tactic of sitting deep against the league leaders, and they may well repeat the trick this weekend – particularly if Liverpool choose to combat by playing long balls. The Merseysiders have only scored one headed goal all season.

Predikta verdict: the draw specialists will draw again.

Stoke vs Arsenal

Arsène Wenger was in a spirited mood on Wednesday night, claiming that the side he’s assembled will win the league with the next three years. It was a bold call for a team that is currently 11 points worse off than they were at this stage last season. And without the sparkling Alexis Sanchez, Arsenal would be down in 14th position this year.

For their game this weekend against the Potters, one thing is clear: Arsène’s men must be ready for the physical battle. Stoke have committed the third highest number of fouls (178) in the league this season; only Leicester and Crystal Palace have committed more. Arsenal must roll with the punches and strike at the right time if they are to avoid replicating what was a damaging loss last season at the Britannia. 

Predikta verdict: 1-2, with a controversial Alexis Sanchez penalty securing the points for Arsenal.

West Ham vs Swansea

There’ll be an interesting contrast of styles at Upton Park as 5th take on 7th on Sunday afternoon.

West Ham, as we all know, love getting balls into the box. The numbers back it up: Allardyce’s team have delivered 81 corners into the penalty area this season; only Arsenal have more. More importantly, 10 of the Hammers’ 23 goals have come from headers, more than any other team by some distance. 

Conversely, nobody has put fewer corners into the box than Swansea this campaign. For all their inconsistencies, though, the Swans can be relied upon to fight right up until the final whistle: they’ve scored an impressive 5 goals in the last 15 minutes of games this campaign. The home side will have to maintain their focus for the full 90 minutes if they want to take all three points this weekend.

Predikta verdict: Swansea’s neat midfield play will prove too much for West Ham to handle, and it’ll finish 0-2 to Monk’s men.

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Brendan Rodgers must really, really hate Selhurst Park. His side’s spectacular collapse from three goals up in last season’s corresponding fixture effectively ended their title hopes, but this weekend’s defeat was probably just as depressing for Liverpool fans.

Despite some shocking form this season – they have won just three games in all, losing their last three in a row – over half of Predikta players foresaw a narrow win for the Merseysiders against Crystal Palace.

As it was, two late Palace goals condemned the Reds to their worst start to a league season for 22 years. With Luis Suarez no longer around to paper over the cracks, the shortfalls of Rodgers’s team are there for all to see. 

The rain often has a funny old habit of hyperbolising emotions. Witness Brendan’s utter dismay, contrasted with Neil’s pure, unadulterated joy as Jedinak found the top corner with his free kick late in the game: 

Yannick Bolasie rampaged around like a young Yaya Toure, if we do say so ourselves. The 25-year-old Frenchman is one of those players that always looks pretty clueless on the ball but is nonetheless weirdly effective. 

Maybe we’ve found a new contender for the most unpredictable player in the Premier League. Neil Warnock seems to think so, anyway: 

North of the river, the Arsenal-Man United game made for hilarious viewing for several reasons: first, because it featured Jack Wilshere trying his absolute darndest to nut United midfielder Maroune Fellaini, but coming up drastically short in the height department:

Like a sausage dog trying to hit a giraffe, that. Except of course that if Jack Wilshere were a dog, he’d almost certainly be Scrappy Doo. Or a Pit Bull Terrier. Probably the latter.

The second contributor to hilarity was the sheer predictability of it all. When the Gunners went in at half time, having failed to score against what was, let’s face it, the weakest United defence of a generation, you just knew what was coming next. 

In fact, only 11% of Predikta players had backed United to take all 3 points before the match. How that figure would have grown if there’d been the option to change predictions at half time.

Because every football fan has read this script dozens of times before: defensive cock-up leads to absurd own goal, Arsenal do the most Arsenal-y thing ever and push for an equaliser without any regard for their defensive duties, and their opponents score the most inevitable second goal from the most inevitable counter attack in the history of counter attacks ever.  

We’re scratching our heads at Predikta HQ this morning, wondering this: will Arsenal ever, ever, ever, ever learn? Probably not. The #ArseneOut camp are sharpening their pitch forks.

In the weekend’s other games, Newcastle extended their hot streak with a fifth consecutive win, whilst Burnley secured a great victory at Stoke. Only 3% of the Predikta community got that one correct, so well done to you. 

Draw specialists Sunderland did what they’re great at doing and yep, you guessed it, drew. 51% of us called that result, so at least Predikta players are learning how to get more than one point, even if the Black Cats aren’t.

The Footie league’s Jonathan Shapiro was this week’s top scorer with an excellent 23 points. Kaushal Baghat was behind him with 21, ahead of Matt Harvey on the Predikta separator.

  The season’s top 10 will be up on our Facebook page, as usual.

Happy predicting!

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It’s back to business this weekend as we return to the Premier League after what felt like an absolute eternity interim period. The international break is a bit rubbish, but it does give rise to some classic goals.

The standout for us was Scotland’s superbly-worked corner routine, which led to this cracker by Shaun Maloney, as the Scots bagged a vital 1-0 win against the Republic of Ireland:

The other memorable moment from the break was the amusing comments from the Germany-Gibraltar game, which the world champions won 4-0. This scoreline is slightly less impressive when you consider that Gibraltar started the campaign with back-to-back 7-0 defeats to Poland and the Republic of Ireland.

Before the game, Gibraltar goalkeeper Jordan Perez was giving all the pre-match hype you’d expect from a player of his calibre: “I’ll be pleased when we concede less than seven goals. We’d be able to say that we are better than Brazil.”

Perez, incidentally, earns a part-time living as a fireman.

After the match, 4-0 loss in the bag and smiles on faces, the Gibraltarians earned some bizarre praise from their coach, Allen Bula:

"It's a great result and we really needed something like this," Bula said. "0-4, I could not have asked for more.”

That’s why you have to love the international break, in a way. Where else in the world of sport would you ever hear a phrase as ridiculous as that?

If you listened to our wise recommendations with regards to the Late Surge™ on Sunday night, you would have some success, at least: Wales secured an excellent point in Belgium (9% of players on point with that one), and Croatia managed the same with a 1-1 draw against Italy, although the match was interrupted twice when flares were thrown onto the pitch.

Flare throwing is bad and stupid, obviously, but it does make for very pretty pictures. Maybe a rebellious band of photojournalists secretly organised the whole thing.

As for the coming weekend, it’s a rather big one for the teams battling it out in the Premier League. As we move into the Christmas period, in which the games come thick and fast, the teams at the bottom need to start picking up points – and fast.

Leicester, for their part, are still without a win since that rambunctious 5-3 against Man Utd back in September. This weekend is a great opportunity for them to secure another, as they face a Sunderland side that does not tend to travel well.

The incentive is doubly big for the Foxes, given that Burnley and QPR both have tough away games – at Stoke and Newcastle respectively.

Elsewhere, there’s that huge game between Arsenal and Man Utd, as everyone’s favourite traitor-villain Robin van Persie returns to the Emirates. Chelsea, meanwhile, can extend their lead at the top of the table to 7 points with a win over West Brom. (Southampton, who lie in second, don’t play until Monday night).

It is, as ever, all to play for. Happy predicting!

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We’re not sure why, but it felt like a particularly significant weekend in the Barclays Premier League. 

As we fling ourselves into another International Break with 11 league games under our belts, it seems as good time as any to take stock and make some utterly unsubstantiated well-informed observations about England’s top tier.

And so, in no particular order: 

Arsenal’s defending is criminally bad, and they’re not too keen on holding on to a lead, either. A quick zip around their fan blogs this morning showed one consistent element: a link to this classic Simpsons scene.

Swansea can, most definitely, do it on a cold wet night in Swansea. Well, Gylfi Sigurdsson can, anyway:

Burnley are up and running…at last. They’re the last team in the top four tiers of English football to register a win this campaign. It couldn’t come soon enough for Dyche’s men.

Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea proved us right with a narrow but deserved win at Anfield. Are Chelsea games, dare we say it, becoming predictable?

Harry Kane, however, proved us wrong when he celebrated his first Premier League start of the season by missing an absolute sitter in the first half against Stoke.

An entirely unremarkable Spurs went on to lose (that’s three defeats in four league games), despite this quite marvellous strike from everyone’s favourite Y-front exhibitionist, Nacer Chadli.

The BBC cameramen love panning to Daniel Levy when Spurs are a goal or two down. Like he’s suddenly going to turn red and emit steam from his ears. Needless to say, he never does.

QPR are starting to look like something resembling a football team again. They held stumbling Man City to a draw but really could have had all three points on the basis of their first-half performance.

Charlie Austin, by the way, is one of the few fairytale heroes of English football. In 2009 he was playing for semi-pro side Poole Town and part-timing as a bricklayer to make ends meet. Five years later, he’s in the Premiership and scoring against the Champions.

They say strikers win you games, but Sergio Aguero is working hard merely to save City’s blushes at the moment. The little Argentine now has 12 goals in 11 Premier League games, a scoring record only bettered by Les Ferdinand (13) in 1995.

Mug-turned-Messiah Alan Pardew and his Newcastle side are absolutely flying. Their 2-0 win at West Brom means they have taken 13 points from the last available 15.

It was a third goal in as many games for striker Ayoze Pérez, and this was certainly the pick of his most recent bunch. Seriously impudent from the 21-year-old Spaniard:

Seriously though, it’s hard to put into words just how impressive Newcastle’s recent turnaround has been. A decent 30% of Predikta players backed them for three points this weekend, too, which shows renewed faith in the Toon.

Elsewhere, staggeringly, 46% of players were spot-on in guessing the 2-1 final score at Anfield. Which begs the question: is 2-1 the most predictable score of all time? Give us a year (or two) and we’ll tell you. Right here on this blog.

Only 18% foresaw Burnley securing their first win of the season this weekend, but of those, just over half got the score exactly correct. Well done you.

Jason Parker and Ruth Perryman led the pack this week with 17 points.

James McCreath still leads for the season overall, as a solid week’s work saw him hit 150 points. The full table will be up on our Facebook page shortly, as usual.

Happy predicting!

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When van Persie grabbed that equaliser deep into injury time against Chelsea last week, you might have been forgiven for thinking that United’s luck was on the turn.

BBC Sport’s Phil McNulty hailed it as “the return of Fergie time”, quite rightly pointing out that it was a sign of the feebleness of the Moyes era that this was the first time United had scored in injury time to salvage a point since van Persie scored the winner in the 3-2 derby at Man City on 9 December 2012. 

Essentially, van Gaal was commended by journalists for rescuing a point against the league leaders – which may be fair praise, but United’s season as a whole so far has been nothing short of disastrous.

This weekend’s defeat to their Manchester rivals means that the Red Devils have succumbed to their worst league start in 28 years. This time last season, under the much-maligned Moyes, United were 8th with 17 points. Louis van Gaal has garnered just 13 points in the same period, despite spending £150m. 

At £241m (or there abouts - the exact figure is disputed), United’s starting XI on Sunday was the most expensive to ever take to the field in the Premier League – and yet they were still regarded as underdogs in the game at the Etihad.

Nobody’s suggesting that their opponents could not compete financially – City’s starting line-up cost a rather healthy £170m – but what is remarkable is that van Gaal is still largely escaping criticism for the way he has gone about things since he boarded the United ship in July.

It’s not often we agree with Robbie Savage, but his opinion that Moyes would have been “fried for breakfast” for this kind of form is spot-on.

It’s often said that the national media has a tendency to hype British players up far more than they deserve. Is the same perhaps true of foreign managers? Yes, van Gaal has rightly earned prestige and respect for what he has achieved in his career, but his wealth of experience arguably makes United’s current situation even less acceptable. 

Why do we hesitate to criticise a man who is so patently underwhelming in his role at the biggest club in the world?

That only 11% of Predikta players foresaw an away win for United this weekend tells its own story. Interestingly, though, only five players got the 1-0 final result spot on; that United’s genuinely quality attack was kept at bay was probably the game’s biggest surprise.

On the other hand, the Predikta community had great success in this week’s featured Championship game between Watford and Millwall, with over three quarters of you correctly predicting a home win for the Hornets, who find themselves at the top of the table with a third of the season gone. Not bad for a team that’s been through four managers in three months.

A healthy 20% of Predikta players called Newcastle’s win against Liverpool, as Pardew’s purple patch continues; it’s now four wins in a row for the Geordies – we can’t believe it. Neither can Newcastle striker Sammy Ameobi, it seems:

Top scorer this week was Alan Hopkins, who scored a healthy 22 points. Paul Burke was just behind him on 21, with Amy Boekstein in 3rd via the Predikta separata. 

The updated top 10 for the season is now up on our Facebook page – the top two, James McCreath and Zsolt Mester, are unchanged, but there’s been plenty of movement below them so go check it out.

Happy predicting!

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We shouldn’t need reminding, of course, but football really is an incredibly fickle business.

As recently as their opening day defeat to Spurs in August, West Ham fans have been calling for Sam Allardyce’s head; only this weekend, after a run of three (yes, three! Not one, nor two, but three!) straight league wins, he was interviewed in the Telegraph, praising the club’s owners who “deserve this success” after not sacking him.

Never one to shy away from sharing his thoughts, Big Sam always seems to produce rather stupid-sounding quotes when pushed, and Saturday morning’s stormer seemed no different: 

"There are two types of coaches", he said. "There’s coaches like me who weigh up the opposition and ask the team to adjust. Fergie was similar. Jose is similar.

Then there’s Arsène, who won’t adjust. There’s Brendan (Rodgers), who looks like he won’t adjust. There’s Manuel Pellegrini, who looks like he won’t adjust, even in the Champions League… That’s why you can beat them.”

Lumping himself in the same category as Mourinho and Ferguson appeared dubious, to say the least, but Allardyce’s West Ham proceeded to take the reigning champions to task on Saturday afternoon. Watertight in defence (Silva’s wondergoal aside), the Hammers stifled an out-of-sorts Sergio Aguero and were excellent value for the three points.

The truly baffling thing is that Big Sam’s men have been undeniably exciting going forward this season. On Saturday, summer signing Diafra Sakho became the first West Ham player ever to score in seven consecutive games, while the effervescent Enner Valencia played in Morgan Amalfitano for the opening goal.

Most shocking, though, is Stewart Downing’s recent return to form: the winger has created 26 chances from open play this season – a figure only bettered by the incontrovertible Cesc Fàbregas.

City’s loss at Upton Park was certainly the shock of the weekend, as a sizeable 63% of Predikta players had Pellegrini’s men down for a 2-1 or 3-1 win.

The other big Predikta surprise this weekend was that game at Anfield, where Liverpool were held to a goalless draw for the first time in 48 games. Needless to say, not one player saw that coming.

Newcastle also caused an upset this weekend, as M. Alain Pardieux and his merry band of Geordies recorded their second straight win against Spurs at White Hart Lane. Less than 2% of you predicted that one – perhaps we’ll see your confidence in M. Pardieux return in the coming weeks.

We had more success predicting West Brom’s home draw with Crystal Palace (the Baggies’ second 2-2 in a week), with more than a third of players correctly calling a draw of some description at the Hawthorns.

Saido Berahino again did that thing he’s quite good at doing where he puts the ball in the back of the net before giving the crowd a big smile – it surely won’t be long before Alan Shearer utters the classic “goals worth their weight in gold” cliché on MOTD (how much does a goal weigh, anyway? No one’s ever told us…).

Congratulations to Roy Thompson of the ONI Predikta League, who topped the table this week with 18 points. Dom McDermot finished just below him on the Predikta separata, whilst Amanda Purrett took third spot with 17. 

For the season rankings, head over to our Facebook page. They’re there somewhere, have a little gander.

Happy predicting!

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Pic of the week: van Gaal and Mourinho's loving embrace. Check out Louis's cute little flabby cheek.

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We return to the warm embrace of domestic football this weekend after what turned out to be an unusually eventful fortnight of international fixtures. And by that, we mean that all of Holland, Spain and Germany suffered shock defeats.

The Netherlands are having a classic reaction to a breakup after their recent split with Louis van Gaal – which essentially entails them losing all self belief and looking for hasty rebound number two as Hiddink disappoints. Ronald Koeman is reported to be the man they seek next. “Not my problem,” retorts the Southampton manager. Wise decision, we say. Best to stay away post-breakup.

Meanwhile, yet another Iker Casillas clanger helped Slovakia on their way to victory, which means that David de Gea might finally get his chance as first choice in the national side. As for the World Champions, questions were asked after their 2-0 defeat in Poland last week. Stupid questions, like “Are Germany in a crisis after this loss?”

Mario Götze’s response to journalists was perfect:

Another hilarious snippet of news involves Liverpool, whose chief commercial officer said earlier this week that according to the club’s “research”, they have 580 million fans globally.

Five hundred and eighty million. Is he having a laugh? That means that if Liverpool fans decided to declare independence and become a country, they’d form the third most populous country in the world. That also means that there are nearly twice as many Liverpool fans as they are inhabitants of the United States of America. On yer bike, son.

In fairness to Liverpool, they aren’t the only ones fudging their statistics. In 2012, Manchester United claimed to have 659 million fans, which would mean that over 9% of the world support United. Barcelona claimed 349 million, while Real Madrid estimated their fan base at a modest 750 million – larger than the entire European population. Why do these clubs make estimates that simply cannot make sense? The mind boggles.

Back to the football, and injuries are the hot topic of discussion this week. Much has been said of the woes of the Arsenal squad, which, at this moment in time, resembles 25 fragile flowers battling the elements. And Mesut Özil, the most fragile of the fragilest flowers, looks like he will be out for at least three months.

Reports have surfaced suggesting that the German World Cup winner managed to cause ligament damage in the outside of his left foot simply by passing a football. That foot. So fragile.

Arsenal aren’t looking too hot at the back, either, with Debuchy sidelined until Christmas, Chambers out with a suspension, and now Laurent Koscielny with an injury that will keep him out for at least a couple of weeks. Which means that the Gunners are likely to start Nacho Monreal at centre back for this weekend’s fixture against Hull.

Arsène Wenger’s assertion that “in the defensive department…we are a bit short” is absolutely a contender for understatement of the century.

Alas, the show must go on. This weekend’s Predikta fixtures feature some tasty clashes, the pick of which is probably Saturday’s early kick off between Man City and Spurs. Elsewhere, Aston Villa will look to get their season back on track with a result against out-of-sorts Everton, while QPR’s game at home to Liverpool on Sunday is a vitally important one for the under-fire Harry Redknapp.

Reading take on an in-form Derby side at the Madejski Stadium in our Championship game of the weekend, in which the home side will desperately want to bounce back from their 3-1 defeat to Brentford a fortnight ago.

Happy predicting!

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