The table doesn’t lie (except when it does), part 2
The 2017-18 Premier League season kicks off this Friday. What better way to celebrate than by predicting the entire league table?
The Premier League returns this Friday. In preparation, I have undertaken the soul-crushing task of predicting how the final table will look. Yesterday, I took a stab at the top 10. Today, it’s the bottom half.
In 2016-17, the gap between eighth and 17th place was a mere six points, which makes predicting the bottom 10 very silly indeed. There are a lot of sub-mediocre teams in the mix, but many of them enter the season with shiny new, or close to new, managers. And then there are the newly-promoted sides, Newcastle, Brighton and Huddersfield, who … who knows, really? I sure don’t, but these are the picks anyway, with my degree of confidence in each included underneath.
11. Crystal Palace
After bringing in Sam Allardyce midseason to exorcise the demons of the Alan Pardew tenure, Crystal Palace seemed primed at the end of 2016-17 for an unremarkable stint in the mid-table. Then Allardyce retired, and things got interesting.
He was replaced by Frank de Boer, one-time Netherlands, Ajax and Barcelona legend, and currently the guy who got fired by Inter Milan after 85 days last fall. But Inter are a very silly club, and while de Boer didn’t do a good job there, his four consecutive Eredivisie titles with Ajax before that, not to mention his being god damn Frank de Boer, qualify this as an exciting managerial appointment.
Palace are a talented side, but have floundered in the Premier League in recent seasons, roughly since the players figured out Pardew wasn’t the hero he told them they both needed and deserved. And so the exciting thing about de Boer’s arrival isn’t so much that he’ll make the team significantly better immediately, though he should help, as it is that he wants to establish some kind of identity at the club, to build something for the future.
The Eagles have a lot of money for a mid-table side, and their approach the past few seasons has mostly been to throw it around willy-nilly while hoping Wilfried Zaha bails them out in attack. It was no coincidence the difference between relegation and survival last season was a highly effective January transfer window, during which Allardyce identified Palace’s biggest areas of weakness and addressed them intelligently, bringing in Luka Milivojevic, Patrick van Aanholt and Mamadou Sakho (on loan).
Because de Boer not only has a plan, but also a philosophy (which is like a plan but even fancier), the Eagles should expect a more intelligent use of the resources that allowed them to spend, for example, nearly £30 million on Christian Benteke last season. His early business — 20-year-old center-back Jairo Reidewald comes in from Ajax, Ruben Loftus-Cheek from Chelsea on loan — points to a greater emphasis on youth, and less of a willingness to throw Palace’s TV money around for the sake of it.
Based on preseason, the de Boer planlosophy seems to involve a 3-4-3, which is perhaps a bit strange given Palace’s lack of good center-backs, but it limits Zaha’s defensive responsibility and puts Andros Townsend in what might be his best position at wing-back. It should also play to the strengths of Benteke, who scored 15 goals last season in a bad team, and should be good for the same or more again this year.
The margins will be very fine in the mid-table again this season, but Palace’s talent, coupled with a manager whose name alone will be enough to get them motivated, should see them move northward up the table. I don’t expect huge improvement, but if they can eliminate the last-minute-defeats-in-nine-goal-thrillers against Swansea, and the 4-0 defeats at home against whoever this season’s Sunderland equivalent are, 11th seems achievable.
DoC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsZkCFoqSBs
12. West Brom
West Brom seemed for a time last season like they may challenge Everton for seventh. Then they reached 40 points and stopped trying. That seems to be the way it’s going to work under Tony Pulis, whether he likes it or not.
The Baggies ended last season on a nine-game winless streak after reaching 43 points with a win over Arsenal in late March. That was their only victory in the last three months of the season. It was a near-identical story in 2015-16, as they went on a nine-game winless run to finish the season after reaching 39 points with a win against Manchester United in early March.
West Brom were dominant against the bad teams last season and hopeless against the good ones, which is about what you’d expect from a side that actively shun possession and try to pick teams off at set pieces. But there’s no reason that approach needs to result in a mid-table finish. In the last nine matches last year, the Baggies lost to Watford, Southampton, Leicester and Swansea, and drew with Burnley — all teams they beat earlier in the campaign. Fifteen more points would have put them on 60, one behind Everton.
Obviously it’s not quite that simple, but this team showed during the middle third of last season they’re capable of more than settling for a mid- to lower-mid-table finish. They have a dangerous-looking attack with Nacer Chadli, Matt Phillips, Salomon Rondon and now also Jay Rodriguez, and the defense should be as good as always.
But at this point there’s no reason to expect a full season’s worth of the effort and intensity Pulis demands when his sides still have relegation to avoid. And fair enough, really. Far be it for me to suggest mid-table security is anything to scoff for one of the Premier League era’s greatest yo-yo teams. But at some point the Pulis Technique will begin to grate, and the Baggies will learn to ask for more.
DoC: https://youtu.be/Rkhj7yYfIOk?t=15s
13. Watford
Here’s a question: why do Watford keep offering their managers contracts that last longer than a year? There is an approximately 100 percent chance Marco Silva leaves at the end of this season, just as Walter Mazzarri did at the end of last season, and Quique Sanchez Florez did at the end of the season before that, and Slavisa Jokanovic did at the end of the season before that.
Silva did a really good job at Hull last year, even if they did get relegated. The intensity he demands from his players should do wonders for a team that conceded 68 goals last season, while the Hornets’ team is filled with players who, in a different time, at a different club, might easily be called very good.
This is the most incoherently assembled squad in the league, but while I’ll never fully grasp the logic behind Watford’s one-year-at-a-time approach, you can’t argue with results. The Hornets finished 17th last season, but really weren’t in the relegation battle at all. They slipped that low only after reaching 40 points, and then losing their last six games of the season.
If they get off to a bad start — one of the only common themes over their last two seasons was a very strong first half of the season — the instability at the club, the lack of any clear tactical identity, the lack of players who have played there more than a couple seasons, etc. could mean things get ugly fast. But Silva showed last season he’s capable of getting good performances out of a weirdly assembled team. With a full preseason under his belt, he can help the Hornets climb the table.
DoC: about the same as the Watford board’s in Marco Silva.
14. Newcastle
Rafa Benitez is back. In the morass of sub-mediocrity that is the bottom half of the Premier League table, it’s going to be the little edges that separate teams, and Newcastle’s manager may be the biggest edge in the league outside the top seven.
The Magpies didn’t exactly blow the Championship away last season, only winning on the final day of the season with Brighton having started to celebrate their automatic promotion three weeks earlier. But the second division is a strange place, and one Benitez doesn’t know half as well as he knows the Premier League. Newcastle achieved what they needed last year, promotion, and the former Liverpool boss can now, nearly 18 months after his arrival at St. James’ Park, get on with the job he presumably thought he was taking in the first place.
The squad certainly isn’t great, but there’s a lot of Premier League experience there. Last season’s key players — Shelvey, Matt Ritchie, Dwight Gayle, Yoann Gouffran, Paul Dummett, Mohamed Diame — have all played in the top flight before. None of them were particularly good, admittedly, but they won’t be shocked by the step up in quality the way some promoted sides are.
But again, Benitez is the key, and he’s probably going to approach the season like a long series of two-legged European cup ties. That’s going to mean a lot of draws away from home, and a lot of uneventful soccer, but it’s also going to mean survival.
Newcastle are a big enough club to look up at the top seven and get ideas about their place in it, with all the necessary caveats pertaining to Mike Ashley’s being a world-class bozo. But this is not, nor should it be, the season to start thinking about a run at the Europa League spots.
Benitez is at heart a pragmatic manager, which is just as well, because his team are going to lose a lot of games next season. But they’ve got more quality and top flight experience than the other promoted sides, and a better manager than anyone in the bottom half. That should be enough for a lower-mid-table finish.
DoC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOaZYhTd2BU
15. Leicester
Leicester’s attempt to cling on to the magic of 2015-16 last season resulted most consequentially in the hiring of Claudio Ranieri’s assistant, Craig Shakespeare, as manager on a three-year contract. I’ve never been a huge fan of clubs hiring managers with literally no managerial experience, and Craig “do exactly what we did last year” Shakespeare doesn’t fill me with confidence.
Shakespeare did a good job inasmuch as Leicester’s form improved significantly after he was hired, but I suspect much of that had to do with the fact the players, for whatever reason, had had enough of Ranieri, and so their level of effort increased markedly after he left. In other words, Shakespeare’s greatest strength was that he wasn’t someone else.
That’s not going to wash over a full season. The 2015-16 formula is fine, until it isn’t. When Leicester inevitably lose, or hit a bad patch of form, how will he react? You can’t go back to basics when the basics are your starting point. He could be good, maybe, but there’s really no way of knowing, and in a team with a lot of selection questions looming over it, it’s hard to see the Foxes improving in the way many of the teams around them could.
They were only three points above 15th place last season, so this doesn’t qualify has a huge regression, just the continued fallout of the most unlikely title triumph in Premier League history. That understandably had weird, unpredictable psychological consequences last season, and the aftershock hasn’t yet subsided.
As for the squad, Riyad Mahrez’s future is in doubt, Vardy will turn 31 this season, Christian Fuchs 32, Robert Huth 33 and Wes Morgan 34. There are also a lot of selection headaches. Vardy, Islam Slimani, Shinji Oazaki, Ahmed Musa, Leonardo Ulloa and new signing Kelechi Iheanacho are all vying for two spots up front, while the options in central midfield include Danny Drinkwater, Wilfred Ndidi, Daniel Amartey, Nampalys Mendy, Andy King and new signing Vicente Iborra.
Perhaps the most encouraging sign was a strong transfer window. Iheanacho should be a great signing, while center-back Harry Maguire impressed with Hull last season and strengthens an obvious area of need. That suggests Shakespeare at least has is priorities in the right place, but that doesn’t mean he’s capable of navigating the very, very choppy waters of a full Premier League season.
The Foxes play Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool in their first six games of the season. We’ll know a lot more about their new manager after that.
DoC: our doubts are traitors and make us loose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.
16. Stoke
Stoke, after three consecutive ninth-place finishes under Mark Hughes, took a big step backward last season, coming in 13th (albeit only two points off ninth) and, more importantly, looking absolutely miserable while doing it. To make matters worse, they sold Marko Arnautovic this summer and replaced him with, you guessed it, Darren Fletcher.
They’ve since also brought in an actual replacement, Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting, who scored three goals and added six assists in 23 appearances for Schalke last season, but it’s hard to imagine he can fully compensate for the loss of Arnautovic.
The Potters were making real progress during Hughes’ first two years in charge, but the mid-table ennui seems have caught up with them. The biggest concern is that the squad itself is beginning to look very thin on legitimate top-half players.
With Arnautovic gone, the playmaking burden will fall to the oft-injured Xherdan Shaqiri, who will hope to be the primary supplier to Saido Berahino, who scored zero goals in 13 appearances last season, and is now so far removed from the 2014-15 campaign in which he scored 14 goals for West Brom as a 21-year-old, it’s difficult even to get excited by his potential anymore.
Bojan returns from a loan to Mainz, which was weird when it happened and just as weird now, while Fletcher will probably partner Joe Allen in midfield. Ryan Shawcross and Chelsea loanee Kurt Zouma have the makings of a strong center-back pairing, but Glen Johnson and Erik Pieters don’t inspire confidence at full-back.
That should be enough to see Stoke safe, but this could be a very uncomfortable season for the club, and it wouldn’t be a big surprise if Hughes wasn’t the manager by the end of it. The Welshman is a notoriously slow starter, and the Potters face Everton, Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea in their opening six games. If they struggle in those, things could get out of hand very quickly at the Britannia.
DoC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTmIIMIW-Ig
17. Swansea
Given the way they finished last season, it’s hard to predict Swansea to get relegated. That would be unfair to the work of Paul Clement, who transformed a team that was conceding 2.3 goals a game before his arrival (in his first ever job as a manager, so there’s hope for Shakespeare yet). That number dropped to 1.4 in the 18 games Clement was in charge, and there could be good reasons to think the Swans will continue that positive trend this season.
“Could” because it seems Swansea may be about to lose their best player, Gylfi Sigurdsson, who scored nine goals last season and assisted 13. That’s a lot of production to lose, especially since the man Sigurdsson assisted most often, Fernando Llorente, looks set to miss the start of the season with a broken arm.
That puts a lot of pressure early on on Tammy Abraham, the highly-rated Chelsea youngster who scored 23 goals in the Championship for Bristol City last season. It’s going to be fun to see him in the Premier League, but relying on a 19-year-old for goals isn’t a great place to be a season after narrowly avoiding the drop.
The Swans also have a very difficult run-in. In their last seven games, they face Manchester United, Everton, Manchester City and Chelsea, though they finish up with matches against Bournemouth and Stoke. If the race is tight, that could be the difference between relegation and survival.
The bigger concern is the overall loss of stability at the club, which was once among the best-run in the league. The new owners went through three managers last season, the first of which, Francesco Guidolin, was coming off an impressive half-season in 2015-16, not dissimilar to what Clement did last year. Guidolin didn’t start the season well, with only four points from seven games, but he also had to play Chelsea, Manchester City and Liverpool.
A similarly knee-jerk approach in 2017-18 could cause similar problems, but even if it doesn’t the squad isn’t loaded with talent, and the doubt surrounding Sigurdsson’s future only raises more concerns about the Swans’ ability to pull away from the relegation battle.
DoC: the same amount I’m confident Sigurdsson will still be a Swansea player by the end of the month.
18. Huddersfield
Huddersfield might be the most intriguing promoted side since Ian Holloway’s Blackpool in 2010-11. The Terriers won’t be anything like Holloway’s side stylistically, but in terms of improbability and unpredictability, they’re not a million miles apart.
David Wagner’s side will, at least based on their Championship campaign last season, be the first newly-promoted team to go all-in with a pressing game. We’ve seen in recent seasons how a tactical approach traditionally reserved for top half teams — see: Bournemouth, Swansea — can pay dividends in the bottom half as well, but we’ve never seen it like this.
The Terriers’ big problem last season was a lack of goals. They conceded 58 — not great, but fewer than fellow playoff sides Reading and Fulham — but scored only 56, the second worst total in the top half of the Championship. While new signings Steve Mounie and Tom Ince are designed to help remedy that problem, it’s hard to imagine it won’t be an issue again.
But the real question is how their press holds up against Premier League teams. Wagner is close friends with Klopp, and his approach is more similar to the German’s than it is to the league’s other pre-eminent pressing manager, Mauricio Pochettino, focusing on funneling the ball to specific areas and winning it as a means to create chances.
Klopp’s style has been extremely successful against teams that try to attack Liverpool, and most teams will try to attack Huddersfield, which is a very, very minor cause for optimism. But Mounie, Tom Ince and Aaron Mooy are not Philippe Coutinho, Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino.
For that reason, the Klopp comparison is a little pointless, and unfair to Wagner. But the Huddersfield manager’s unique, clearly defined style should be an asset. Promoted teams that try to be a little bit of everything tend to struggle — Hull last season, Norwich and Aston Villa in 2015-16, QPR before that. Because they tend to lack the talent to overcome tactical aimlessness (see: Stoke), it’s the ones that have a clear game plan for every match, that you can point to and say exactly what they’re trying to do, that have the most success.
The Terriers will certainly have that. The question is whether it’s enough to overcome their lack of talent. I really have no idea, but it’s going to be a lot of fun to find out.
DoC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJHbBysuNkY
19. Burnley
Burnley, lost as they were in last season’s lower-mid-table guck, didn’t receive much love in 2016-17, but they were quietly one of the league’s best stories. The Clarets were widely tipped for their second relegation in three years, but defied the odds on the strength of an excellent record at Turf Moor, where they won 10 and drew three of their 19 matches.
Not only did they not get relegated, but they were never really in contention to go down, despite an approach that seemed to rely far too much on opposition teams not finishing a lot of shots. That was most obvious in their biggest win of the season, a 2-0 against Liverpool in their second match. It was an excellent performance from Sean Dyche’s side, especially at the back, but he simply can’t expect his team to consistently score two goals from three not very good chances on a consistent basis.
Burnley also secured home draws against Manchester United and Chelsea, the latter of which was thanks to an exquisite Robbie Brady free-kick. That’s not really a sustainable approach. And while the Clarets don’t need to win points off any of the big teams to stay up, the fact they were able to steer clear of the relegation scrap last season owed much to those sorts of results.
Burnley finished six points above the drop zone last season while scoring only 39 goals, the lowest total outside the bottom three. Dyche has almost no margin for error if he hopes to repeat the success he had in 2016-17.
And that, more than anything, is the big concern. The Clarets seem primed to approach this season in exactly the same way as last. That’s not a terrible idea, except that the teams that kept Burnley from slipping into the relegation battle last season — Swansea and Crystal Palace, in particular — both start the new campaign in stronger positions.
There are a lot more reasons to think those two sides will improve than that Burnley will. Last season, there were three teams worse than the Clarets on paper, and they all got relegated, while the summer additions of Jack Cork, Jonathan Walters and Phil Bardsley hardly move the needle for Dyche’s side.
Sam Vokes and Andre Gray have the makings of a Troy Deeney-Odion Ighalo circa 2015-16 striking partnership, but it’s unlikely Dyche will give his side the attacking freedom to exploit that goalscoring threat. Add to that their woeful away record — seven total points, one win — and it’s hard to see a path to safety for Burnley.
DoC: https://youtu.be/IWeSwVv0MGc?t=4m45s
Next: Premier League 2017-18 season preview
20. Brighton
Chris Hughton has done an excellent job at Brighton, taking over with the club hovering above the Championship relegation zone and guiding them to the Premier League in only two full seasons. The Seagulls were excellent in the second tier last term, surprising many by leading the league for much of the season, but if ever a squad didn’t look ready for the jump up to the top flight, it’s probably Brighton’s.
Last season, their key attacking players were Glen Murray and Anthony Knockaert. Murray turns 34 next month and has failed to impress twice before in the Premier League, once with Crystal Palace and once with Bournemouth. To be fair to the striker, he’s coming off one of the best seasons of his career, having scored 23 league goals last season. And different players thrive in different situations, so the fact he was so-so for Palace and Bournemouth doesn’t mean he’ll be so-so for Brighton. But that’s a lot of caveats to have to attach to the teams most reliable source of goals.
The same holds for Knockaert, though at 25 years old there’s reason to think he can still improve. The Frenchman scored 15 goals and added eight assists from out wide in 2016-17, and will be a central part of Hughton’s attack in 2017-18, but outside of nine games for Leicester in 2014-15, this is his first stint in the Premier League.
The most eye-catching new signings are Pascal Gross and Izzy Brown, one of several Chelsea players on loan throughout the top flight this season. Gross will have to be the teams creative hub, though it’s unclear where he fits into Hughton’s preferred 4-4-2 formation, while Brown should be a more mobile option off Murray up front.
If Brighton are to survive, they will need a full squad of players with no Premier League experience to step up simultaneously. That seems like a long shot. There are no obviously awful teams already in the league like there were last season. There are several teams it wouldn’t be surprising to find out quickly become awful after a bad start. There’s always hope, but the Seagulls have a disturbing combination of limited talent and a lack of a clear tactical identity.
DoB: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H91jUbu0Q8o