It’s that time of year again – summer is nearly over, the pandemic is on the wane (touch wood) and club football is back! In the interests of transparency and also because what’s the point otherwise, I’m putting my predicted 2021/22 Premier League table out there for posterity. In 10 (or 2) months’ time, we can look back and laugh at how wrong I was but for now, here’s how I see each team’s chances:

1. Liverpool
2. Manchester City
3. Chelsea
4. Manchester United
5. Leicester
6. Tottenham
7. Arsenal
8. Leeds
9. Aston Villa
10. Brighton
11. Everton
12. West Ham
13. Wolves
14. Southampton
15. Newcastle
16. Norwich
17. Crystal Palace
18. Brentford
19. Burnley
20. Watford

Team by team predictions: The top four

Pundits seem to be underestimating Liverpool. This remains pretty much the same team that reached two Champion’s League finals in back-to-back seasons and put up a combined 196 Premier League points in the 2018/19 and 2019/20 seasons. They’ve reinforced to a full complement of centre-backs and key players like Sadio Mané, Mohamed Salah and Trent Alexander-Arnold have had a summer off. Liverpool can win this title, but they do need all the luck that went against them last season.

Manchester City are splashing cash as they always do but I think they’re due a very slight dip from their incredibly standards. They lack a true striker (unless they manage to crowbar Harry Kane free from Daniel Levy’s fierce grip) and the base of midfield and defence is a notch below the quality they’ve had there in previous seasons. Most of the time they’ll be too good for their opposition to get at these potential weak spots but the competition at the top of the table will be fierce and City have never quite convinced against very strong opposition under Guardiola.

Putting the European champions third shows either how strong the top end of this league is, or that I’m a joker who knows nothing. Chelsea’s boys in blue are more than capable of winning the title and with Romelu Lukaku are probably the only team in my (and basically everyone else’s) top four with a genuine world class striker. So why third? I’m not sure their defenders are quite good enough to achieve the kind of points totals required to win this league. Thomas Tuchel has masterfully prevented the defence from being exposed so far, but over 38 games, I anticipate enough slip-ups at the back to leave them just shy of the crown.

On paper, Manchester United have enough squad quality and depth to match pace with the top three in every position except one. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has proven he is a good manager and capable of taking this squad deep in all competitions. What he isn’t is a world-class strategic and tactical genius like, for example, Klopp, Guardiola and Tuchel. United will be fun to watch and should comfortably seal another top four finish, but I expect them to fall away from the top of the table before the final five matches.

European challengers

Leicester City have cruelly missed out on Champion’s League football on the final game of the season twice in a row now. They’ve not lost any key players and in Patson Daka may finally have the heir for the ageing Jamie Vardy. Brendan Rodgers has proven he’s a top-class manager and the Foxes have shown they can beat anyone, having taken points last season from every team I’ve ranked above them in this list. But all the richest teams are finally starting to spend their money with a coherent plan and Leicester may have to settle for being the best of the rest.

I have no idea how Tottenham Hotspur will do this year. I’ve put them here on the assumption they keep Harry Kane or that they sell him for circa £150m and buy sensibly; and that Nuno Espírito Santo was largely blameless for Wolves’ slump last season. With Son Heung-min and Kane up top, and newly acquired Cristian Romero in defence, Spurs should make a push back up the table towards the Champion’s League places – I just don’t expect them to actually get there.

Arsenal are also a bit of a mystery. They’ve been on a steady decline since about 2015 (or 2006 depending on who you ask) and have spent the past few years in erratic attempts to arrest the slide. The Gunners have a core of talented young players like Emile Smith Rowe and Bukayo Saka and an interesting manager in Mikel Arteta. They’ve signed sensibly this transfer window, but they’ll be too focused on fending off the attempted predations of up-and-comers like Aston Villa and Leeds to make much progress.

Mid-table optimism

In previous seasons, 7^th down to about 16^th was a mess of teams who could and did finish in incomprehensibly unpredictable orders. Now though, it looks like a few rough sub-divisions have opened up. Leeds United should top the “comfortably mid-table” unit. They play scintillating football with targeted plans for each opponent under the guidance of maverick Marcelo Bielsa. Last season was their first back in the Premier League since 2003/04 and they took points off almost everyone (except Brighton, West Ham and Wolves weirdly enough) and should kick-on given most of their players are young and improving.

Aston Villa have sold their best player and yet they should do better this season than last. That’s because they’ve replaced £100m man Jack Grealish with Emi Buendía, Leon Bailey and Danny Ings which gives them strength across their whole front line. With Tyrone Mings and Ezri Konsa sitting in front of Emiliano Martínez at the back, Villa will be hard to beat and should be better than the median Premier League team.

Brighton and Hove Albion were a bit of a meme last season – based on many expected points tables (i.e. how well a team should have done based on the quality of the chances they created and allowed) the team that battled relegation and finished 16^th should have finished 5^th. This season we get to find out whether the Seagulls are unlucky or just flaky, and I expect the answer the be a bit of both. Graham Potter has them playing lovely football and in Yves Bissouma they have an outstanding midfield talent – here’s hoping their forwards can convert a few of the many good chances they create.

What are Everton? They’ve employed just about every type of manager over the past five years, bought one player from Real Madrid and signed another on a free from Crystal Palace; and always landed between 7^th and 12^th. Replacing the continually overrated Carlo Ancelotti with the probably entirely rated Rafael Benítez should make them more consistent but also puts a ceiling on how high they can go. If Dominic Calvert-Lewin can keep banging in goals, they can have ambitions of a Europa Conference League run next season. I don’t expect that to actually happen.

West Ham United came a close second to Sheffield United in last seasons ‘team that most wildly defied expectations’ table, upgrading themselves 10 places from 16^th to 6^th. There’s a real risk though that last season was the ‘fuck around’ season, and this is the ‘find out’ one. With a thin squad that is highly vulnerable to injuries, David Moyes will have to juggle an increasingly competitive Premier League with trips to the continent in the Europa League. Best case scenario for them is exciting – mid-table solidity at home and a quarter-final run in Europe would be great fun. Relegated after being sent home from the group stages of the Europa League would be slightly less enjoyable.

Mid-table pessimism

The next sub-group of “uncomfortably lower-table” teams is a weird mix of intriguing newcomers and stale old hands. Wolverhampton Wanderers are at risk of making the transition from the first to the second, like Bournemouth, Watford and Swansea before them. In fairness, the loss of Raúl Jiménez last year to a sickening head injury derailed them quite badly and his return will hopefully see them back to their best. Wolves should be better than five to six other teams but a return to Europe next season is likely well beyond them.

Southampton are another team that’s drifting dangerously towards the brink. Ralph Hasenhüttl is a great manager, but great managers don’t move the needle that much compared to good players, and the Saints are running dangerously low on those. If James Ward-Prowse can keep banging in free kicks and setting up goals from corners then they should be safe enough, and they’ll have a bit more time and energy this season to execute on their high-pressing style. All in all, they should be safe from relegation but the weight carried by that ‘should’ is growing yearly.

Newcastle United have overperformed expectations for several seasons now, to the point that they’ve reset those expectations slightly. While their fans are pessimistic, with Callum Wilson, Ryan Fraser and Allan Saint-Maximin they have an attacking force to rival any of the mid-table teams. Their defence is a little more suspect, but Steve Bruce’s safety-first approach helps mitigate that. It’s probably another season of the same for Newcastle: flirting with relegation but never seriously committing to a long-term relationship with it.

Relegation candidates

Norwich City are a classic yo-yo club – this is their fifth stint in the Premier League and their fourth since the start of the 2011/12 season which is also the last time they managed to make it stick for more than one season. Daniel Farke has been backed by the owners and the arrival of Josh Sargent from Werder Bremen will help with scoring goals, but as with so many relegation battlers it’s the defence that is the real worry. The experience they earned in 2019/20 should stand them in good stead here and I think they’ll scrape into a second Premier League season in a row.

Crystal Palace are attempting a highly ambitious reboot. Gone is Roy Hodgson and his legions of 30-year-old workmanlike central midfielders and defenders; in their place is Patrick Vieira and a host of exciting young London talent like Michael Olise and Marc Guehi. It’s therefore very hard to tell how they’ll do this season with a team that will bear only a superficial resemblance to last season’s edition. With Wilfried Zaha and Christian Benteke up top, they might just make it out alive.

Brentford are the Moneyball team of English football – buying young players from obscure markets that represent overlooked value and playing modern football which prioritises high-quality chance creation and defending through possession. They’ve got great talents through the squad including Ivan Toney, Bryan Mbeumo and Kristoffer Ajer; but teams that get promoted with little Premier League experience and who are used to dominating matches against Championship level opposition often struggle. I think they’ll go back down this time but bounce up again quickly.

Burnley are the team most likely to be this season’s ‘model club gone sour’. The financial gravity of the Premier League means that teams who can’t afford to spend every year and who rely on a core of players executing a specific game plan tend to do well for a few seasons before fatigue, attrition and the inevitable march of time pulls the legs out from under them. Burnley are at the end of that arc and there is no shame in that – they’ve had a taste of European football, stuck it to all the big teams at least once and defied relegation predictions repeatedly. This season is likely to be one season too far for these clarets and their fearless, if slightly whingy, leader Sean Dyche.

Watford are a funny club, kind of a mini-Chelsea. Where other clubs attempt to establish themselves as top-flight regulars by backing a manager to execute a long-term vision (see Brentford, Burnley, Leeds, Norwich), Watford respond to every setback by sacking the manager and hiring a new one – and it’s largely worked. They’ll be reliant on exciting Senegalese winger Ismaïla Sarr for creativity but it’s their allergy to spending money on centre-backs that is the real red flag. Expect them to concede a bucketload and sink back down to the Championship.

Conclusion

So there you have it – my overly bold shout on what’s going to happen this season and why. I’ll check in with each club as much as I can this season but my primary focus will always be my reluctant love for Manchester United, and my intense frustration with their failure to buy a good defensive midfielder. My greatest hope for the year is that the slightly less intense schedule leads to way fewer injuries; and that the review brought on by the failed Super League leads to a truly independent football regulator as soon as possible. Fingers crossed.