Premier League predictions: How accurate were BBC Sport pundits?

Anyone anticipating Liverpool’s triumph in the Premier League? We opted not to.

The Reds would be champions, according to one of the 30 BBC pundits we asked to pick the top four before the season started, Stephen Warnock and Fara Williams, who both predicted second place.

They were not the only ones who messed it up.

Your team’s exact chances of winning any competition can be determined by Opta’s “supercomputer.”

It is actually a complicated algorithm that relies on a model created by the sports analytics company’s “Power Rankings,” which are based on past outcomes and betting market odds.

Before a ball was kicked, the team simulated the results of all 380 Premier League games 10,000 times, finding that Manchester City had an 82.2% chance of winning the title, with Liverpool in third place, before the simulation.

Opta’s algorithm was correct about two of the four teams, Chelsea in second and Arsenal in fourth, and it did choose all four that finished in the actual top four in fairness to the algorithm.

Williams performed an unspecified hunch rather than analyzing any data, but he still managed to match that pretty impressive feat.

She chose to predict the top four teams, and she placed Arsenal in third place, one place above Chelsea, as one of five BBC pundits who included them all.

He can see the fine line between being last year’s star predictor and one of this season’s aussi-rans, though Aston Villa’s controversial defeat at home to Manchester United may be pointed out.

Villa, Warnock’s choice for fourth spot, had a chance to finish as high as third on Sunday but ended up sixth and squandering places in the Champions League.

We wanted to know who everyone believed would take home a spot at the top table of European football, so we wanted to know about that race as well. Only the top four knew that at the start of the season.

Six of our pundits merit praise for predicting Newcastle would qualify, given that it was confirmed in April that the team that placed fifth would do so as well.

However, some of our experts’ predictions, especially those that included Tottenham, Manchester United, or West Ham, were undoubtedly a little further along.

Of course, Spurs did advance to the Champions League, but only by winning the Europa League and not by finishing 17th overall.

Only Manchester City and Arsenal made the 30 teams that were expected to finish in the top fours, out of which nine.

Using all 30 BBC predictions, the overall predicted ranking was:

(Using a system of four points for first place, three for second, two for third, and one for fourth) Position is based on the team’s highest individual prediction when points are tied.