5 Bold Premier League Preseason Predictions, Revisited

At the 4th straight time of asking, Arsenal finally scaled the mountaintop this season-- as this blog (kinda) predicted they would.

Way back in August, with the dawn of a new Premier League season within us, I offered 5 bold takes for how the 2025-26 season would transpire. I had no idea in August 2025 how different life would look in May 2026, in ways both good (my life in general 🥰 ) and bad (just about everything about this club football season in general 😔). But indeed, here we are yet again, with another season in the rearview mirror.

As we tie a bow on 9 months of....well, not exactly thrilling football, to be fair, but a season unlike many in recent memory-- culminating in a Decision Day yesterday that saw Arsenal lift the Premier League trophy for the first time in 22 years, Erling Haaland polish off his 3rd Golden Boot award, and legends of the game Pep Guardiola and Mohamed Salah wave farewell to the league --I thought it might be fitting to look back at how those projections held up. Despondent with my weak 1/5 finish to my weekly predictions, and a serious downturn from last year's mark (my final tally was 92/170, or 54%, a good 11% drop from last year's mark), I'm desperate for a win somewhere.

Anyways, before we delve into how prescient or horribly off-base I was, let me remind you that the title of the original piece did foreshadow the high probability that I look foolish come June. With that in mind, these are 5 things I predicted would transpire, in order of what I expected the least to most foolhardy prophesies would be:

1. One of last year's Top 4 will win the league... but it won't be Liverpool.

The result: 10/10

One of the biggest storylines from the Premier League season (especially the first half) was the shocking futility and inconsistency from reigning champions Liverpool, who underwent an October and November with a solitary win in both the Premier League and Champions League. The Reds steadied the ship a little bit in the winter months, but ended up a good 25 points back in a distant 5th place, only officially securing Champions League football on the final matchday. The champions, meanwhile? Last year's runners-up (and the runners-up from the two seasons prior) Arsenal. It was the Gunners' title almost wire-to-wire, as they took the lead from Liverpool at the start of October and never looked back, save for a brief blip. That brief blip did at least give us an exciting title race, though, however short-lived, as Manchester City pulled even on points and ahead on goal differential in the final month before Arsenal steadied the ship and closed it out. But this prediction was spot on: it was only ever going to be a Top 4 finisher from last year that brought home this trophy, and it was clear from an early date that it was not going to be Liverpool.

2. We will have a first-time Golden Boot winner.

The result: Wrong, as I have been almost every time I make a Golden Boot prediction.

One day, I will learn to not doubt Erling Haaland or Mo Salah. Salah, of course, is on his way out at Liverpool (more on that below), and likely out of the Premier League altogether. But the number of times I've predicted a new Golden Boot winner in recent years, only for one of these two (and before Haaland, Harry Kane) to once again take top scoring honors in the league is crazy. Manchester City having a second consecutive somewhat disappointing season-- marked by another early Champions League exit, and an uncharacteristic collapse down the stretch of the Premier League season --obscured the fact that they still completed a domestic cup double, and especially obscured another magnificent Haaland season. The big Norwegian only scored 8 goals in the year 2026, and still managed to belt in 28 total on the season, and have a 3rd Golden Boot (bested only by Salah's and Thierry Henry's 4) iced away by the holiday season.

3. Crystal Palace are this year's "underdog that could."

The result: It depends?

For a while there, it seemed like Crystal Palace were going to make me look like a savant! They unofficially kicked the season off by beating champions Liverpool on penalties in the Community Shield, and continued to torment the Reds in the coming months by handing them their first league loss of the season 6 weeks in, and knocking them out of the League Cup at Anfield a couple weeks later. In November, they were sitting Top 4 in the league, Top 8 in the Europa Conference League, and in the quarterfinals in the League Cup. But a brutal December and January stretch saw them win just two matches in all competitions since Thanksgiving weekend and tumble all the way down a crowded table to 14th in the league. In the January window, they lost captain and talisman (and rat) Marc Guehi to Manchester City, and iconic manager (and rat) Oliver Glasner declared he would be leaving at season's end. Their league positioning never recovered, and they were unable to repeat their remarkable FA Cup title from last year. Still, they consistently proved a tough out for any and all teams, including the top ones all season, and importantly, are playing in a European Cup final as they take on Rayo Vallecano for the Conference League Final on Wednesday! They're far from a bad team, and for a club with as little history of triumph as they have, a European trophy would be a massive success, so I'm not totally wrong about their "underdog that could" status. Still, the spirit of this prediction was referring to their ability to crash the top 4-8 of the Premier League table, which they very much did not do.

4. Mohamed Salah will have his worst (statistical) season with Liverpool.

The result: Nailed it 😔

I basically feel like this. As a Liverpool die-hard whose favorite Liverpool player of all time very well might just be Mo Salah, this was the saddest part of the Reds' frustrating season for me. Even when I was making my pessimistic prediction, I did not foresee just how bad it would get for The Egyptian King. Salah looked a shell of himself for much this season, not only struggling to get on the stats sheet, but often struggling to even make an impact on the match, or to put away some of the easiest chances he'll ever see. He still ended up with the second-most goal involvements of anyone in his team, finishing with 7 goals and 7 assists on the year, but that was more a sign of Liverpool's futility at large than anything else. By contrast, last season he totaled 31 goal involvements before the new year, and finished with a record-breaking 29 goals and 18 assists. So unreliable was his form this season that it led to something happening that had never before happened in his Liverpool career: getting dropped from the starting lineup. This-- no doubt coupled with the continued mediocre results after said benching --led to an extremely out-of-character public blowup between player and club, including manager Arne Slot, which in turn led to rumors and speculation that the Liverpool legend might be headed elsewhere in the January window, less than a year removed from signing a two-year contract extension (and sweeping all the league's individual awards). Now, he and Slot ultimately made amends, and the Egyptian King did see out the rest of this season at Anfield, but in March, announced he would not see out the rest of that contract extension and would be departing this season. I felt confident this prediction would be right, but never in a million years did I expect just how bad it would get for Salah and Liverpool this season, or that it would end with him leaving the club at full-time yesterday. Sigh.

5. All 3 newly promoted teams will go right back down.

The result: Not even close!

After two consecutive seasons of the new promotees immediately going back down, I figured it wasn't the most outrageous bet to count on the newbies making it three, especially given the survival skills consistently displayed by recent escapees Wolves, West Ham and Everton. But by the midway point, it was already clear this prediction was going to be wrong, thanks mostly to one team: Sunderland. The Black Cats, who actually finished 4th in the Championship last year and had to win the playoff in order to promote, made the most of their long-awaited return to the top division. They were a "top half of the table" club nearly all season long, and sat 16 points clear of the bottom three at the midweay point. 2026 was ahrsher on the side than 2025 was, but a new-look Sunderland side still did enough-- culminating with an upset of Chelsea on the final matchday -- to clinch Europa League football next season. While fellow fresh faces Burnley are headed right back down, and truly, spent almost the entire season in the relegation zone, the third promotee Leeds also stayed out of the danger zone, finishing in 14th place (and even reaching an FA Cup semifinal in the process). In the end, it would be West Ham and Wolverhampton joining Burnley in the drop, the two longtime Premier League clubs looking every bit the relegation fodder I was skeptical they would be.

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In the end, my bold preseason predictions only yielded a couple total misses! If you're feeling generous, you could say I got 3/5, and if you're feeling rigid, I suppose you could say I went 2/5. In reality, I think this was pretty much a 50% success rate, which feels like a pretty perfect representation of my match predictions for this season, as well as for how I'd rate this Liverpool season. Meh. We'll be back next year!!