Premier League Predictions, Week 12

Welcome back to the weekly predictions, Premier League fans! It's been a long, hard, cold wander through the wilderness, but we've made it to the other side. The last international break until late March is in the rear-view, and starting with this weekend, we get the good stuff: Premier League action every single week for the next 16 weeks.

If you can't remember what happened back before the break, I feel bad for you. Well, okay, I feel bad for me, because last time out, I had my best outing in a long while. To be clear, that's a low bar to clear from how I had been doing, and I didn't exactly shoot the lights out here, either. I missed three of the five matches I selected, starting with Brighton's upset of Man City, and continuing with Liverpool's and Newcastle's wins over Aston Villa and Nottingham, respectively. However, I did at least nail the Brighton-City scoreline, along with Manchester United's win over Leicester City, and put both pieces together with a dead-on projection for Chelsea and Arsenal's 1-1 draw. All told, that's a 3/5 week from me, which slightly improves my season total to 25.5/50. Back above .500, baby!

Now, the matches are less than 12 hours from kicking off, so let's not waste any more time celebrating small Ws. Here are your 5 for Week 12!

Leicester City vs. Chelsea

The weekend's first match features two clubs in very different spots on the table, but both looking for their first league win in November. Leicester have acclimated back to life in the Premier League considerably better than their fellow promotees, but still not quite as well as most would have expected from the former league champions, currently languishing just 3 spots above the relegation zone. Their job won't get any easier tomorrow, even at home, as they host Chelsea; the Blues have gained just 6 points from their last 15, but still sit in 3rd place. You can bet they will come out of this international break fired up to course correct and keep pace with their Top 4 peers, and I think that spells trouble for Leicester.

The Pick: Chelsea, 2-0

Arsenal vs. Nottingham Forest

Arsenal, two-time reigning runners-up in the league, came into this season as betting favorites for the first time in who knows how long, but safe to say it has not gone to plan thus far. It's far from catastrophic, to be clear, but a combination of injuries, disciplinary suspensions, and dropped points suddenly sees them 9 points off the pace of league leaders Liverpool. The Gunners come into tomorrow's match in the midst of a four-match slump (five if you include their Champions League loss to Inter Milan), and looking for their first league win in a month and a half. It's been far from the easiest stretch of games for them, in fairness, and it won't get a whole lot easier tomorrow, hosting a 5th-place Nottingham side that suffered just their second loss of the season before the break to Newcastle. I'm of the opinion that Forest's Top 4 placement was a little bit of fool's gold, but there's no question they will be a tough out for Arsenal; just ask Liverpool, whose only loss in any competition thus far this season came at home to Nuno Espirito Santo's men. That said, I do think the Gunners will put this one away late to finally grab their long-elusive-- and needed -- win.

The Pick: Arsenal, 2-1

Manchester City vs. Tottenham Hotspur

Often times international breaks are unwelcome for teams, interrupting whatever flow and momentum their players and staff have gotten into. For Manchester City, however, the break could not have come at a better time. The defending champions four times over are in the midst of an exceedingly rare slide, losing 4 straight matches in all competitions, including their last 2 in league play, all while Liverpool has won and extended their lead atop the league. I can imagine there are few teams Pep Guardiola would rather see less as they attempt to turn around their form than Tottenham, who have consistently been a bogey team for Guardiola and co. over the last several years. In fact, despite their aggressively up-and-down season thus far, Spurs already own a win over Man City, knocking them out of the league cup less than a month ago. Tottenham also will be eager to start swinging the pendulum of their form the other direction, after capitulating into the international break with a collapse at Galatasaray in the Europa League, and a full-blown embarrassment at home vs. minnows Ipswich Town in their last outing. That said, League Cup aside, hungry as they will be for points, Spurs have been very unreliable in the bigger matches this season, and I think City are at a point where they will need a win even more between the two sides.

The Pick: Man City, 3-1

Southampton vs. Liverpool

On paper, this should be the easiest pick all week. It's the first-placed team coming up against the last-placed team, after all. The Arne Slot era at Liverpool could not have started much better than it has, almost literally: despite the new manager, despite almost zero signings this offseason, despite being amidst what is supposed to be a murderers' row of matches stretching from late October to early December, the Reds are 5 points clear atop the Premier League, into the quarterfinals of the League Cup, and the only team in the Champions League to have won all their matches thus far. This is supposed to represent the only 'easy' match in Liverpool's crucial stretch, but two things give me (a Liverpool fan) pause: one, that sole blemish on Liverpool's résumé all season came against a big underdog fresh off an international break that had seen the Reds score a big win immediately beforehand. Two, and probably more significantly, despite being the cellar-dweller in the league, Southampton are at home and truthfully haven't actually been all that bad. Manchester City, Arsenal, and Nottingham Forest all needed late goals to fight off the Saints. Do these things cause me enough concern to actually pick Southampton to upset Liverpool? I don't know that I'd go that far, but I do think this will be a significantly more competitive one than most everyone thinks.

The Pick: Liverpool, 2-1

Ipswich Town vs. Manchester United

At first glance, there's nothing all to exciting about the 17th-placed team hosting the 13th-placed team. But there's a reason this is the last match of the Premier League weekend; three weeks ago, Manchester United became the first club all season to sack their manager when they dismissed Erik ten Hag. After a nice mini-spell with caretaker manager Ruud van Nistelrooy, highly-anticipated new hire Ruben Amorim makes his debut at long last this weekend. Given that one of their new boss's last matches at the helm of Sporting Lisbon was a demolition of big bad rivals Man City, the excitement is palpable among Man United fans. He will have to lead a talented but imperfect team into choppy waters, heading on the road to a motivated Ipswich Town, whose last match before the international break was that massive upset at Tottenham. Up until now, the season's buzziest manager debut was Arne Slot for Liverpool, who opened....on the road at Ipswich Town. In that match, a fired up Ipswich caused Liverpool loads of trouble early on in front of a raucous crowd, until the favored club took control in the 2nd half and eased to a 2-0 win. I would not be surprised if we see something very similar for Amorim and United.

The Pick: Man United, 2-0