With the English Premier League set to return on Saturday there will be many predictions on the season ahead. Who will be crowned champions? Will Pep's City come roaring back? Will Liverpool, having gone 30 years without a league title, now win two in a row? Can Ole, Jose or Mikel get their respective teams to challenge City or Liverpool? And what about Chelsea. Could they win the title after spending so much money?
Naturally, there will be other prediction as to who will get relegated, what manager will be sacked first, what teams will reach Europe, and on and on. The variety of predictions (often in the form of bets) is almost endless.
Listening to the "experts" will help - at least at an individual match level. This is what our recent paper in the European Journal of Operational Research has found at least.
Our paper analyses the forecasting accuracy of experts vis-à-vis laypeople over three seasons of English Premier League matches from 2014 to 2017. We find that former professional football players have superior forecasting ability when compared to laypeople.
There currently limited free access to the paper for the next 30 days available here.