This entry is intended to recall a variety of articles written during the past year that considered the 'live' Premier League race and recaps on several of our suggestions and forecasts.
The curse of the prolific goal scorer, that was considered by Declan Jordan here and by John Eakins and myself consider here , has struck again for the Premier League. Only 8 times in the Premier League history did the top goal scorer play for the champions, Luis Suarez is added to a growing list of the cursed!
In light of the teams relegated and the issues of managerial change, Robbie Butler considered how effective altering the boss was here and again in April here, providing some wise advice. Declan Jordan addressed the extent to which Premier League clubs have been increasing the rate at which they change managers here, something which has seen growing attention as the Premier League managerial casualty list lenghtened over the course of 2013-2014 season.
Manchester United bucked the trend this season and didn’t challenge for the league after winning it, something which I showed was a rather rare occurrence historically in the Premier League here. In a poor season for the 2012-2013 champions, Robbie Butler and myself forecasted David Moyes' uphill challenge to qualify for the Champions League here last December. While on the subject of Champions League qualification, Everton were unlucky not to qualify for next years competition as they surpassed the crucial 70 points mark that Robbie Butler considered here, yet still failed to qualify for Europes elite competition.
The week before the start of the Premier League season Robbie Butler wrote a very interesting piece on how it may be 'darkest before the dawn' for Liverpool here.
An on running debate saw us consider whether defensive or offensive teams are more likely to win Championships. Declan Jordan used statistics form the League of Ireland here to consider the issue while John Eakins considered
European statistics here. I discussed the offensive side in January and showed how 70% of Premier League winners have scored the most goals in the league (which is true of this season too) and used it to argue why goals scored offer a fast and frugal means to predict the eventual winners in light of a supercomputers complex estimates of the Premier League outcome. The supercomputer incorrectly predicted the winners but correctly predicted the relegated teams.
We all look forward to considering similar topics and new ones for the 2014-2015 Premier League!