- How Arsenal is now the model for other clubs – but some still can’t get it right
- Why it is really important for Arsenal to stay well away from the Club World Cup
By Tony Attwood
Both fans and the media often focus on individual issues when it comes to predicting how well their club might do in a new season, each emphasising different points depending on their prejudices. One favourite is to look at the amount spent on transfers. Another point often emphasised is the number of players brought in. Yet another is the “what if” factor of what happens if one particular player gets injured. Then again there can be the issue of bringing in a new manager.
But is there one point that really can tell us how well a club will do in the coming season?
The answer is yes, but it is not wholly accurate, and is not the one most journalists focus on. Which is why most of the media hide from their predictions once the season has started.
However, at the end of last season, the Guardian did run a comparison between its predictions and reality. And we noted that prediction, because they predicted Arsenal would win the league, which they might well have done had they not suffered one of their biggest injury crises of the last 20 years.
In fact, although only one of the newspaper’s predictions was actually right (they correctly guessed that Southampton would finish bottom of the league), they were pretty close in many cases . Indeed the majority (12 of the clubs) ended upwithin three places of the prediction.
But there were some gawping errors. Tottenham were predicted to end up fourth (the error ranking here possibly a punishment from the great journalist in the sky for the newspaper constantly insisting on using that club’s nickname when writing about them while every other club has its proper name used) while Manchester United were predicted to end up ten places higher than they actually managed. Other big mistakes were Nottingham Forest (predicted 16th, finished 7th) and Brentford (predicted 17th, finished 10th).
What they did get very noticeably right were the three clubs to be relegated, although Ipswich and Leicester had their positions reversed, which really is a point of detail.
So, looking at the top six, the predictions and actual final table with the difference noted in the final column was…
| predicted | Reality | Predicted difference | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 1 | Liverpool | -1 |
| 2 | Manchester City | 2 | Arsenal | -1 |
| 3 | Liverpool | 3 | Manchester City | +2 |
| 4 | Tottenham Hots | 4 | Chelsea | -13 |
| 5 | Manchester United | 5 | Newcastle | -10 |
| 6 | Aston Villa | 6 | Aston Villa | 0 |
In recent times, the media has tried to find ways other than transfer fees to predict where a club might end up, most notably the wages paid, but this method too can have difficulties, given that, for example, Brentford ended up 10th in the league but had the 19th highest wages bill.
And they were not alone in being an anomaly in this regard since Bournemouth were ninth in the league and had the 17th highest wage bill. Nottingham Forest were 7th and had the 14th highest wage bill. The league winners, Liverpool, had the fifth-highest wage bill
Some clubs of course, did have wages bills that matched their position, more or less. Ipswich had the lowest wage bill but one, and were bottom of the league. At the other end, Arsenal had the third highest wage billl and came second.
But as you might expect, the biggest gap came with the biggest losers. Tottenham’s wages bill was the 7th highest in the league (at £104m), and Manchester United’s bill was the second highest in the league (£180.6m), and well, we know where they ended up.
Even the link between the amount of money spent in the summer and the result at the end of the season can be described as nothing more than “moderately positive”, which really hardly makes the research worth doing!
So, is there no way of predicting how well a club will do? The answer is yes, there is, but unfortunately, you won’t find it readily reported, and it is still a long way short of 100%. It is the transfer spending over the last three years, or better still, over the last four years. In short, looking at transfer spending over the life of the average player’s contract. And this works for predicting most of Europe’s big leagues.
The New York Times found the correlation between gross transfer spending and performance in a single season was 46 per cent — moderately positive, but not especially close or predictable.
However, by extending the period from one season to three, the correlation for English clubs jumped up to 61 per cent, and was 66 per cent by the end of the fourth year.
So if you want predictions for the end of the season, consider the transfer spend over the past four years. It’s not a perfect correlation, but it is the best we can find.
