During the course of a Premier League season, have you ever muttered to your friends or yourself that you could pick a better team than the manager of your favorite Premier League club? We’ve all done it at some point especially when our club’s manager has made a ridiculous selection to the starting 11 or has made a bizarre substitution. During the season, though, we just grin and bear it, and wonder what may have been.

That all changes now with a one-of-a-kind prediction game from EPL Talk. Beginning today, we’re launching Beat The Manager, a free EPL prediction game that asks readers to make three predictions each gameweek of the 2012-13 Premier League season:

(1) Pick the starting 11 (and 3 substitutes) that you think should play in your team’s next game,

(2) Predict the starting 11 (and subs, if any) that your manager will play, and

(3) Predict the final score of the game.

Contestants will be scored on each of the elements of their entry. Winners will be assessed both on the accuracy of their predictions and the quality of their choices, as assessed by our expert panel. Our panel has devised an algorithm for establishing what the best team would have been in any given match and your choices will be scored against this. The decisions of the expert panel are final.

As you can imagine, this gives a whole new meaning to following your favorite Premier League club each season. You get a chance each gameweek to beat the manager at his own game, determining who should and shouldn’t be in the side. It takes a completely different thought process. It’ll help you look at the game differently to use which talent is sitting on the bench or playing in the reserves that is being under utilized.

Beat The Manager is completely free to play. And the best thing yet is that you’ll have five chances to win an Apple iPad over the course of the 2012-13 EPL season. The contestant who has the top score at different stages of the season will receive their very own iPad 3. And, the winner at the very end of the season will receive the new iPad, which is expected to be the iPad 4.

But in order to be eligible to win, you need to take just one minute to register. And then you need to play the Beat The Manager game each week.

Hurry! The deadline to register and to make your entry for gameweek 1 is Saturday at 7:30am ET/12:30pm BST, so don’t delay and sign up today.

And if you have any questions, refer to the FAQ but if the answer isn’t there, post your questions in the comments section below.