When I sat down in August 2009 to predict what the final table for the 2009-10 Premier League would look like, little did I know what a disastrous season lay ahead for Liverpool. At the time, many pundits were predicting that Chelsea would finish in top place. And I was one of them especially after how rejuvenated they looked on their Summer 2009 tour.

For the most part, I did pretty well with my predictions (see right). If you take Liverpool out of the equation, the top seven spots were close to how they ended. I was surprised that Everton didn’t do as well as in previous seasons but they were hampered by injuries.

While I was hopeful that Manchester City would give the Premier League Big Four a run for their money, I had a strong suspicion that they wouldn’t be able to do as well as many City supporters had hoped.

Near the bottom of the table, I got 2 of the 3 predictions correct of who would get relegated. Even until a couple of months ago I was convinced Wolves would go down, but full credit to Mick McCarthy for keeping the Wanderers up for another season.

Other clubs that surprised me during the 2009-10 season were how well Birmingham City and Stoke City did as well as how poor Wigan and West Ham performed. As a Swansea City supporter, I probably gave Roberto Martinez more credit than he deserved for his first season in the Premier League.

In addition to my predictions, I also asked you — the readers of EPL Talk — to submit your educated guesses of who would end up in positions one through 20. As is often the case, some readers posted their entries as late as April, which is quite unfair. So looking at those who posted theirs in the comments section in August, the most apparent thing to me is how many people predicted Liverpool would win the title or finish in second place. Their seventh place finish must have come at quite a shock for many people, myself included.

In addition to the predictions of who would finish where in the table, EPL Talk held the Fantasy Premier League for the 2009-10 season. Here are the results:

First, the good news is that the EPLTalk.com Fantasy Premier League team finished in 10th place worldwide out of 193,262 private leagues.

Second, with almost 2,000 players, the league was quite competitive as you would imagine. But, drumroll please, here are the top 10 fantasy players in the EPLTalk.com private league:

Congratulations to Pat Pence who finished in first place as well as all of the other fantasy players who participated. Pat squeezed through on the last day of the season to beat Swagat Satpathy by two points.