With the Champions League matches out of the way for the next few weeks, all attention returns now to the Premier League where Manchester United, Arsenal, Manchester City, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur are fighting it out for positions one through five.
The question is, where will these teams end up at the end of the season? Will the clubs finish in the same positions that they’re in now or will there be plenty of fluidity between now and the end of the season in May?
First, let’s look at the remaining fixtures for each club:
Manchester United (12 league games remaining): Wigan (a), Chelsea (a), Liverpool (a), Bolton (h), West Ham (a), Fulham (h), Newcastle (a), Everton (h), Arsenal (a), Chelsea (h), Blackburn (a) and Blackpool (h).
Arsenal (11 league games remaining): Sunderland (h), West Brom (a), Blackburn (a), Blackpool (h), Liverpool (h), Bolton (a), Man United (h), Stoke (a), Aston Villa (h) and Fulham (a). Plus, to be scheduled: Spurs (a).
Manchester City (11 league games remaining): Fulham (h), Wigan (h), Chelsea (a), Sunderland (h), Liverpool (a), Spurs (h), Blackburn (a), West Ham (h), Everton (a), Stoke (h) and Bolton (a).
Tottenham Hotspur (11 league games remaining): Wolves (a), West Ham (h), Wigan (a), Stoke (h), Man City (a), West Brom (h), Chelsea (a), Blackpool (h), Liverpool (a) and Birmingham (h). Plus, to be scheduled: Arsenal (h).
Chelsea (12 league games remaining): Man United (h), Blackpool (a), Man City (h), Stoke (a), Wigan (h), West Brom (a), Birmingham (h), West Ham (h), Spurs (h), Man United (a), Newcastle (h) and Everton (a).
Looking at the remaining fixtures for the top five teams, Arsenal has the easiest finale while Manchester City and Tottenham have a slightly harder route, which leaves Manchester United and Chelsea with the toughest slog. While United and Chelsea have the toughest schedule, it also gives them the greatest opportunity to those two teams to gain vital points against top six opposition.
Now that we’ve taken the long-term view about who the top five have to play against for the remainder of the season, let’s consider the short-term and that’s this weekend’s important Premier League matches. This week I’m trying something new which is playing the prediction game on Facebook with a brand-new app launching this week called Scoreboard.
Scoreboard is a Premier League predictions game where you play against your friends and other soccer fans on Facebook and try to climb to the top of the league ladder. And it’s free.
If you think you can beat me in the inaugural week of the Scoreboard predictions game on Facebook, take two minutes and add the app to your wall today. And then punch in your predictions and we’ll see how good you are. The final game of Gameweek 28, which kicks off Saturday and ends Tuesday is, gulp, Chelsea against Manchester United, live from Stamford Bridge in London.
Time is running out, so be sure to log in and enter your predictions before Friday. And then beginning Friday, March 4th you can watch a one-hour online TV broadcast live on Facebook courtesy of Scoreboard. The studio pundits predict the scores of the forthcoming games, and their predictions are compared with the crowd-sourced average prediction from all the users of the game, along with various other stats from the users. Comments from users are also shown alongside the pundits’ predictions. The following week the pundits’ and crowd’s performances are compared. There’s a winner for each week and for the entire season.
So, drumroll please, here are my predictions for this upcoming Gameweek 28:
Saturday
Aston Villa 2-1 Blackburn Rovers
Everton 1-1 Sunderland
Newcastle United 2-0 Bolton Wanderers
Wigan Athletic 1-2 Manchester United
Wolverhampton Wanderers 1-1 Blackpool
Sunday
West Ham United 2-3 Liverpool
Manchester City 3-0 Fulham
Monday
Stoke City 1-0 West Bromwich Albion
Tuesday
Chelsea 0-0 Manchester United
Don’t forget to try Scoreboard today. And, in the meantime, feel free to post your feedback in the comments section below regarding how wrong or right you think my predictions will be.
