How the BBC football “experts” thought the Premier League top four would pan out in 2016/17.
Chelsea’s John Terry, Gary Cahill and team mates celebrate with the trophy after winning the Premier League
Ahead of the 2016/17 season the BBC asked 33 of its pundits, presenters, journalists and commentators to pick out their Premier League top four for the upcoming campaign.
A super-computer was also thrown into the mix for good measure, as was the prediction of where reigning champions (at the time) Leicester City would finish in the final table.
Leicester City players looks dejected
Their answers are quite interesting and make for good reading now that we know the final outcome.
Of those asked more than half (18) predicted that Manchester City would win the title. Another 12 went for Manchester United, while only John Motson, Trevor Sinclair and Steve Wilson correctly picked Chelsea.
Chris Waddle went for former club Tottenham Hotspur and was probably mocked at the time, but doesn’t look quite so stupid now.
Tottenham’s Son Heung-min and Danny Rose celebrate after Manchester City’s Aleksandar Kolarov scores an own goal and the first for Tottenham
Only Jermaine Jenas, another ex-Spurs man, predicted that Tottenham would finish second and in fact only 12 had them in their top four at all.
Everyone but four had City to either win the title or come second. They were Jason Mohammad, Jason Roberts, Motson and Waddle. That’s two correct for Motson now.
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola
Nine pundits had Liverpool to finish fourth, but there was just one who chose to omit both Arsenal and Man United from their top four and that man was Jenas – predicting the top four teams right, but in the wrong order. Along with Motson he probably comes out of this with the most credit.
As for Leicester, every single one of them had the Foxes to finish inside the top ten. Therefore Mark Lawrenson’s prediction of tenth was the closest to their actual finish of 12th. At this point it must be highlighted that Dean Saunders had them to finish second.
Take a closer look at their predictions below:
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