by Foreverinbluedreams » Fri May 11, 2018 1:59 pm
From Football365's Mediawatch:
Lawro laughs
Football predictions are not easy. Paul Merson is given a particularly tough time on these pages, but it should be noted that the many variables make it is a thankless task to forecast the result of a game. If it was straightforward, we would all be rich and bookmakers would be out of business.
But the difficulty in predicting the outcomes of football matches is not about to stop Mediawatch delighting in the fact that, by Mark Lawrenson’s calculations, Liverpool have just completed their second successive unbeaten Premier League season. It really is quite some feat.
‘Liverpool’s superior goal difference means they only need a point to be sure of finishing above Chelsea and making the top four,’ Lawrenson tells BBC Sport this week, ‘and I think the Reds will get the result they need.’
Of course you bloody do. Liverpool are backed to win 2-0 – their 23rd league win of the season. They have drawn the other 15 matches, going unbeaten but only finishing three points above Chelsea in fourth.
Rather wonderfully, Lawrenson has not predicted a single Premier League defeat for Liverpool since May 2016, when he expected the looming Europa League final to take their eye off the ball in the final game of the season against West Brom. The only other league defeat he has predicted for Liverpool since April 2015 came against Southampton in March 2016. That is three years and one month with only two league defeats. And, rather brilliantly, only one imaginary title.
The data for Lawrenson’s predictions unfortunately only runs back as far as the 2009/10 season, when he backed Liverpool to lose just two games (they lost 11). Then came four defeats (actually 14) in 2010/11, one loss (or 14) in 2011/12, and an eerily accurate eight defeats in 2012/13, when Liverpool lost nine times.
After the brief moment of clarify came three defeats (6) in 2013/14, four (12) in 2014/15, and two (10) in 2015/16, before the two unbeaten seasons. In nine campaigns from 2009/10 to the current one, Liverpool have lost 87 Premier League games; Lawrenson has predicted 24 defeats.
Football predictions are not easy. But they are really funny.