I got things wrong last season. This is not news. What matters is knowing which things and why. So here it is. Five calls I got wrong, in writing, before the new season starts. If you are going to beat me, you should know where my mistakes come from.
One. I backed Manchester City to win eleven of their first fourteen games. They won seven. I misjudged how much the squad rotation was masking the drop-off in depth. I had the right club and the wrong method. City play a different game when they are managing sixty fixtures a season and when they are focused purely on the league. I confused the two. It cost me eight points in the first quarter.
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Two. I said Wolves would be fine. They finished nineteenth. In my defence I gave them confidence two on that call, not confidence three. In my offence, I still said it. The recruitment had been fine on paper for three years running. The paper lied. I should have trusted the pitch numbers more than the contract numbers. Lesson learned. For this season I am treating any club whose recruitment I cannot verify directly with at least one confidence-level downgrade.
“I got it wrong. I am telling you now so you can use it. That is the point of a public record.”
Three. I consistently overestimated Everton's home record. They were better on the road than at Goodison for long stretches of the season. I have watched Everton for twenty years. I should have seen it. I did not. I backed them at home in three separate gameweeks where the data was already pointing the other way. Pride. Mine. Moving on.
Four. I did not give enough weight to red cards. When a key midfielder got sent off in November and I had already locked in my pick, I had no mechanism to account for it. The VAR buffer now means I score after the reviews are in. But my pre-pick logic still undervalued the probability of a red card in high-intensity fixtures. I am correcting this. When I pick a fixture with a history of cards and a high-tempo referee, I am building that into the confidence rating.
Five. I trusted Spurs in March. I always say I will not trust Spurs in March and then March arrives and something convinces me. I cannot tell you what it was this time because I have blocked it out. The record shows three confidence-two picks on Spurs between February and April of last season. All three wrong. I am keeping this list visible so I can read it before I pick any Spurs fixture this coming season.
That is five. The record is there. It stays there. You cannot beat me if you do not know where I slip. Now you know. GW1 picks Friday the fourteenth.
“I got it wrong. I am telling you now so you can use it. That is the point of a public record.”
The Gaffer · beatthegaffer.com