50 Predictions For The Premier League Season

You’ve installed Sky, your fantasy football team is picked and you’ve even placed some bets on how the opening day will play out.

But have you considered how the whole season itself will play out? What will the fate of the Barclays Premier League be after the bloodthirsty English press are done ravaging it for 10 straight months? And that’s just on the pitch…

What about the players, the team previously known as England, the Big Cup, those pesky Spanish clubs and of course, the managers whose only purpose is to ruin our football clubs? How will it all turn out?

Iain Spragg has daringly peered into his crystal ball and came out the other side with 50, top-notch, iron-clad, surprising (only one of them is true) predictions for the 2010/2011 Premier League season.

Premier League Predictions

1. Disillusioned with England fans getting on his back, Wayne Rooney changes his name to Wayneo Roonetto, applies for an Italian passport and heads off to Serie A. He returns a fortnight later because they don’t sell baked beans, the blokes have all got ponytails and the coffee comes in tiny cups.
2. The back pages of the papers are dominated by stories about the wellbeing and whereabouts of Roberto Mancini’s bloody scarf.
3. Steven Gerrard cracks a smile. Possibly.
4. Craig Bellamy named as the wildcard in Europe’s Ryder Cup team and decapitates Tiger Woods after ‘he looks at me missus funny’.
5. Harry Redknapp talks happily to anyone listening about one his foreign players but unwittingly insults them because they can’t speak English proper, don’t like a round of golf, never get drunk and only slept with one woman last week.
6. Dimitar Berbatov bows to the inevitable and becomes the face (and head) of Regaine-For-Men. Joe Cole sign ups as his trusty sidekick.
7. Steve Bruce lands the part of Mr Potato Head in Toy Story 4. “It’s the part I was born to play”he tells reporters.
8. Ledley King becomes the first professional footballer in the world to be fitted with a titanium knee. It immediately goes rusty after he gets it wet in the showers.
9. Martin O’Neill is sectioned after being found wandering the streets of Birmingham, twitching uncontrollably, waving his arms in a threatening manner and shouting incoherently at innocent passers-by.
10. Mark Lawrenson jokes that Blackpool face a ‘towering’ task to stay in the Premier League. Absolutely no-one will laugh.
11. Aaron Lennon starts wearing high heels during game – and his crossing dramatically improves.
12. The West Ham treatment room is bursting at the seams after Avram Grant brings in his own private masseur.
13. Fergie ends his strop and finally starts giving interviews to the BBC again. He headbutts Garth Crooks when he asks him if referee added enough injury time.
14. Potty-mouthed Arsene Wenger reacts furiously after Blackburn’s players dare to tackle one of his ickle boys and offers Sam Allardyce outside for a fight.
15. Liverpool win their opening two Premier League games under Roy Hodgson and the city instantly implodes as the Anfield faithful starting dreaming about the title.
16. Theo Walcott’s voice breaks.
17. Roy Hodgson sensationally quits Liverpool to star as Harold in the Hollywood remake of Steptoe & Son. Davey Moyes is signed up to play his dad.
18. Gary Lineker’s tan deepens so dramatically that the BBC are forced to insert a ‘No Sunbeds’ clause in his new contract.
19. David Beckham returns to the Premier League when he signs for West Ham from Galaxy in January. Posh gets pregnant and they name the nipper Hackney Wick.
20. The Chelsea players have a dressing room whip round to buy Alex a surname.
21. Man City’s Yaya Toure buys up every single wheelbarrow in the country so he can get his weekly wages safely to the bank.
22. Carlos Tevez and Gary Neville sign up for a one-off cage fight at the MEN Arena.
23. Cesc Febregas gets drunk and gets a ‘I Love Barcelona’ tattoo. A furious Arsene Wenger marches him down the Holloway Road by the ear to get it lazered off.
24. Tony Pulis has his baseball cap surgically removed, revealing a shock of pink hair.
25. Stoke’s Rory Delap launches one of his trademark long throws and the ball hits a passing Boeing 747.
26. Sunderland’s Paraguyan Cristian Riveros will become the first exotic summer signing to throw his toys out of the pram, bemoaning the English weather, women and food by the end of November.
27. Sol Campbell stuns Newcastle by handing in a transfer request after just two games and joins for Sunderland. Two months later signs for Everton before quitting Goodison for a pay-as-you-play deal with Liverpool. His 23 minutes of action for the Reds earns him a princely £26.32.
28. Mick McCarthy chins the next person who asks him if he’s related to Sam The Eagle from the Muppets.
29. Joey Barton is sent off after five minutes of Newcastle’s return to the top-flight after assaulting a linesman.
30. In a desperate bid to prise Ashley Cole away from Chelsea in the January transfer window, Real Madrid boss Jose Mourinho stages a Girls Aloud reunion concert at the Bernabeu.
31. Didier Drogba signs up to appear in the celebrity version of Total Wipeout but inexplicably falls over before the first race.
32. Emile Heskey is humanely destroyed by RSPCA vets.
33. John Terry turns over a new leaf and sets up a support group and drama class for single mothers, never missing a meeting.
34. Paul Scholes finally agrees to do that advert for Duracell batteries.
35. Tired of waiting to be crowned champions, Man City buy the Premier League, immediately relegate the other 19 teams and declare themselves masters of the universe.
36. An Englishman breaks into Arsenal’s north London training ground complex but is promptly escorted out by security.
37. In a desperate effort to restore his reputation, Fabio Capello sets up his office at the crèche at the Man United training ground as he searches for a ‘new generation of England stars.’
38. Injury-plagued Owen Hargreaves calls time on his playing days and begin a new career as professional Mick Hucknall impersonator.
39. Carlo Ancelotti regrets selling Joe Cole to Liverpool as Chelsea suddenly suffer a chronic ball boy shortage. He immediately resigns Shaun Wright-Phillips.
40. Kris Kamara does a porn film.
41. Nani sensationally quits Man United to star in ‘Michael Jackson: The Musical’ in the West End.
42. Alan Hansen takes to menacingly stroking a cat on the MOTD sofa in an effort to scare off Lee Dixon.
43. Jamie Carragher announces his second international retirement but is persuaded to make yet another U-turn when Fabio Capello adds a speech therapist to his backroom staff.
44. Tensions in the Man City dressing room escalate when it emerges that Emmanuel Adeboayor’s yacht is five foot longer than Kolo Toure’s.
45. Fulham make a poor start to the new season and Mohamed al Fayed reacts angrily, forcing the players to spend the weekend listening to his conspiracy theories about the death of Diana.
46. Ashley Cole sensationally spends a quiet night in at home.
47. Anxious Chelsea players ban their wives and girlfriends from attending matches. John Terry implores them to change their minds.
48. Man City make a dramatic bid in January for Lionel Messi, offering Gareth Barry and Buckingham Palace in exchange for the little Argie.
49. Marouane Fellaini’s chops off his afro and like Samson, his powers immediately disappear and Davey Moyes flogs him to Accrington Stanley.
50. And finally, Fergie gets so irate with a referee that he finally explodes. The whole of Surrey grinds to a halt as they hold a minute’s silence.

Written by Iain Spragg, published author, respected sports writer and co-founder of Sports Media Solutions.

Welcoming the new season:

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