Last August, before a ball had been kicked in anger, 33 BBC television and radio pundits sat down to call the Premier League season. They had company: Opta's supercomputer ran 10,000 simulations of the entire campaign, and Microsoft's Copilot AI was asked to generate its own table. By the time the final-day dust settled, the collective forecasting record made for uncomfortable reading.

Liverpool the overwhelming favourite — but Arsenal took it

The consensus pick was Liverpool. Twenty-one of the 33 BBC pundits had Arne Slot's side lifting the title, and the BBC Sport reader vote — drawn from thousands of predictions submitted on the website — also crowned the Reds as champions with the highest aggregate score in the weighted ranking system used. Opta's model gave Liverpool a 28.5% probability of retaining the trophy, making them clear favourites before a ball was kicked.

Arsenal won it. Six pundits had backed the Gunners — Matthew Upson, Martin Keown, Thomas Hitzlsperger, Sue Smith, Leon Osman and Jermaine Beckford — but only Upson managed to place Arsenal and Manchester City in the correct order they actually finished. That made him the standout performer of the exercise, even if he also fancied Tottenham to finish top of the chasing pack, which emphatically did not come to pass.

Nobody got more than two teams right

Every single pundit placed both Arsenal and Manchester City in their top four — that much was near-universal — but beyond that, the predictions fractured badly. The four clubs who actually filled those spots were the same four who had finished there the previous season, yet not one of the 35 forecasters — pundits, AI and supercomputer included — managed to name more than two of the four in the correct positions.

Manchester United and Aston Villa were the surprise packages. Wayne Rooney called United to finish fifth, and Danny Murphy also tipped them to be in the mix, while Steph Houghton specifically flagged Villa as the side most likely to break into the top four. All three deserve credit for being closer than most. Chris Waddle went a different route entirely, backing Chelsea to win the league outright.

The noises out of the AI camp were no more accurate. Microsoft Copilot simply crowned City as champions, while Opta's algorithm — for all its sophistication — had Manchester United finishing 12th and did not place them anywhere near the Champions League places.

A broader point about fifth place

There is one caveat worth noting. Liverpool's final-day position was shaped partly by the fact that, by that stage of the campaign, they already knew fifth place would earn a Champions League berth next season — a rule change confirmed in April. On the strict question of who would qualify for Europe's top club competition, the majority of pundits who had Liverpool in their top four were not entirely wrong, even if the table order did not match their pre-season scripts.

Sutton's match-by-match predictions go to the wire

Separate from the top-four exercise, Chris Sutton spent the whole season predicting the outcome of all 380 Premier League fixtures for BBC Sport, going head-to-head with Copilot and the BBC readership each week. The competition went to the final round of games with Sutton level on outright wins with the AI tool. He needed one more outright correct result on the final Sunday to claim the title but fell short, finishing behind both Copilot and the collective BBC reader entry, which claimed the last weekly prize with three correct results and two exact scores.

It was, in short, a season that humbled forecasters of every variety — human, algorithmic and artificial. The market had Liverpool nailed on; the real Premier League had other ideas.

Frequently asked

Which BBC pundit made the most accurate Premier League top-four prediction?
Matthew Upson was the most accurate, correctly identifying both Arsenal and Manchester City and placing them in the right finishing order — the only pundit to do so.
Did Opta's supercomputer get the Premier League title right?
No. Opta's model made Liverpool heavy favourites with a 28.5% probability of winning the title. Arsenal were the actual champions.
Who won the BBC Sport match predictions competition in 2024-25?
Microsoft's Copilot AI edged Chris Sutton on the final day of the season to win the BBC Sport match-by-match predictions contest, with the BBC readership taking the final weekly prize.