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Everybody likes to make their fair share of pre-season predictions. They are all part of the atmospheric build-up that makes football come to life after a long few months of exhibition matches and transfer speculation.Avoiding getting involved in the chitter-chatter is difficult, but its equallytough to ensure these forecasts come true, after all they are outside all of our control. It does notstop us taking part in the ritual of conjecture on an annual basis, though.Unsurprisingly, then, the same turn of events happened before the beginning of the season.Which predictions did most fail to make? What turn of events seemed least likely to happen, and yet happened anyway? Scroll on to find out.
#5 Juventus\' surprisingly poor domestic form
They might not be the most underwhelming reigning champions in Europe this season, but they’ve certainly not covered themselves in glory either with a number of uncharacteristically disappointing league displays.
Considering they went unbeaten during the 2014/15 Serie A campaign, their four defeats after only 13 matches has left fans and pundits alike utterly dumbfounded. Not only that but they almost completed a treble last time out, so to see them so far from those same levels is a real thinker.
Their recent three wins from three league games is a decent return to form, but it’s still difficult to envisage how they’ll mount a league challenge one-third of the way along the road having stuttered and looked so off-kilter quite regularly.
Perhaps more worryingly is the fact the Bianconeri have not played entertaining football and have not been able to call upon the skill and quality of the likes of Paul Pogba, Alvaro Morata and Juan Cuadrado – all of whom have only amassed a small portion of goals for the club from midfield. Indeed, it’s fair to say that they have been overly reliant on the attacking prowess of Paulo Dybala, who has six league strikes to his name.
They will need to be far more convincing as a team in the coming months if they plan on surging into the top four.
#4 Arsenal on the cusp of UCL exit
Arsenal and the last 16 of the Champions League are sort of a package deal. For a lot of football fans, they’ve never seen the Gunners fail to make it beyond the group stage, and it’s a record the north London club should be more than proud of.
More precisely, they have managed to make it to the knockout phase of Europe’s elite competition for 18 consecutive seasons.
However, Arsene Wenger’s men need to beat Olympiakos by two goals to make it out of the group stage this season as they currently lie in third spot. Their destiny is in their own hands, but it’s sure to be a nervy night for the fans when the pair square up against each other.
Ever the cantankerous contrarian, though, Jose Mourinho is hoping that one of his biggest rivals fails to make their great escape a reality, as relayed by Goal.com recently.
Will Wenger’s men be able to disappoint him and the rest of their critics and avoid a huge upset?
#3 Chelsea\'s early season EPL woes
To say that nobody saw this coming would be an understatement to say the very least. Sure, the analysis, insight and dissection have each brought with them a number of key reasons and motives behind their slump in form, but hindsight is a wonderful thing and the Blues were many people’s favourites before the 2015/16 campaign began back in August.
Boasting the likes of Eden Hazard, Diego Costa, Cesc Fabregas and Kurt Zouma, Chelsea possessed a tremendous spine of a team with championship-winning experience. How could they possibly go too far wrong?
Well, so far a combination of a collective team slump, unbalanced managerial decisions, pressure to perform, a failing double-pivot and a lacklustre defence have all conspired to make this one of the worst starts to a Premier League campaign ever suffered by a reigning champion.
The general consensus is that the situation has become too difficult to rectify significantly to mount a defence of their crown, but minor signs of a reawakening mean that they might just be good enough to nab one of the Champions League spots, such a disappointment to what many fans of the Pensioners would have liked to see happen instead.
#2 Fiorentina challenging at the summit of the Serie A
For a time, La Viola were top of the Italian Serie A, and it looked as though they might just be good enough to stay there for a few weeks.
Fate conspired against them, however, and they eventually lost their grip on pole position, but the signs remain that they are good enough to continue making a real nuisance of themselves for the rest of the campaign.
Simply put, Paulo Sousa’s team have been scoring enough goals to stay competitive, and Nikola Kalinic, in particular, has been shining brightly as their star goal-getter. Already this season, the 27-year-old Croatia international has bagged nine league goals and is spearheading their attack incredibly well.
Indeed, the brilliant form he has been in with Fiorentina has been good enough to attract the interests of reigning Premier League champions Chelsea, per Metro’s George Belshaw (h/t Gazetta dello Sport).
#1 Jamie Vardy leading the charts in England
It’s easy to like Claudio Ranieri. The man possesses a certain charm unique to him and he’s given British football plenty of romantic notions about what the underdog can do – and how.
He has injected life into Leicester City and has transformed them from mere mid-table fodder to unlikely league leaders. What’s more, he has managed to pull it off by getting his team to play elegant football. Talk about a turn up for the books.
The Foxes are certainly one of Europe’s biggest surprise packages, and there are even murmurs that they could just go all the way and win the league. Of course, all that talk is a tad premature, but it just goes to show how captivating they have been.
Spearheading their attack has been England ace Jamie Vardy who recently overhauled Ruud van Nistelrooy's long-standing Premier League record of scoring in 10 consecutive matches with an 11th league goal in a row at the King Power stadium. Playing without fear and with plenty of conviction and courage he has managed to become the best striker in the country, eclipsing so many other more high-profile names in the process.
It was fitting that he broke the mould against none other than Manchester United and this has undoubtedly been the biggest surprise of the season to date.
Can he shock us all and keep the good times rolling into 2016? Will Vardy equal the largely unknown Jimmy Dunne’s British top-flight record of netting in 12 successive games? We’ll see.
