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2017 is over and 2018 is upon us and, although we’re past the halfway point of the football season, there’s plenty more action to come – the later rounds of the Champions League, the deciding games in the world’s biggest domestic competitions like the Premier League and La Liga, and of course, come the summer, the World Cup in Russia – football’s biggest competition point blank.
We’ve already seen some seismic events this season – who expected Manchester City would be this good, for example? And did anyone really predict Tottenham would beat Real Madrid and win their Champions League group?
But undoubtedly, there are more to come now it’s 2018. Here are five potential surprises that could shock us all in this new year.
#5 Jose Mourinho will be fired
There have already been reports in the last few days – reports that the Portuguese manager has denied vehemently mind you – that Jose Mourinho is about to resign from his post as manager of Manchester United, despite his team still sitting in second place in the current Premier League table.
The story has something to do with the fact that Mourinho, despite being in his second season at Old Trafford, still hasn’t purchased a home in Manchester, or anywhere near for that matter. In fact, he’s living out of a hotel.
Mourinho has called the reports “garbage”, but rumours still persist that he’s unhappy at the club, in particular with the amount of money he’s been allowed to spend. Which, to be quite frank, is ridiculous given he broke the world transfer record to bring Paul Pogba to Manchester in the summer of 2016, and he spent well over £100m this summer too. But should Manchester United’s power brokers be happy with Mourinho? Perhaps not. This is a man, after all, who was supposed to bring guaranteed success.
And while he won three trophies last season, only the UEFA Europa League was really important as it provided United with a ticket to the Champions League. He only took them to a shoddy 6th place in the Premier League.
United remain second in the table but they’re coming off a run of relatively poor results, haven’t been playing well, and even superstars like Pogba and Romelu Lukaku aren’t at their best. Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham aren’t far behind United now – just seven points separate United from the fifth spot, which would force them back out of the Champions League.
If that happens – and it doesn’t look impossible given the form of United’s rivals – Mourinho’s position could be untenable by the end of the season. Even if he does finish in the top four, missing out on the league could be seen as a failure and mark the end of his reign as United manager.
#4 Manchester City will finally lose a league game
If we’re all honest, it’d be crazy to predict that Manchester City could miss out on winning the Premier League title at this stage of the season. They lead the table by a massive fifteen points right now, haven’t lost a game and they’ve swept aside even great teams like Tottenham and Liverpool.
At their best, Pep Guardiola’s team look absolutely unstoppable. And so it’s not surprising that people are already talking about them breaking Premier League records such as the all-time highest points total and the all-time best goal difference. But can they finish the season unbeaten, as only Arsenal’s ‘Invincibles’ in 2003/04 did?
It’s possible, given the strength of their squad, their current sky-high confidence, and the manager at their helm. But lasting a whole season unbeaten is harder than some fans would make it sound.
The Premier League remains as competitive as ever – despite some worrying statistics that suggest the top six teams are pulling away even more – and there are no easy games despite a handful of teams seemingly being willing to lay down for the Citizens.
In their last game of 2017 against Crystal Palace, City came as close to losing as they have all season – and would’ve lost had it not been for a late penalty miss from Luka Milivojevic.
Nobody would claim Roy Hodgson tactically out-played Guardiola, but he did appear to find a chink in City’s armour – using long diagonal balls to Wilfried Zaha to capitalise on City’s high line. City bounced back from the 0-0 draw to beat Watford, but with games against Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea to come all before the end of March, can it be long before someone finally cracks them?
I suspect at least one of those three teams could do it. After all, City have relied on quite a lot of luck and late goals to pick up some of their wins thus far – how long before they end up on the unlucky side of the coin?
#3 Real Madrid will end the season empty-handed – sort of
It’s a little hard to claim that Real Madrid could end 2017/18 empty-handed, given they’ve already won the Supercopa de Espana, the UEFA Super Cup and the FIFA Club World Cup.
But if we’re frank, those competitions are basically glorified friendlies that nobody really cares about. In terms of the bigger competitions – La Liga, the UEFA Champions League and even the Copa del Rey – this could be the first season since 2014/15 that Los Blancos come away with nothing to their name.
Going into the season that may have been a crazy prediction given Zinedine Zidane’s side won so much last year, but it seems very different now.
Real’s form in the Champions League has been patchy at best – they were thoroughly outplayed by Tottenham both home and away, managing a 1-1 draw at the Bernabeu, but losing 3-1 at Wembley – and worse still, they’ve drawn Paris St. Germain in the round of 16.
PSG were clearly the outstanding side of the group stages and in Edinson Cavani, Neymar Jr and Kylian Mbappe, they may have the most dangerous attack in all of world football. Based on the form of both sides thus far in the Champions League, Real have little to no chance of surviving the tie with the French powerhouse over two legs.
In La Liga meanwhile, Real are way off the pace. They’re currently fourth - five points behind second-placed Atletico Madrid and a monstrous 14 points behind current leaders Barcelona.
For Zidane’s men to overhaul such a lead would take an absolute miracle, and even with Cristiano Ronaldo scoring goals, it seems impossible. Which leaves the Copa del Rey – Madrid are in the round of 16, but so are Atletico, Barca and Valencia – all of whom currently sit above Los Blancos in La Liga.
A victory in this cup is obviously a possibility, but given the form of Barca and Atletico, I wouldn’t put money on it. Instead, it’s more likely that Zidane may finish this season with nothing truly important to show.
#2 Roy Hodgson will steer Crystal Palace into the top half of the Premier League
When former England boss Roy Hodgson took over at Crystal Palace in early September following the sacking of Frank de Boer, it almost looked like he was taking on an impossible salvage job. Palace had lost their first four Premier League games and hadn’t scored a goal, and for the first three games of the Hodgson era, neither fact changed.
In fact, things seemed to get worse – they shipped five goals against Manchester City and four against Manchester United and were rooted to the bottom of the league table.
A stunning 2-1 victory over champions Chelsea marked Hodgson’s fourth game in charge, though, and since then there’s been no looking back. Palace have lost just three games since – two of those to title-challenging Tottenham and Arsenal – and although they’ve drawn more than they’ve won, it’s been enough to take them all the way up to 14th place, and on 22 points, they’re only three points away from Watford – who are in 10th place in the top half of the table.
Is it inconceivable that Hodgson could guide them into the top half? I’d say definitely not.
Since taking over at Selhurst Park, Hodgson has given the likes of Wilfried Zaha, Bakary Sako, James Tomkins and Luka Milivojevic new leases of life, and he’s made Palace into a far more resilient side than they ever were under de Boer.
The fact that their wins over Stoke, Watford and Southampton came after they fell behind tells you that much. After their disastrous start it seemed insane to think Palace’s season could end with anything but relegation, but thanks to Hodgson, the top half isn’t out of reach at all – and the patchy form of the teams around them like Brighton, Newcastle, Huddersfield and Watford means they could well finish there.
#1 England will have a successful World Cup
So to set the record straight to begin with, by “successful” I’m not predicting that England will lift the famous trophy in Russia this summer. I simply don’t think their squad depth will be good enough to take them past the very best sides, teams like Germany and France.
But a quarter-final finish – which would be their first since 2006 – or even a semi-final? I think both of those goals are more than achievable for Gareth Southgate’s men, which would mark a massive leap forward from the disastrous campaigns that were the 2014 World Cup and Euro 2016.
What’s changed? Well, if you’re just looking at qualification, not much. England got through their group relatively easily but also appeared to be sleepwalking at times, struggling past poor sides like Scotland and Lithuania while boring the fans to tears with a stodgy brand of football.
But the friendly games against Brazil and Germany in November offered so much more. Southgate dispensed of older players such as Gary Cahill, experimented with a new formation – a three-man defence – and also introduced youngsters like Joe Gomez, Tammy Abraham and Ruben Loftus-Cheek, players who proved to be big hits.
If Southgate can capture the exuberance of this youth talent – remember that the likes of Harry Kane, Dele Alli and Marcus Rashford are all younger talent too – and help them to keep up the momentum that England’s youth sides had last year when they won three tournaments – then an improvement on the last couple of efforts should be easy.
Drawn in a group with Belgium, Panama and Tunisia, the last 16 is definitely reachable and given they’d likely face Poland or Colombia there, then the quarter-finals are a distinct possibility. And from there, who knows?
