Who will win the Premier League title in 2024-25? Which clubs will qualify for the Champions League and who will be scrapping for survival? We look at all the key questions with our Premier League predictions for the upcoming season via our trusty Opta supercomputer.
Premier League 2024-25 Predictions: The Quick Hits
Title Favourites: Manchester City
Top Four Favourites: Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool alongside Chelsea or Newcastle
Relegation Favourites: Southampton, Leicester City and Ipswich Town
We tasked the AI-powered Opta supercomputer with simulating the 2024-25 Premier League season 10,000 times to see how it believed the campaign may pan out.
Across those results, eight different teams won the Premier League title at least once, and it won’t surprise anyone to hear that Manchester City won it more often than rivals Manchester United did. Man City, Arsenal and Liverpool were the only teams to avoid relegation in every one of the 10,000 simulations, while at least one of Tottenham, Man Utd or Chelsea were relegated to the Championship across 73 of them.
An essential thing to understand is that these projections are based on what the Opta supercomputer knows today. Essentially, if all 380 games in the Premier League were to be played now, this is how the model sees the league finishing. Of course, these projections will change throughout the season, thousands of times, based on real-life data powering the seasonal simulations. It doesn’t factor in potential points deductions, a long-term injury to a star striker and it certainly doesn’t have a crystal ball to predict managerial changes.
Nevertheless, these pre-season projections provide an early look at what certain teams might be realistically aiming to achieve in 2024-25. You’ll have seen various 1-20 predictions by publications this summer and you’ve probably made your own, too; see this as a more unique projection without opinion and instead powered by data.
So, without further ado, we run you through the key results of the current Opta supercomputer Premier League 2024-25 simulations.
Who Will Win the Premier League in 2024-25?
Across our 10,000 season simulations, no side finished as Premier League champions in 2024-25 as often as Manchester City (82.2%). This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to most football fans. After all, Pep Guardiola’s side have won the Premier League title in each of the last four seasons – a run of success that no English top-flight team have ever managed before now.
This is lower than their projected Premier League title chances at the start of 2023-24, however. Back then it was at 90.2%, a projection that proved to be correct come the end of May. In fact, the Opta supercomputer predicted the correct top three in the Premier League last season, getting the exact league position for seven teams correct overall.
Now, Arsenal fans will probably be incensed that the Opta supercomputer is backing Man City so heavily – we know this because we heard you all last season – but the bigger picture is that Arsenal have gone from a 4.1% projected chance of winning the Premier League title last season before a ball was kicked, to a 12.2% chance ahead of 2024-25. The impressive job Mikel Arteta has done at the Emirates Stadium is further emphasised when knowing Arsenal’s title chances at the start of 2022-23 were just 0.13% with the Opta supercomputer.
The current projections are saying this Arsenal side finish inside the top two 61% of the time, while they end in the top four and qualify for the UEFA Champions League in 95.7% of pre-season simulations. That projection to finish in the top four is slightly lower than Man City’s 99.9% chance, but higher than Liverpool’s 88.8% probability.
Liverpool begin a new era under Dutch manager Arne Slot following Jürgen Klopp’s departure, with the Opta supercomputer making them third favourites for the Premier League title at 5.1% – higher than at this time last season (3.5%). The Reds actually spent more days top of the Premier League table than any other side in 2023-24 (87) – nine more than eventual champions Man City (78) and 11 more than Arsenal (76), but sitting top at the end of the final day is all that matters. Slot arrives at Anfield from Dutch club Feyenoord, where he lost out in a title battle with an exceptional PSV side in the Eredivisie last season.
Across the Opta supercomputer’s 2024-25 Premier League projections, only five other clubs won the title and that happened just 48 times between Chelsea, Newcastle, Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa. Is a shock title win possible? Yes. Is it likely? Not at all.
Who Will Win Finish in the Premier League Top Four?
As we’ve already mentioned, Man City and Arsenal are a shoo-in for top-four finishes in the Premier League this season, while Liverpool look likely to join them.
The battle to seal the final league position to qualify for the 2025-26 UEFA Champions League looks set to be between four clubs, with another 11 sides making it into the top four at least once in the pre-season simulations by the Opta supercomputer.
Chelsea have a new manager in Enzo Maresca, who won the Championship with Leicester City last season. The Blues had a mixed campaign last term under Mauricio Pochettino but ended in sixth, and arguably have the players to achieve higher. They have finished outside the top four in the Premier League in successive seasons, but the Opta supercomputer projects a 31.6% chance of finishing in the UCL qualification spots as things stand. Much of that, though, will depend on how quickly Maresca can relay his ideology to an overspilling Chelsea squad.
Newcastle finished fourth in 2022-23, but last season saw them struggle to juggle Champions League football with their busy domestic schedule. Arguably the worst injury crisis of all Premier League clubs last season didn’t help Eddie Howe, but they still managed to finish seventh in the table. The supercomputer is backing them to finish inside the top four 26.6% of the time this season.
Both Tottenham and Manchester United are considered to be among the Premier League’s ‘big six’ but fell outside the top four last season. Spurs, in their first season under Ange Postecoglou, ended fifth despite dropping only four points in their opening 10 games of the season. Then, the dramatic game at home to Chelsea occurred on 6 November, when they lost 4-1, suffered numerous injuries to important players and had another two sent off. From that point on, they won 40 points in 28 games – the joint-eighth best in the Premier League – after coming into the game with Chelsea just a point off league leaders Man City.
Spurs are projected to finish inside the top four 17.5% of the time, which is just below Manchester United’s 18.9% probability. United struggled in their second season under Erik ten Hag, but they did win the 2024 FA Cup final against rivals Man City, showing that they can beat the best on their day. The problem for United last season was consistency, both in terms of lineup and results. They also let teams shoot too often, with only Sheffield United (678) allowing opponents more shots than United (667), while their expected goals against total of 70.1 was more than Arsenal and Man City combined (64.3).
The addition of Champions League football to Aston Villa’s schedule could prove problematic for Unai Emery’s squad, and the Opta supercomputer isn’t positive about their chances of back-to-back top-four finishes in the Premier League. They are projected to clinch another top-four spot in only 7.3% of simulations, just ahead of Crystal Palace (5.4%) – who greatly improved once Oliver Glasner was appointed as head coach last season – and West Ham (2.2%). The latter will hope the appointment of Julen Lopetegui as manager and some good business in the transfer market will reinvigorate them.
There’s also good news for Southampton fans: the Opta supercomputer’s 10,000 simulations saw Saints finish in the top four and qualify for the Champions League on two occasions. Now, we’ve just revealed that because we’re about to give you some bad news…
Who Will Be Relegated from the Premier League in 2024-25?
Last season saw all three promoted clubs fall straight back into the Championship, with Burnley, Luton Town and Sheffield United relegated to the second tier. The Opta supercomputer is projecting a good chance this will happen again in 2024-25.
Southampton returned to the Premier League with a play-off final win over Leeds United after just one season away from the top flight. Russell Martin is another young and exciting British coach but will have his work cut out to keep his side in the Premier League for more than one season. Saints were relegated the most often across the Opta supercomputer simulations, finishing in the bottom three 66.7% of the time – just ahead of both Ipswich Town and Leicester City.
Ipswich became just the 11th club in English Football League history to seal successive promotions from the third tier to the top level, and just the fifth in the Premier League era. The job Kieran McKenna has done at the Suffolk side cannot be understated, but he’d truly prove himself to be among the best if he can keep Ipswich in the Premier League. The Opta supercomputer makes them second favourites to go down in 2024-25, as they were relegated (64.7%) and finished bottom across 27.4% of the 10,000 pre-season simulations.
Leicester may have lost their head coach to Chelsea, alongside arguably their star player in Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, but they replaced Maresca with Steve Cooper, who kept Nottingham Forest in the Premier League against the odds in 2022-23. Leicester were relegated in 60.3% of our 10,000 pre-season Premier League simulations.
Outside of the promoted teams, it’s Forest and Wolverhampton Wanderers who have the most to be worried about based on the Opta supercomputer’s projections for 2024-25.
Gary O’Neil steered Wolves to a commendable 14th-place finish, 20 points above the relegation zone in 2023-24. However, their form from the start or March onwards – admittedly when they had numerous injuries – saw them pick up just eight points from 12 games, which was more than only Luton (6) and Sheffield United (3). Nottingham Forest finished 2023-24 in 17th on 32 points – six fewer than they won in their first season back in the Premier League in 2022-23. Wolves finished inside the bottom three places across 20.9% of supercomputer projections, while Forest were relegated in 35.6%.
For entertainment purposes only, we can reveal Chelsea were relegated in 10 of the 10,000 simulations. We suppose the supercomputer does have to factor the potential for absolute capitulations, after all.
Opta-Simulated Premier League 2024-25 Table
After simulating the Premier League 2024-25 season 10,000 times, we’re able to average the points total of every club across those simulations and therefore rank teams positionally. Here’s the Opta supercomputer results from those simulations:
1st: Manchester City – 88.7 average points
2nd: Arsenal – 77.6
3rd: Liverpool – 74.0
4th: Chelsea – 61.7
5th: Newcastle United – 60.5
6th: Manchester United – 58.5
7th: Tottenham Hotspur – 58.2
8th: Aston Villa – 54.1
9th: Crystal Palace – 52.7
10th: West Ham United – 49.1
11th: Brighton & Hove Albion – 49.0
12th: Fulham – 48.0
13th: Everton – 46.7
14th: Brentford – 46.3
15th: Bournemouth – 45.1
16th: Wolverhampton Wanderers – 42.5
17th: Nottingham Forest – 39.3
18th: Leicester City – 35.0
19th: Ipswich Town – 34.1
20th: Southampton – 33.9
How Does the Opta Supercomputer Model Work?
- Opta’s League Prediction model estimates the likelihood of teams finishing in each position in the competition. We can therefore see how successful a team’s season is likely to be, whether it’s their relegation or title chances.
- The model estimates the probability of each match outcome (win, draw or loss) by using betting market odds and the Opta Power Rankings. The odds and rankings are based on historical and recent team performances.
- The model considers the strength of opponents by using these match outcome probabilities and simulates the remaining fixtures in the competition thousands of times. By analysing the outcome of each of these simulations, the model can see how often teams finished in each league position to create our final predictions.
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