Welcome to week 31 of The Athletic<\/em>\u2019s Premier League predictions challenge, where I\u2019m hoping Max Dowman\u2019s dramatic late goal for Arsenal has reignited the title race that really matters.<\/p>\n Arsenal\u2019s 2-0 home win against Everton, secured in stoppage time by 16-year-old substitute Dowman, was one of two correct scoreline predictions for me last week, taking me back to within eight points of the top of the table after my recent slump.<\/p>\n The subscribers are still leading the way, just one point ahead of six-year-old Wilfred, but last week gave me hope that it\u2019s not over yet.<\/p>\n I got eight results wrong, but two correct scorelines, plus a bonus point for each \u2014 and in this stupid game, in which I have found myself outwitted by a child and by our wonderful subscribers, that has offered me a lifeline.<\/p>\n Each week since the season began in August, four of us \u2014\u00a0young Wilfred, a guest subscriber on rotation, an algorithm and I \u2014\u00a0have been predicting the Premier League scores with varying degrees of success.<\/p>\n We are awarding three points for a correct scoreline and one point for a correct result. We are also offering a bonus for any \u201cunique\u201d correct predictions, so for example, I got four points for Arsenal beating Everton 2-0 (cheers, Max!) and another four for Manchester United\u2019s 3-1 win against Aston Villa. On the same basis, Liverpool fan Tim, from New York, picked up a bonus point for the subscribers as he was the only one to back Newcastle to come out on top away to Chelsea.<\/p>\n Overall, it was a low-scoring week: four points apiece for Wilfred, the subscribers and the algorithm \u2026 and a rather flattering eight for me.<\/p>\n That leaves the subscribers\u2019 slender one-point lead over Wilfred intact. The algorithm, pleasingly, is languishing in last place.<\/p>\n There are only eight Premier League games this week, with those involving Manchester City and Arsenal (against Crystal Palace and Wolverhampton Wanderers respectively) being rearranged due to their meeting in the Carabao Cup final on Sunday. Arsenal\u2019s game at Wolves was played last month \u2014 a crazy 2-2 draw, which none of us predicted \u2014 but City vs Palace is yet to be rescheduled.<\/p>\n This week\u2019s guest subscriber is Elizabeth, a 42-year-old Newcastle United supporter from San Francisco. Good luck, Elizabeth!<\/p>\n Elizabeth says: \u201c<\/strong>With both Tottenham and Forest hovering dangerously close to the relegation zone, expect a scrap. Neither Vitor Pereira nor Igor Tudor has any league wins. Can Spurs leverage home advantage and get the win, or will it get away again? Grab the popcorn!\u201d<\/p>\n Tottenham 1-2 Nottingham Forest<\/em><\/p>\n Oli says:<\/strong> \u201cThis is such a huge game, which promises to boost one team\u2019s survival hopes significantly while plunging the other towards the abyss. My feeling at the start of the week was that I would go for a Forest win; as encouraging as Tottenham\u2019s 1-1 draw at Liverpool was, I still felt Forest were showing more application, togetherness and their stomach for the fight.<\/p>\n \u201cThe way Tottenham rallied to beat Atletico Madrid on Wednesday has prompted a dramatic rethink. That, plus an extra day to recover from their European exertions, with Forest also going to extra time and penalties in Denmark on Thursday, leads me to switch to a home win. I know I should stick to my instinct \u2014 not least to help The Athletic<\/em>\u2019s design team, who will have to redo the graphic \u2014 but for once this season, I\u2019m going for a Spurs victory.”<\/p>\n Tottenham 2-1 Nottingham Forest<\/em><\/p>\n \n Forest beat Spurs 3-0 in December’s reverse fixture (Naomi Baker\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Bournemouth are unbeaten in five meetings with Manchester United (two wins, three draws; 13 goals scored, only seven conceded), so going for an away win in Friday’s fixture feels a bit lazy. Maybe it is, but I just feel United have more firepower and, in Bruno Fernandes, they have the Premier League\u2019s most in-form player.<\/p>\n Bournemouth 1-2 Manchester United<\/em><\/p>\n Sorry, but this one comes into the same category as Bournemouth vs Manchester United: so many reasons to think the team from the south coast have the quality to make life very difficult for their opponents, but also a lazy fallback assumption that the underperforming heavyweights from the north-west will prevail on account of their superior attacking resources and their greater need. Liverpool\u2019s performance against Galatasaray on Wednesday showed what they\u2019re capable of when they\u2019re on song. That just hasn\u2019t happened anything like often enough this season.<\/p>\n Brighton 1-2 Liverpool<\/em><\/p>\n I get why Marco Silva appears in no rush to extend his Fulham contract, which expires at the end of the season. But whatever the frustrations of life at Craven Cottage, can he be sure the grass would be greener elsewhere? Evangelos Marinakis is a long-term admirer, but nobody seems to retain the Forest owner\u2019s favour for long once they are actually working for him. There have been murmurs of interest from Tottenham, but how much does that role appeal these days? Managing Fulham isn\u2019t the biggest, most prestigious or most lucrative job, but it\u2019s a more stable club than the one Burnley counterpart Scott Parker remembers from his time in charge there.<\/p>\n Fulham 2-0 Burnley<\/em><\/p>\n I don\u2019t remotely trust this Chelsea team, whose flaws I have written about many times. That 8-2 aggregate defeat by Paris Saint-Germain should be a wake-up-and-smell-the-coffee moment for those owners and executives who have spent the past few years congratulating themselves on a recruitment strategy that increasingly has the look of a social experiment. But even though Chelsea have won just 13 of their 30 Premier League games this season, I look at a fixture like this and the image that comes into my mind is Pedro Neto setting up Joao Pedro for a goal on the counter-attack. Maybe it\u2019s because they\u2019ve won more away matches (seven) than Everton have won home ones (five) this season.<\/p>\n Everton 1-2 Chelsea<\/em><\/p>\n Leeds need wins as they try to avoid an instant return to the Championship. Everyone can see how well they have acquitted themselves over the past few months, but the goals and victories have dried up \u2014 five games without a win, three without a goal \u2014 which puts a lot of pressure on for Saturday. They\u2019ve also lost their last two at Elland Road, but I like the look of their next four home matches (this, then Wolves, Burnley and Brighton). Winning here would offer some much-needed breathing space.<\/p>\n Leeds 1-0 Brentford<\/em><\/p>\n Newcastle have not won a Tyne-Wear derby in the league since August 2011 (\u201cRyan Taylor, over the wall\u201d) and, while that includes a nine-year hiatus when these two were in different divisions, it still equates to a run of seven Sunderland wins and three draws in 10 league meetings. I confidently predicted a Sunderland victory in December’s reverse fixture and my feeling at the start of the week was that I would cautiously back Newcastle to get their revenge on Sunday. That feeling has been shaken by the chastening nature of their defeat in Barcelona on Wednesday \u2014 so much energy expended over the two legs, such a brutal scoreline (7-2) at the Camp Nou ultimately \u2014 but, unlike with the Spurs vs Forest game a few hours later, I\u2019ll stick to my initial instinct, with a raucous St James\u2019 Park atmosphere a factor.<\/p>\n Newcastle 2-1 Sunderland<\/em><\/p>\n Villa\u2019s 3-2 win at the London Stadium in the reverse fixture in December came during that period when they were outperforming their xG (expected goals) metrics to a wild extent, summed up by Morgan Rogers\u2019 spectacular long-range winner. Their xG overperformance has eventually caught up with them, while West Ham have had a curious relationship with xG in recent weeks: drawing games they dominated, a harsh 5-2 defeat at Liverpool and a battling 1-1 draw with Manchester City last Saturday when Konstantinos Mavropanos scored with their only attempt of the 90 minutes. Hard to predict, then. I expect others will go for a tight Villa win, so I\u2019ll go for a cheeky draw to take West Ham another point closer to survival before the international break.<\/p>\n Aston Villa 1-1 West Ham<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Welcome to week 31 of The Athletic\u2019s Premier League predictions challenge, where I\u2019m hoping Max Dowman\u2019s dramatic late goal for Arsenal has reignited the title race that really matters. Arsenal\u2019s … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1105,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Our subscriber\u2019s match of the week<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Tottenham vs Nottingham Forest, Sunday, 2.15pm UK\/10.15am ET<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/athletic\/uploads\/wp\/2026\/03\/19062520\/GettyImages-2251902656-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\nOli\u2019s other predictions<\/h2>\n
Bournemouth vs Manchester United<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Brighton vs Liverpool<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Fulham vs Burnley<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Everton vs Chelsea<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Leeds vs Brentford<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Newcastle vs Sunderland<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Aston Villa vs West Ham<\/strong><\/h3>\n