Gary Neville’s predictions from the start of the season have not aged well

He said Lukaku would be top scorer.

Back in August, in one of the first Monday Night Football shows of the season, Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher declared their predictions for the season ahead.

Hindsight is obviously a wonderful thing and it all seems so painfully obvious now, but to be fair to Neville, you have to remember the lay of the land at the time.

Manchester City just walked the Premier League, while Manchester United were comfortably in second place, and Liverpool nicked third, but had a dreadful period in their season where they looked like a shadow of themselves.

Chelsea were European champions and had just purchased Romelu Lukaku, who had a stormer of a season for Inter Millan as they won the Serie A title.

However, given how things panned out and now that we’re in the latter stages of the season, some of these predictions are just too funny to read.

Gary Neville believes that United would finish ahead of Liverpool.

Not least because of his prediction about United finishing ahead of Liverpool.

“I just think they’ve got a better squad. I think Liverpool have got a better first XI but you know Liverpool, with a couple of injuries, do have that drop in level.

“United don’t really have that drop in level in any position.”

Fair play to United for standing strong and proving Neville wrong, as they’ve shown this season that not only can they drop a level, but they can drop multiple levels, and do so consistently.

In fairness he said that Manchester City would win it, and as it stands they are top of the Premier League, but are only one point clear of Liverpool, and the rest of his top four expectations are a little off.

The former Manchester United full back believed that City would be top, Chelsea would be second, United would get third, while Liverpool were set to take the last champion’s league spot.

He’s a little off with that one so far, but not as off he was with his top scorer prediction, for although Jamie Carragher went for the reliable Mohammad Salah, his Sky Sports colleague chose Lukaku.

At the time of publication, Salah is sitting pretty with 22 goals, while the Belgian is only on five.

Premier League underachievers and overachievers.

Next category was overachievers – you know, that team that punches above their weight, regardless of their financial situation or limited history, they manage to over perform and finish well above their predicted position.

Keeping with the poor choices he’s made so far, the Red Devils’ legend went for (pause for dramatic effect) – Everton.

I think it’s fair to say that if this is Everton overachieving, then that club seriously lacks ambition.

In contrast to that, he awarded Arsenal with the underachieversffi tag, which would be very harsh considering that they are only outside of the top four on goal difference, sharing the same amount of points as Spurs who currently occupy fourth.

In Neville’s defence, it’s not easy sticking your neck out to make predictions, and at the time, there was a decent case to be made for all of these arguments.

However, next season, whatever the Mancunian picks, I wouldn’t put money on it.

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