Supercomputer predicts best season in decades as Nottingham Forest close in on Manchester United
In the two seasons since they returned to the Premier League, slightly ahead of Evangelos Marinakis’ schedule, the narrative around Nottingham Forest has been about staying in it.
However, those expectations have changed and now that Forest have worked the Profitability & Sustainability bone through their system and have enjoyed a positive start to the current campaign, people are wondering how close to their owner’s lofty ambitions they can get.
Marinakis has spoken to challenging not only for but in Europe, which after finishes of 16th and 17th would obviously require progress up the table. Forest have not finished in the top half since 1995/96 when they were ninth, the year after Frank Clark guided the club to third.
And they aren’t predicted to get there this time but according to the Casino Hawks’ Supercomputer they are on track to finish 13th a full 20 points clear of the drop zone, which they reckons will be occupied by Ipswich Town, Southampton and Leicester City – the three clubs promoted last term.
While that won’t exactly set Marinakis’ pulse racing it will be their highest finish for 29 years after nearly three decades in the wilderness. That would be six points behind faltering Manchester United. The full table is below.
The Premier League SuperComputer, conducted by Casino Hawks, is a probability model, not determined by human predictions or bias. What happens is the SuperComputer estimates the outcome of each remaining fixture based on a team’s current strength (based on factors such as league position and form) and betting market odds.
The machine then simulates the remaining games in a season 10,000 times and constructs an average league table from the 10,000 simulations, to rule out anomalous results.