Last week I was asked by someone, who could at best be described as a nodding acquaintance, which teams would get relegated from the Premier League this season.

Now I can only assume the gentleman in question has spent the past few years marooned on a desert island if he genuinely values my football predictions. Regular readers will know he would probably be better off asking the cat.

His question was made all the more amusing by the fact that he asked me like I actually knew the definitive answer and would be sharing football’s equivalent of insider trading with him if I spilt the beans. He stopped just short of offering me a nudge, a wink and a brown paper envelope.

However, his blind and misplaced faith in my talents sparked my curiosity and sent me scurrying to the archives to see which teams I had, in fact, doomed to the drop when I did my original seasonal predictions in August.

And the answer is Crystal Palace, Burnley and West Bromwich Albion.

So, seeing as we have just past the halfway point of the season, and as not one of those three currently occupy a relegation spot, let’s have a little look and see if those predictions need some fine-tuning. Or, more likely, a complete rewrite.

As we all know, Palace are now under new management. A few weeks ago, Alan Pardew followed his heart (which was being carried by his bank manager) and returned to a club that he once, apparently, played for.

I thought at the time, and still do, that it was a strange move for him to make, all things considered. However, you can’t argue that he hasn’t had an instant impact, winning his first three games in charge of the club and lifting them up to 12th in the table, just a couple of places behind Newcastle United.

Will he be able to keep that momentum going? I have my doubts. ‘New manager syndrome’ generally doesn’t last more than a month or two, at which point the excitement and adrenalin rush of having a different voice yelling at you from the touchline wears off.

But a few weeks of decent results might just be enough to keep the relegation demons at bay.

Then there was Burnley who, at the time of writing, sit one place and one point outside the bottom three. I’m not denying they have had a few good results in the past couple of months, but I haven’t seen enough to believe they will escape the drop.

They concede too many goals, don’t score enough, and have developed an interesting habit of taking the lead in games before remembering they are not supposed to be any good and going on to lose comfortably. Not only that, but I suspect their board of directors lacks any real survival ambitions and is merely content to have a year with the big boys and then sit back and enjoy the parachute payments in the Championship.

My final nomination was West Brom. Back in August I warned that giving Alan Irvine the manager’s job was a mistake, and it pretty much panned out that way over the first half of the season. It would end in tears, I said.

However, that was before the appointment of Tony Pulis, the Premier League’s very own ‘Get out of jail’ card. It was inevitable that one of this season’s struggling teams would, at some point, sack their manager and beg Pulis to mastermind their great escape.

Luckily for regulars at the Hawthorns it is their team that will benefit from the Pulis effect over the next five months. And, like Pardew at Palace, that effect has been pretty instant, with the team yet to concede a goal under their new manager, winning one and drawing one in the Premiership and dismantling Gateshead 7-0 in the FA Cup.

Unlike Pardew, however, I can see Pulis maintaining his new team’s upturn in fortunes for the rest of the season. He is a man who manages by motivation, a commodity of which he seems to have an endless supply.

Which concludes the review of the original contenders. So what of the relegation party gatecrashers?

Leicester manager Nigel Pearson is increasingly looking like a rabbit caught in the unforgiving headlights of the Premiership juggernaut

At the moment, Queens Park Rangers, Hull City and Leicester City lie under the dreaded dotted line in the table, although you could easily argue that every team up to 12th are involved in this season’s battle to avoid the drop. In that group, only six points separate Leicester at the bottom from Everton at the top, which is a gap that can collapse quicker than Mario Balotelli’s career.

Out of the other nine teams, however, there are one or two which I think we can dismiss from any real worries of relegation. Everton are not going down, and neither are Sunderland, especially having added Jermaine Defoe to the team.

Equally, I don’t think QPR, despite being second bottom, will go down. All is not well at Loftus Road, but I think Harry Redknapp knows enough about the Premier League to be able to scrape together 20 or so points from 16 games. Aston Villa, meanwhile, can’t score a goal to save their lives, but they have that knack of stringing together four or five good results and saving their skins.

To be honest, the one team I would say looks utterly doomed, on current form at least, is Hull. I watched them against West Ham United at the weekend and, apart from a 20-minute spell at the beginning of the first half, they were truly awful. In fact, I think that was the worst I have seen any team play this season. And I’ve watched Sheffield United.

Leicester also look like they are in serious trouble. After spending so much time building up to their return to the top flight, I genuinely believed they were going to be the best prepared of the newly promoted sides.

But they look out of their depth, and their manager, Nigel Pearson, is increasingly looking like a rabbit caught in the unforgiving headlights of the Premiership juggernaut. Which is a shame, as I thought he would be up to the task.

So where does that leave my predictions then?

Well, having given myself this opportunity to review my picks for relegation, it would be a bit stupid not to do so.

I will stick with Burnley as I think they may actually have a subliminal desire to go back down, enjoy the financial benefits, regroup and try and come back stronger.

Joining them will be Leicester. The only thing that could save them really is signing a brilliant striker to fire them up the table. But unfortunately, Emile Heskey moved to Bolton…

The third and final team heading for the Championship is Hull City Tigers FC, or whatever it is they were called last week. I have no idea whatsoever what has happened to Steve Bruce’s team but, despite adding some good players in the summer, they are a shadow of their former selves.

So there you have it, random man who naively thinks I know what I am doing, the answer to your question is Hull, Burnley and Leicester. They’re all doomed.

Oh, and just in case you are interested in who’s going to win the title, mate – that’s still going to be Chelsea. I’m not changing that one…

sportscolumnist@timesofmalta.com
Twitter: @maltablade