We’re officially halfway through the 2021/2022 football season, which means most leagues will be slowly taking some shape of what they will eventually finish as. In some competitions, it’s almost already clear who will win the league and who will be relegating. In this blog, we would like to zoom in on three clubs that we could see surprise their leagues, by doing better than they did the first half of the season.
PEC Zwolle not to relegate
It doesn’t seem like long ago when PEC finished in sixth and won the Dutch Cup as well as the Johan Cruijff-cup. But, in recent times things have gone far worse for PEC Zwolle: halfway through the season, PEC finds themselves in last place, only winning one league duel. Things seem very bad for PEC, but we could see them becoming the surprise of the second half of the Eredivisie. With a new coach and a couple of good transfers, PEC seems to have things back on track just at the right time. Also: there’s nothing to lose anymore, as it can’t get much worse than the first half. We predict that PEC Zwolle doesn’t relegate and that they even don’t have to play relegation football!
Aston Villa to qualify for European football
Aston Villa was one of the sides people predicted to do better than expected before the season started, but this didn’t really show yet. Currently, Aston Villa is in 11th place, 10 points behind place 6. We could see Aston Villa surprising everyone, and making a good run-up to place six, to qualify for European football. With Steven Gerrard as their new head coach and some good signings such as Digne and Coutinho, we think Aston Villa made the moves needed to get the club back to the winning days. In the first half of the season, Villa struggled a lot against weaker sides, but we think this won’t be much of a problem in the second half of the season.
Olympique Lyon to finish third
Currently, Olympique Lyon is in 11th place. This might seem incredibly far off from third place, however in reality it’s only a 9 point difference. Lyon had some trouble starting to get going this season but managed to do get some better results in the second part of the first half of the season. Ligue 1 has shown to be an incredibly tight league this season, which creates lots of opportunities for Lyons opponents to drop points. If Olympique Lyon manages to win their games, we could see them make a good run into third place, right into the Champions League qualifiers.
Sportmonks
Do you want to make your own predictions for the surprises of the second half of the season? An application with the
Football API by Sportmonks is perfect for you! These applications have the biggest database possible, with both current and historical databases. This way you can look up if your team performs better in the first or the second half: perfect for a good prediction to shock your friends with!
