’Tis the season for predictions, tra-la-la-la-la-la, la-la-la.
Empty guesses, no conviction, tra-la-la-la-la-la, la-la-la.
Wild prognostics, random yelling, tra-la-la-la-la-la, la-la-la.
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Shots in the dark and vague foretelling, tra-la-la-la-la-la, la-la-la.
Look. You don’t know what’s going to happen in 2017. Nobody does. For a shortcut, you can probably take the following as a guide to the things that will not happen, now that they have been mentioned here. But every year there are long shots that find their way across the line, and some of these might turn out to be them – or they may not. So no coming back with mocking emails or tweets when the following doesn’t pan out. These are punts – you don’t like ’em, go get your own.
N’Golo Kanté to win PFA Player of the Year
BEST ODDS: 22/1
Halfway through the English Premier League season and Chelsea are obviously not worth backing for the title. Sitting here at about the turn of the year, the least surprising outcome for the rest of the season would be Antonio Conte’s side lifting the trophy in May and Diego Costa finishing up as leading scorer. Indeed, the best odds you can get on a Chelsea/Costa double are a stupidly short 9/4.
The PFA award has a tendency to be a bit quirky sometimes. Costa is the main reason Chelsea are top of the league, and if he and they carry on as they have been, they should win it with a bit in hand. Yet Costa isn’t even the favourite for the award at the minute. He’s 4/1, with Eden Hazard 11/4.
There’s a good reason for this: the top scorer in the league hardly ever wins the PFA award. In the 17 seasons since the turn of the century, the top scorer has only been voted PFA Player of the Year four times. These winners were Thierry Henry (2004), Cristiano Ronaldo (2008), Robin van Persie (2012) and Luis Suárez (2014). So Hazard is a worthy enough favourite in that context.
But if Kanté wins his second league in a row – and with a different team – he should go close to this award. Only five players in history have ever achieved that in England and you have to go back to the 1920s for someone who did it playing in almost every game for both teams. Keep an eye on Kanté through the spring as more and more people latch on to this – it will only take a few mentions on Sky Sports News to get some buzz going for him.
Also, with Hazard and Costa, the highlights reel can dry up easily enough. Kanté’s contribution is the week-after-week, engine-room stuff that keeps a title run on the go. He’ll play every game and likely never be worth less than seven out of 10. If he adds the odd goal, that goes up to eight or nine. Those odds of 22/1 could look very generous by about mid-March.
Fermanagh to win Division Two of the Allianz Football League
BEST ODDS: 16/1
Division Two of the league always has an interesting population. Every once in a while, there’s a team who absolutely shouldn’t be there and who play like they can’t wait to get the stink off them – see Tyrone 2016. There’s always a couple of teams who consider themselves better than some of what’s in Division One but can’t back it up with performances. Mostly, though, it’s a holding cell for teams who are either stopping off on their way up or free-falling in the other direction.
Or sometimes both. It’s only four years since Westmeath went through it only losing a single group game on their way to Division One. It’s only two since they lost five out of seven on their way to Division Three. In 2017, they will start their league campaign against Carlow in Division Four. That’s how volatile it is.
By rights, given their league history, Cork should be the Tyrone of 2017. But after 2016, you wouldn’t be putting the life savings on them, would you? The point is that in the absence of an outstanding team, Division Two is usually up for grabs for whoever hits the ground running early on. Given how open it tends to be, therefore, Fermanagh are a mad price at 16/1 to win it.
It has taken Dublin and Mayo to knock Fermanagh out of the All-Ireland series these past two years. They are a serious proposition every day they go out under Pete McGrath. They start off against Down, who could easily be the freefall team this time around, and then Galway, who have just four wins out of 14 games against Ulster teams in the league over the past four seasons. If they’re two from two at that point, this league is very winnable.
Paul Casey to win the Masters
BEST ODDS: 66/1
Casey is getting a bit long in the tooth now for a breakthrough and it could very well be that a Major victory will always stay just that bit out of his reach. But his resurgence over the past 18 months suggests a big year ahead. Certainly his form at the back end of 2016 was enough to rival anyone’s, apart from Hideki Matsuyama. But whereas the Japanese star is a best-price 9/4 to win a Major in 2017, you can get 16/1 on Casey to break his duck.
More tempting, however, is the 66/1 available for Augusta. Casey has had eight top-10s in Majors and four of them have been at the Masters. It’s a full decade since he finished anything better than tied for 39th at a US Open and last year saw his first top-10 placing in a USPGA championship at his 14th attempt. True, he finished tied for seventh in the British Open the last time it was at Birkdale, in 2008, but that was without breaking 70 all week and never being closer than nine shots off the lead.
So it feels a wasted punt to take the shorter price on the broader bet when, in all likelihood, Augusta is probably his best chance. He was fourth there last year and sixth the year before. Augusta’s habit of throwing up familiar names come Sunday is well-worn by now, so it’s no surprise that two other players have joined him in the top six two years in a row. But while Jordan Spieth is 9/1 four months out and Dustin Johnson is 12/1, Casey can be backed at 66/1 today. If he continues 2017 the way he ended 2016, that price will tumble.
France to win the Six Nations
BEST ODDS: 14/1
It hardly needs pointing out that France’s recent history in this competition is less than stellar. They haven’t won it since 2010, and they even took the wooden spoon in 2013. They start off their 2017 campaign at Twickenham, where they haven’t won in the Six Nations since 2005. If England are in the right mood – and there’s no reason to suspect they won’t be – there’s every chance that France’s championship could be over before it gets started.
Still, the feeling is that 2017 will be a year with no Grand Slam. England are probably the best team, but not by any great distance, and it won’t take a lot to go wrong for them to see Ireland and/or Wales beat them on their travels. As for ourselves, it all feels very exciting at the moment until you remember that our only wins in this tournament last year came against Italy and Scotland.
France would have beaten Australia in November with a better place-kicker and arguably should have taken New Zealand as well. Guy Noves was rumoured to be on his way out the door after Bernard Laporte’s election as president of the French Rugby Federation last month, but he seems secure in the job for now and has clearly been making progress. If he can get the squad he needs fit and available, they are no 14/1 shot.
At this remove, it’s hard to guess how bonus points will influence the Six Nations, but it’s reasonable to imagine it will encourage a more expansive game, to some extent at least. If that means France going back to being France and throwing the ball around, then it’s stupid to think they won’t be a threat in every game.
And some odds and ends . . .
DYLAN HARTLEY’S NEXT MISDEMEANOUR: Poor Dylan – only he could have a book like this running under his name. So far, the options are punch (2/1), headbutt (3/1), swinging arm (4/1), bite (10-1), with spit, verbal abuse and eye gouge all available at a sporting 16/1. At a big price, the verbal abuse one looks the standout, no?
DONALD TRUMP’S FIRST STATE VISIT: US presidents always, always go to either Canada or Mexico on their first trip outside the US after inauguration. The only time they deviate is for a G8 or G20 meeting, but there isn’t one scheduled in 2017 until July. So, assuming he will continue to march to the beat of his own drummer, where will Trump go first?
England is the favourite at 7/4, but it’s hard to imagine what business he’d have there – surely he doesn’t like Nigel Farage that much. Israel is tempting at 10/3, with plenty of provocation potential. But, at 33/1, the standout bet is Slovenia, homeland of soon-to-be-first-lady Melania Trump. Ordinarily, it would be mad to think of a US president making a trip abroad just to show off his model wife, but this is Trump we’re talking about.
CARL FRAMPTON TO WIN BBC SPORTS PERSONALITY OF THE YEAR 2017: At 66/1, this is admittedly, a very long shot. Frampton has little profile outside Northern Ireland and if a boxer is going to take the award in 2017, it’s more likely to be Anthony Joshua. But say Joshua loses to Klitschko, say Andy Murray and Rory McIlroy don’t win a Major between them, say Lewis Hamilton doesn’t win the world title and the Lions get tonked in New Zealand – soon enough, you’re running out of candidates.
If Frampton keeps racking up victories and his reputation keeps growing – being named ESPN’s boxer of 2016 last week can’t hurt in this regard – he could gain some traction as the year goes on. Worth backing each way at least.
