It’s perhaps the most famous set of results in English football history: 1-5, 6-1, 10-1, 2-0, 6-1, 3-3, 3-0, 4-4, 2-8, 3-3.
No, it’s not Tottenham’s last 10 results in all competitions, but the First Division results from Boxing Day 1963, the silliest of all days. Sixty-six goals across 10 games, with twice as many teams scoring three or more goals as managed one or fewer. A brilliant thing, and alas a bar no subsequent Boxing Day could match.
This, though, is already confirmed as the most batsh*t Premier League season ever and if anyone can live up to the boys of 63, it’s the 2024/25 Barclays. So we’ve considered the eight games on offer, and assigned them each one of those 1963 efforts. Yes it is handy we don’t have to include the 10-1 because of that. We don’t just make up our rules on the spot, you know.
Just be grateful we haven’t done 16 Conclusions on these made-up results, because we’re absolutely not above that kind of thing as you know.
Manchester City 2-0 Everton
Easy one to start. A full eight years before his birth, 1963 Everton were already channelling their inner Sean Dyche and refusing to play any part in the Utter Woke Nonsense going off around the country, contenting themselves with a disappointing but entirely regulation 2-0 defeat at Leicester.
Everton were one of only two teams not to score on that famous Boxing Day 61 years ago, and that’s also something they’ve managed to achieve in six of their last seven games here and now. Let’s gloss over the fact they accidentally scored four in the other one.
Four of Everton’s last six games have ended 0-0 and had there been such an option on the 1963 classifieds we’d have had it; if you can shut down Arsenal and Chelsea as Dycheball has in the last couple of weeks you can surely do the same to this pale imitation of Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City.
Does seem a bit wild that this is the most regulation, vanilla prediction among all this nonsense and it’s one of the ones we’re least sure about because City scoring twice against Everton seems just absurdly far-fetched right now.
Bournemouth 3-3 Crystal Palace
Excuses in first: this is the one we’re least happy about. But one of the key quirks of the 1963 results is that the only home wins available to us are 2-0, 3-0, 6-1 or 10-1. We don’t think Bournemouth, good as they are, are going to win 6-1 (or, indeed, 10-1) against Crystal Palace, bad as they are. And the 2-0 and 3-0 both have more compelling contenders elsewhere.
But we’re not about to go suggesting Palace might win this 8-2 as title-chasing Blackburn did at West Ham all those years ago either. So we’re a bit stuck really. Doesn’t leave us with much anywhere else to go than the 3-3 draw Forest and the Blades offered up.
It’s not an absolute madness as suggestions go, though. Bournemouth have scored exactly three goals three times in the Premier League this season, and conceded exactly three goals twice. Palace did score three at Brighton recently, before conceding eight goals across two games against Arsenal.
We’ve almost talked ourselves into actually believing this one.
Chelsea 3-0 Fulham
The West London posers were two of the biggest contributors to the 1963 silliness, scoring 15 goals between them. Fulham got 10 of those against Ipswich, who might be grateful to escape on a technicality here by not playing Arsenal until Friday.
However, if Fulham wanted to be considered live contenders for a key role in all this year’s predicted festivities then they should have thought about that before spending 90 minutes struggling to find their arsehole with both hands against Southampton of all teams. That is simply not the way to go about getting us to predict they might score a whole load of goals at Chelsea. They were fools to think it was.
No, Fulham right now have become altogether too dreary. Relentlessly competent off the ball but uninspiring on it, especially if Emile Smith Rowe isn’t there to add a little something, something.
Enzo Maresca’s hugely impressive Chelsea do have an undeniable capability for chaos, but we’d humbly suggest that manifests more often than not in being open to chaotic extravagance against teams who are more often and more proactively agents of chaos, rather than generating it themselves.
Thrashing Wolves and Southampton, for instance, or roaring back from a goal down against Brighton to score four by half-time. And most obviously with whatever that absurdity was at Tottenham.
Against less chaos-inclined opposition, Chelsea have rarely brought their own to the table. Perhaps the most obvious parallel for this Boxing Day test in Chelsea’s recent efforts was the Villa game, with Unai Emery’s men unable at that time to fully emerge from a funk that left their football on the dreary side of staid. And the fact we’ve crowbarred that in because it enormously conveniently finished 3-0, the only remaining non-nonsense home win we’ve got to choose from, is neither here nor there.
Newcastle 3-3 Aston Villa
Another nice straightforward chance to use one of the teams involved 61 years ago when selecting our scoreline for what is, on paper, the game of the day.
As noted by Steven Chicken in Big Boxing Day, we’ve a sneaking feeling that both teams’ recent resurgence makes this a ‘take a draw’ kind of affair that allows both teams to rumble on to the next game with momentum retained and positive vibes in place.
Of course, this is Boxing Day 1963 we’re talking about. So both teams being happy to settle for a point means the game ends 3-3. In fairness, Newcastle have scored 15 and Aston Villa 10 across their last five games respectively, which makes 3-3 seem slightly less outlandish than it otherwise might. And it was also the scoreline the last time a good team – Liverpool – visited St James’ Park. To be honest, it’s starting to look nailed-on.
Nottingham Forest 4-4 Tottenham
A wonderfully entertaining Spurs team travelled to the midlands on Boxing Day 1963 and emerged with a madcap 4-4 draw. The 2024 version of Spurs are so absurd that such an outcome from another trip to the midlands 61 years later would, if anything, be slightly underwhelming for a team whose last four games have involved losing 4-3 at home from 2-0 up against Chelsea, scoring five goals before half-time at Southampton, attempting to lose from 3-0 up and eventually tripping over themselves to a 4-3 win against Manchester United and contriving a situation where their defeat against Liverpool could entirely accurately be described as ‘only 6-3’.
If you’ve ever wondered how Spurs are so good at being Spurs, it’s because they’ve been doing it for so long. They went into that West Brom game back in 1963 in great shape in the title race, went ahead in the third minute and held two-goal leads on three separate occasions before ending up with only a single point to show for it. The one difference between 1960s Spurs and the current pack of plonkers – admittedly a significant one – is that the 1960s version did still win things.
Clearly there’s no great leap of imagination required to picture Spurs playing out a 4-4 draw, especially one in which their game management is laughably poor, but do Forest have it in them? That’s admittedly less clear for a team that is just quite simply good and has neither scored nor conceded four times in a single game this season. But we can get there. Forest have, for instance, both scored and conceded three in a game at some point in the last few weeks, and once you factor in the Spurs nonsense multiplier it’s perfectly easy to imagine how Forest could both score and concede one more than that. If you can win 3-2 at Man United, you can absolutely draw 4-4 with Spurs.
Southampton 1-5 West Ham
Okay fine, there’s very flimsy evidence that we can expect this kind of thing from West Ham. We are forced here to lean far, far too heavily on a 4-1 home win against Ipswich nearly three months ago. But there’s no denying West Ham retain the requisite component parts to perform a madness even under the stifling not-sacked-yet gaze of the Spanish Moyes, Julen Lopetegui.
And really, we don’t actually need to know that West Ham can score five away when we know with such absolute certainty that Southampton can concede five at home. Especially to London clubs. It’s happened twice this month already.
Wolves 6-1 Manchester United
A proud, old powerhouse of English football giving Manchester United an absolute shoeing? We’re in. With the Gary O’Neil shackles well and truly thrown off, who among us would truly be surprised to see Wolves the latest club to inflict defensive misery on Ruben Amorim’s baffled back three? Not us, that’s for sure.
Wolves have fleetingly shown themselves to be a side with goals in them – they got four at Fulham a while back, didn’t they? And another three at Leicester this week. And most importantly Manchester United’s current players simply cannot yet defend coherently or cohesively in Ruben Amorim’s preferred formation. They’ve conceded seven goals across their last two game and unfortunately for them it is DEFINITELY about to get even worse.
Liverpool 6-1 Leicester
Obviously Liverpool can’t hope to play against a team as stupid as Ange Postecoglou’s Tottenham every game, but they do get to do it two games in a row this Christmas thanks to their next assignment being against Ruud van Nistelrooy’s Leicester.
They’ve conceded seven goals across their last two games against Newcastle and Wolves, and must now make a significant step up in class against a team absolutely rammed full of confidence after getting all those lovely presents at Spurs.
We must admit we were tempted by the 10-1 here, but the neatness of another 6-1 Liverpool win to match that Stoke mauling back in the day gets the nod. It is also, we will just about accept, probably very, very, very slightly more likely. But we really are not ruling out the 10. We’re going to be kicking ourselves, aren’t we?