With the Premier League season reaching its climax, the top four race is one of the biggest storylines as always.
There is a mega conclusion to the title race in store, with Arsenal and Manchester City vying for supremacy, while big clubs like Everton, West Ham, and Leicester are fighting to avoid the drop to the Championship.
And, in the middle of it all, a handful of teams are vying for the European places, with a few surprising names compared to what many had predicted at the outset of the season.
Looking back to the beginning of August, the predictions made by BBC's football punditry team show how unpredictable the top four race has been this season.
Top four race: Start of season BBC predictions look wild now
Hindsight is a beautiful thing, but even so the predictions made by some of the BBC's regular football pundits at the beginning of this Premier League season look jarring as we reach the end of the football year.
With Micah Richards among those enlisted to pick their top four ahead of the season kicking off with Crystal Palace v Arsenal in August, there was a widespread consensus among the 23 ex-pros enlisted to give their picks.
Every single pundit predicted some variation of a Manchester City-Liverpool top two. Though there was nothing to suggest that Liverpool would drop off as dramatically as they have this season, and the pair had just run out another all-time epic Premier League title race, it still looks jarring when you compare it to Liverpool's current eighth place in the league standings.
The BBC punditry team's top four predictions from the beginning of the season (Photo: BBC)
There are a few other elements here which show how unexpected many of the Premier League's biggest storylines have been this season.
Of the teams predicted to make the top four, Liverpool and Manchester City were in all 23 of the pundits' picks, while Dion Dublin was the only man to omit Spurs from his selection. Chelsea were close behind with 13 picks, with the aggregate scores placing the top four as Manchester City - Liverpool - Spurs - Chelsea.
With 23 pundits asked, you'd have expected a bit more variation, and two of this season's best performers got very few shouts. Only eight pundits predicted that title-chasing Arsenal would be in the Champions League places, with not one predicting they would even finish in the top three. Meanwhile, Erik Ten Hag's Manchester United were only in three pundits' top four predictions.
The most notable absence from the list is Newcastle. Likely to finish at worst fourth, Eddie Howe's side didn't get a single pick from the BBC's punditry team, showing the scale of their achievement in gatecrashing the top four battle this season.
As we say, hindsight is a beautiful thing. Nobody could have seen the scale of Liverpool or Chelsea's drop-offs in form coming, while Spurs have been a disaster almost from day one this season. Meanwhile, the impressive jobs done by Erik Ten Hag and, in particular, Mikel Arteta, have surpassed even the most hopeful pundit's predictions.
There are still twists and turns to come in the top four race, but it's safe to say that things haven't panned out as we had expected.
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