1	M.Grunwell	59.03	2016-2017
2	M.Phillips	58.05	2013-2014
3	M.Grunwell	56.93	1989-1990
4	E.Grunwell	56.89	2007-2008
5	M.Grunwell	56.57	2018-2019
6	M.Phillips	56.44	2007-2008
7	M.Grunwell	56.04	2013-2014
8	M.Phillips	55.89	2018-2019
9	The Sun	55.85	2016-2017
10	J.Phillips	55.68	2005-2006

Mark Grunwell's amazing title-winning 56.93% in the 1989-1990 season looked like it would never be beaten or even challenged, however in 2007-2008 Elliott Grunwell almost did it, when he won the Results League title with 56.89%, just 0.04% behind Mark's record. The magical 57% looked like it would never be beaten and Mark's figure stood for nearly a quarter of a century.

Then in 2013-2014, Mike Phillips not only passed this milestone but demolished Mark's 24 year old record, with 58.05%. That looked like a record that might stand for another quarter century, but within three seasons Mark finished with 59.03%, pushing the figure up by almost a whole percent and reclaiming his top spot as the highest all-time Results League finish.

These top 10 are quite impressive and hard to achieve, all at 55.68% or over. Mark Grunwell has four entries in this exclusive table; Mike Phillips has three. The other amateur entries are Elliott Grunwell and Joyce Phillips with one each. Only one Professional makes the top ten with one entry, The Sun; The Sunday Mail was pushed out of the top ten in 2018-2019.

Complete list of all 50% scores to follow.

1	M.Phillips	17
2	M.Grunwell	16
3	F.Grunwell	14
4	G.Grunwell	13
5	E.Grunwell	11
6	The Sun	9
	D.Grunwell	9
7	M.Willing	8
8	Sunday Express	6
	M.Crossley	6
9	J.Phillips	5
	K.Mowad	5
10	B.Roberts-Jones	4
	I.Milligan	4
	W.Hughes	4
11	S.Almudaris	3
	F.Khalid	3
	M.Lewis	3
	R.Salter	3
	M.Starling	3
	Sunday Times	3
	J.Knight	3
	T.Bammeke	3
12	D.Boston	2
	J.Grunwell	2
	Daily Mail	2
	Sunday Mail	2
	Sunday Mirror	2
	K.Morgan	2
	D.Thompson	2
	J.Blackford	2
	A.Foster	2

The following have all achieved one season of 50%:
M.Hayas, M.Konfektov, D.Sancto, M.Dourado, Foot Stats (Pro), Rezilta (Pro)

1	F.Grunwell	8
	M.Grunwell	8
2	D.Grunwell	6
	Sunday Express	6
3	J.Phillips	5
4	M.Crossley	4
	M.Phillips	4
5	G.Grunwell	3
	M.Lewis	3
	K.Mowad	3
	Sunday Times	3
	M.Willing	3
	E.Grunwell	3
	J.Knight	3
	W.Hughes	3
	T.Bammeke	3
6	F.Khalid	2
	I.Milligan	2
	Sunday Mirror	2
	R.Salter	2
	S.Almudaris	2

All Time/Career Averages
All Time Average is naturally enough based on the number of completed seasons in the top flight (old Division One and current Premier League) Results League. You need two completed seasons to acquire an average.

The problem with the all-time averages method is that for those who have only ever competed in the minimum number of seasons to qualify, they may have an artificially low or high career average.

For example, the 1980s and the early 1990s produced a number of low scoring RL percentage seasons, even for the 'top' predictors, whereas in the 2000s there have been many higher scoring years.

Take as an example, Sami Almudaris who currently has an excellent career average based on five complete seasons from 2016-2017, with 51.28% - in fact, Sami is now number 1 on the all-time career averages of 59 predictors since 1980-1981, both amateur and pro, who have completed more than one season. Members also have to have predicted to within 3 weeks' worth of the end of the season. This adjustment removes all those percentages from members who stopped predicting early in the season or missed too many weeks, giving them an artificially high score.

The earlier years of the FPA, especially the 1980s and 1990s, produced very low Results League percentages, whereas the 2000s, especially the last 5-10 years, has produced much higher percentages - except for these last two seasons affected by the global pandemic.

Compare Sami Almudaris to Mark Grunwell, who has 35 seasons of top flight finishes, and an all-time average of 49.94. But for the same five year period as Sami, Mark''s average is higher at 53.88, because all the low score years from the 1980s-1990s, a disadvantage to long standing member averages, have been removed. It is certainly not an exact science.

Here are all the all-time (formerly called career) averages for amateur and professional predictors who have completed more than one season in the top (Premier) Results League (some members may have spent some of their career time in the former Division One, based on Championship games). Bear in mind the comments as above with the comparison between Sami Almudaris and Mark Grunwell. See all the section below on Four Year Averages.

All Time Averages - percentages and number of completed seasons in brackets (to May 2022 - to be updated in 2024):

1	Mark Crossley	51.22	(7)
2	Khalid Mowad	50.57	(6)
3	Sami Almudaris	50.30	(6)
4	Fiona Grunwell	50.10	(21)
5	Mark Grunwell	50.00	(36)
6	Misha Konfektov	49.80	(2)
7	Rob Salter	49.54	(5)
8	Matt Willing	49.42	(20)
9	Tope Bammeke	49.30	(2)
10	Elliott Grunwell	49.16	(22)
11	Sunday Express (UK Newspaper)	49.14	(12)
12	Moteb Hayas	49.05	(4)
13	Daniel Grunwell	49.02	(16)
14	Mike Phillips	48.94	(36)
15	Matthew Starling	48.72	(6)
16	Sunday Mail (UK Newspaper)	48.70	(14)
17	Danny Thompson	48.56	(8)
18	Ian Milligan	48.44	(11)
19	Rezilta (Online Tipster)	48.14	(3)
20	Sunday Mirror (UK Newspaper)	48.124	(5)
21	Mark Lewis	48.121	(8)
22	Foot Stats (Online Tipster)	47.98	(8)
23	Barry Roberts-Jones	47.90	(11)
24	Glen Grunwell	47.76	(34)
25	Joseph Grunwell	47.74	(5)
26	Alan Foster	47.52	(5)
27	Fakhar Khalid	47.39	(7)
28	Daily Mail (UK Newspaper)	47.28	(12)
29	Joyce Phillips	47.12	(23)
30	Jason Blackford	47.01	(7)
31	The Sun (UK Newspaper)	46.97	(35)
32	Will Hughes	46.84	(7)
33	Tina Keen	46.20	(3)
34	PredictZ (Online Tipster)	46.13	(7)
35	Sunday Times (UK Newspaper)	45.60	(16)
36	Mark Oliver	45.40	(3)
37	Daily Express (UK Newspaper)	45.25	(6)
38	Sunday Telegraph (UK Newspaper)	44.883	(8)
39	Dave Boston	44.875	(24)
40	Daily Mirror (UK Newspaper)	44.58	(10)
41	Dave Sancto	43.952	(5)
42	Arron Springate	43.945	(6)
43	Khalid Aldhamen	43.92	(5)
44	Rob Slater	43.36	(3)
45	Ted Phillips	43.33	(3)
46	The Telegraph (UK Newspaper)	43.30	(7)
47	The Sunday People (UK Newspaper)	43.06	(9)
48	Ken Morgan	43.03	(19)
49	Richard Wellings	42.68	(6)
50	News of the World (UK Newspaper)	42.55	(10)
51	The Independent (UK Newspaper)	42.33	(4)
52	The Times (UK Newspaper)	42.30	(5)
53	Darren Sherman	41.38	(3)
54	Darren Parker	40.97	(2)
55	Paul Burch	40.73	(4)
56	Ian Humphries	40.27	(4)
57	Mike Sherman	39.99	(5)
58	Dennis Springate	39.85	(10)
59	Evening Standard (UK Newspaper)	39.12	(4)
60	Crossfire (TV Tipster)	38.98	(2)
61	Oracle (TV Tipster)	38.38	(5)
62	Vic Hatherley	38.12	(4)

The qualification criteria is two complete seasons. Why are there only 62 names when FPA has had over 120 members across all the seasons? Because firstly some members only predicted one season or less (partial season) then left the FPA. Secondly, some members only participated in our lower tier division, in the era when we had a two tier league system (1994 to 2002), never were promoted to the top flight, and left the FPA before we reverted to just one division/league based on EPL only. The 62 names you see above is anyone who completed two years in the top flight, predicting the former Division One and the current Premier League.

Vic Hatherley (Black Horse era) has the lowest all-time career average of both amateur members and all members, with 38.12% from 4 seasons.

Dennis Springate, second from bottom of the amateurs with 39.85% from 10 seasons was on 50% in his comeback season but did not complete the year (due to his son Arron leaving the FPA, and he used to collect Dennis' predictions), else his average would be higher - at least, into the low 40s.

The lowest all-time career average for a professional is Oracle (a former TV teletext-style pundit, along with Crossfire another TV predictor, the second worst professional), with 38.38% from 5 seasons.

It should be noted that Vic, Dennis, Oracle and Crossfire were all active in the late 1980s to the early 1990s, a period when average percentages were much lower than today.

To improve your all-time average, you obviously need to score a higher percentage in a current season than your overall average listed here.


Updated for 2023-2024
A better way to look at overall predicting performance is to attempt to standardise finishing year percentages (or 'normalise' in scientific terms) and there's more than one way to do this.

The first way to do a more realistic comparison is to take everyone's results percentage for the last number of consecutive years when new members joined.

For example, we had some new members join FPA in the 2020-2021 season, but they have obviously only completed two seasons so will only have an average based on just the last two years.

So we go back two seasons for the last influx of new members, since two is the minumum we can average for. If no new members joined in the future seasons, we'd compare averages going back the number of seasons that we can compare. Example: let's say the last new FPA members joined five years ago; we could then run a five year average comparing everybody's last five seasons of averages.

Currently two is the furthest we can go back then. The table is smaller since it can only show those who have predicted the last two seasons, but it now looks quite different:

Current Two Year Average (to 2023-2024):

1	M.Phillips	52.74
2	J.Knight	52.70
3	F.Grunwell	52.34
	M.Grunwell	52.34
5	E.Grunwell	51.86
6	T.Bammeke	51.65
7	D.Grunwell	51.43
8	G.Grunwell	51.24
9	SoccerVista	51.11
10	W.Hughes	50.50
11	M.Crossley	50.09
12	K.Mowad	50.03
13	J.Blackford	49.68
14	A.Foster	49.11
15	M.Willing	47.91
16	S.Almudaris	47.75
17	W.Rajan	47.51
18	R.Salter	47.44
19	ForeBet	47.20
20	M.Starling	46.84
21	PredictZ	41.96

The second method is to take the two best high scores for each member from all their FPA complete seasons, and compare those with the those who have only completed two years - since apart from the 2021-2022 season, where two new members joined (Jacob Knight and Will Rajan), all current members have predicted two seasons or more. Note that some former member members will show in this table, if they predicted a minimum two seasons

Best Four Seasons Averaged (to 2017-2018): This is still showing old data for four years average and is due to be updated for 2022-2023 season end

1	Mark Grunwell	57.98
2	Mike Phillips	57.25
3	Elliott Grunwell	56.23
4	Joyce Phillips	55.40
5	Glen Grunwell	55.21
6	The Sun (Newspaper)	54.81
7	Fiona Grunwell	54.63
8	Sunday Mail (Newspaper)	54.29
9	Matt Willing	54.05
10	Sunday Express (Newspaper)	52.78
11	Ian Milligan	52.64
12	Khalid Mowad	52.50
13	Danny Thompson	52.32
14	Sunday Times (Newspaper)	52.28
15	Will Hughes	51.21
16	Daniel Grunwell	51.14
17	Joseph Grunwell	50.96
17	Sunday Mirror (Newspaper)	50.96
19	Sami Almudaris	50.73
20	Dave Boston	50.72
21	Mark Crossley	50.71
22	Daily Mail (Newspaper)	50.69
23	Barry Roberts-Jones	50.66
24	Ken Morgan	50.34
25	Rezilta (Online)	49.84
26	Foot Stats (Online)	49.28
27	Fakhar Khalid	49.24
28	Dave Sancto	48.52
29	Predict Z (Online)	48.31
30	Daily Express (Newspaper)	48.30
31	Sunday Telegraph (Newspaper)	47.70
32	Daily Mirror (Newspaper)	47.56
33	Tina Keen	47.42
34	Matthew Starling	47.35
35	Arron Springate	47.03
36	The Telegraph (Newspaper)	47.00
37	News of the World (Newspaper)	46.60
38	Jason Blackford	46.50
39	Ted Phillips	46.33
40	Sunday People (Newspaper)	46.31
41	Mark Oliver	46.14
42	The Times (Newspaper)	45.59
43	Richard Wellings	44.32
44	The Independent (Newspaper)	43.90
45	Dennis Springate	43.16
46	Mike Sherman	42.90
47	Ian Humphries	42.41
48	Vic Hatherley	42.29
49	Darren Sherman	42.17
50	Paul Burch	41.79
51	Oracle (TV)	41.77
52	Darren Parker	40.97
53	Evening Standard (Newspaper)	40.70
53	Crossfire (TV)	39.98

A familiar pattern begins to emerge with many of the same names appearing in the top 10 of the last two tables which more accurately reflects overall performance, rather than merely two good seasons of predicting. Now all the long standing members are more accurately compared to those who have predicted only the more recent higher scoring years.

Of course, over time, given enough seasons for the newer members, their averages should equalise, since not every season will be a high scoring (say 50% plus) one.

These latter tables also give a chance for former members with a good predictions history (title winners or regular high placings) such as Joyce Phillips, Barry Roberts-Jones and so on, to be better represented.

As mentioned above, recent seasons, certainly since the 2000s, have been 'easier' to achieve a higher season's score, evidenced by all the 50%+ years. This puts good predictors no longer with us (either left the FPA or passed away) at a disadvantage as they can obviously never improve their average; likewise, current members who predicted through many 'lean' seasons of the 1980s and 1990s need a better way to be compared with more recent members to the FPA who have had two or more good years.

This means there are past predictors who were very good at it (such as Barry Roberts-Jones and Joyce Phillips) still come out poorly in any comparison with today, even using two year averages.

The best way to compare then is not in absolute values but in relative ones. A better indicator of how good someone's RL season was is to work out the average for the Results League for each table of the last day of each season. Then work out how many % above the average the winner was. We can get an overall average of a member's average above or below the background average. This would give us a 'standardized' way to compare past and present member performances regardless of whether it was a higher or lower scoring season. These stats will appear here in time.


Finally, this one is more for fun and interest. Instead of individuals, all family/related winners grouped, including husband/wife 'teams'. Obviously there needs to be a minimum of two family members, and a minimum of one title win, to get into this table.

1	Grunwell	126
2	Phillips	49
3	Springate	8
4	Wallbank	3
5	Williams	1
	Sherman	1
	Keohane/Slater	1

1: Mark (60), Fiona (24), Glen (20), Elliott (10), Daniel (10), Joseph (2)
2: Mike (34), Joyce (14), Ted (1)
3: Arron (4), Dennis (4)
4: Matt (3), Mark (0)
5: Tony (1), Neil (0)
5: Darren (1), Mike (0)
5: Nina Keohane (1), Rob Slater (0)

Here are all the competitions for each season:
(currently we only have a sample from a few years, but over time all the seasons' records will be added here)