We asked AI to predict Birmingham City's final league position this season | OneFootball

Birmingham City had a record-breaking season in League One in 2024-25, so we asked ChatGPT to predict how they'll do in the Championship this season.

Birmingham City had a record-breaking season in League One in 2024-25, so we asked ChatGPT to predict how they would get on in the Championship this time around.

Birmingham had an extraordinary season in League One in 2024-25, running up 111 points, winning the title by 19 points, and losing just three of their 46 League matches.

But the Championship is a different beast. The Blues may have a lot of money behind them, but they don't have the colossal advantage of Premier League parachute payments which the three relegated clubs enjoy. A lot of clubs have spent a lot of money this summer, and it seems likely that the division will be tight this season.

Predicting how this division might turn out is difficult, and the difference between success and failure can come down to very fine margins indeed. So with all of this in mind, FLW have asked ChatGPT to rank how Birmingham will get on in their first season back in the second tier.

ChatGPT predicts that Birmingham will finish 8th in the Championship in 2025-26

AI has predicted that Birmingham City will finish eighth in the Championship this season, though its confidence in this prediction is somewhat undermined by the fact that it initially predicted that they would finish between fourth and 14th and had to be asked a supplementary question to narrow its prediction down a bit.

A couple of their rationales for this position are slightly eccentric, describing their 1-1 draw with Ipswich on the opening weekend as "hardly earth-shattering", which is true in a sense (a win would obviously have been better), but rather overlooked the fact that they were playing one of the favourites for promotion this season, who needed a very late (and slightly ropey) penalty kick to salvage a point from the game.

In addition to this, "expert backing from bookmakers" doesn't feel like a very reliable way of predicting future success, while its confident prediction that losing Jamie Vardy will have more of an effect on Leicester - who are mentioned when trying to explain why it may not be a simple case of three-up-three-down this season - than the possibly swingeing points deduction that's likely to be heading their way at some point this season also seems counter-intuitive.

AI's lack of confidence in its prediction hints at how tight the Championship may be this season

But that's not to say that AI is not making any sense with the 'thinking' behind its prediction. One particularly salient point that it pulls out is manager Chris Davies' lack of experience at this level. Davies had no professional playing career to speak of, while his coaching career prior to arriving at St Andrew's was largely spent in the Premier League, at Swansea, Liverpool, Leicester and Spurs, with a spell in Scotland as assistant to Brendan Rodgers at Celtic thrown in. It's not difficult to envisage a slow start resulting in a decision being taken to change tack, and such a decision could entirely alter the trajectory of their season.

AI also gives credence to the idea that momentum could be very important to them this season. There are few more optimistic clubs in the Championship at the moment than Birmingham, and if winning is a habit, they're in a unique position at the start of this season, having won 34 of their 46 League One matches last season.

But the key to this Championship season may be found in that initially broad prediction for Birmingham of "4th to 14th." With so many competing factors, and a lot of changes having come across the entire division over the summer, this division looks extremely difficult to call this season.