By history Alright so this whole thing started when I was cleaning out my old hard drive last weekend, right? Found this folder labeled “Premier League Obsession” – totally forgot I even had it. Made me remember that insane 2013-14 season. You know, the one where literally nobody saw Liverpool crumbling at the end or Leicester just barely staying up? Figured it’d be fun to recreate how that table changed every single bloody week.
The Painful Data Hunt Begins
First things first, needed the raw numbers. Big mistake thinking this would be quick. Started scraping some old stats sites, but half the links were dead – typical internet graveyard stuff. Wasted almost two hours trying to find accurate matchday-by-matchday standings before giving up entirely. Ended up manually copying numbers from dusty PDF match reports I dug up. My eyes almost crossed seeing double after typing out twenty teams’ positions for 38 weeks.
Total nightmare checking this mess:
- First had to verify when Arsenal actually topped the table in March
- Then triple-checked Everton’s point swings – those draws killed them
- Biggest headache? Untangling Manchester United’s shockingly average run under Moyes
Spilled cold coffee all over my notes during week 34 data entry. Nearly rage-quit the whole project right there.
Excel Became My Personal Hell
Thought making the table would be smooth sailing. Nope. Excel kept freezing every time I tried adding conditional formatting for relegation/promotion zones. Had to restart three times before I finally stopped trying to make it “fancy”. Settled for basic color fills: red for the drop zone, bright green for Champions League spots. Took forever aligning team names so Aston Villa didn’t overlap with Arsenal on the printed version.
Fun realization halfway through? I’d misspelled “Swansea City” as “Swansae” across fifteen matchweeks. Had to go back and fix every single instance manually – brutal stuff. Almost cried laughing seeing “Manchester Untied” though. Freudian slip right there.
The Real Kick in the Teeth
Got all cocky when the table was done. Decided to make a little chart showing Liverpool and Man City’s point gap week by week. Wanted to capture how quickly Stevie G’s slip changed everything. Found this tutorial for animated bar charts… complete disaster.
Three software crashes later, I just screenshotted the table every five matchweeks and stitched it into a crude slideshow instead. Looks janky as hell when you click through it, but honestly? Kinda fits how chaotic that season felt.
Finished? More Like “Survived”
Sat back around midnight seeing the final matchday table – Palace wrecking Liverpool 3-3, City scraping past West Ham. Felt weirdly emotional reliving it. The whole project took way longer than planned. My girlfriend asked if I’d found buried treasure with how much time I spent hunched over my laptop.
Honest takeaway? Nostalgia’s a dangerous thing. Makes you forget how much grunt work goes into tracking simple numbers. But hey – now I’ve got a visual reminder of why being top in April means absolutely nothing. Might frame this disaster spreadsheet next to my “I Survived Excel 2013” coffee mug.
