A dedicated football fan (the soccer sort) has used Football Manager 2015 to simulate 1000 years of Premier League play to determine the greatest team of all time. It took 58 days for the simulation to complete, according to Redditor Lorf_Yimzo, who posted his results in a spreadsheet listing each club's first, second, and third-place finishes in the English Premier League, as well as the European League and Champions League. Points were awarded based on each team's result, and he also documented how many seasons each club played in the Premier Division.
The first century of the simulation contained a couple of surprises, Yimzo said (and I'll have to take his word for it), as Derby won the Premier League in 2021 and Stoke emerged as a dominant force, a position it held well into the 2100s, when Burnley stepped up and wrestled away the crown. After that, Sheffield United, Southend, Sunderland, and several others all had a turn in the spotlight, until the simulation ended in 3015, in "a struggle between Brentford, Ipswich, and Nottingham Forest, with the very last title ever going to Hull City."
The most successful club of the next millennium was ultimately determined to be Sheffield United, just ahead of runner-up Burnley. The most consistent club, with 982 Premier League seasons played, was Burnley, followed by Arsenal, with 905 seasons. (Presumably with Cyber Wenger 3.0 in charge, says Arsenal-loving editor-in-chief Tim Clark.)
The team with the best Premier League season of the next 1000 years was (will be?) Sheffield United, which managed 101 points in the 2374/75 season. 300 years later, Sheffield United also had the dubious distinction of being the least-disciplined team of the millennium, accumulating 103 yellow cards and 9 red cards in the 2697/98 season.
The results are detailed in a number of screenshots linked in the Reddit post, and the save file is available as well if you want to load it up and play around. Are they accurate? Check back in 1000 years to find out, but the likelihood seems low. Sorry, Stokies.
