Foul Play: Once More With Feeling

Pop the champagne corks and bring on the dancing girls. There’s more to look forward to in this season’s Premiership than at any time in the last decade, primarily because there are no less than six teams with an entirely realistic shot at winning the thing.
My enthusiasm for the English game reached an all-time low during the mid-Noughties when the top four became a completely closed shop, with Everton occupying a near-permanent fifth place in the firmament and every other outfit having to accept that sixth place in the League was the absolute zenith of their aspirations. Now, in contrast, the thing looks wide-open. Financial factors were behind the Premiership becoming all lopsided in the first place, and they’re also responsible for the recent outbreak of glasnost: Man City and Spurs now have money to burn, while the Glazer regime has crippled Man United’s financial muscle, and even Roman Abramovich at Chelsea has started pinching the pennies.
Last season, Chelsea and United scrapped it out for the prize, finishing with 86 and 85 points respectively. The age profile of both sides, combined with a lack of summer reinforcements, suggests that they will do very well to avoid moving backwards this season.
United cannot possibly rely on Ryan Giggs (36), Paul Scholes (35), Gary Neville (35) and Edwin van der Sar (40) to do the business for much longer, and the new breed (Obertan, Macheda, the da Silvas) just aren’t there yet. This is not to suggest that they won’t be an almighty force in two or three years’ time, or that Fergie has over-estimated their true worth. But United have reached a juncture where their key players are either too old or too young. They are far too reliant on Wayne Rooney, and I still have reservations about Nani. And there is no evidence at all that the Glazers will be inclined to loosen the purse-strings if they need fresh blood in January. This may be the season when the empire collapses into a crumbling heap.
I backed Chelsea last year, and they just about did the business despite missing the almighty Michael Essien, who should restore some bite and drive to the Blues’ midfield. Yet the suspicion lingers that their key operators – John Terry, Petr Cech and Didier Drogba – may be on the verge of decline. True, they scored for fun last year, banging in an unprecedented 103 League goals (eight in one game against Wigan, and seven against Villa, Sunderland and Stoke), but beyond the starting XI, Chelsea’s squad depth is not all that it might be. John Obi Mikel gives the ball away far too often; they may miss Joe Cole and Michael Ballack badly; Ashley Cole might not be the happiest camper with the tabloids pursuing a permanent vendetta against him; and the World Cup appeared to indicate that JT may not be completely over the Vanessa-gate episode either. (Tiger Woods has recently demonstrated just how completely the show can fall apart when a great sportsman begins to twig that he has become an object of universal public ridicule). In other words, I don’t see Chelsea hanging onto the crown.
If the big two are dragged closer to the pack, Arsenal (a comfortable third last season) initially seem the likeliest candidates to supplant them. They are incredibly easy on the eye, and when they hit their stride, you could watch them all day. But it’s been five years since they finished in the top two, and there is no compelling evidence that they’re any stronger this time out. New arrival Chamakh averaged roughly a goal every three games in the less testing environs of the French league, which suggests he’s unlikely to set the scoreboard alight. The stylish Eduardo has gone. Van Persie is back, but his World Cup form was awful. Arsenal will again devour the Wigans and West Broms, often in corruscating style, but their weaknesses remain. Almunia in goal? A back four of Clichy, Vermaelen, Sagna and (probably) Laurent Koscielny? The romantics can forget it. Arsenal may do well to stay in the Champions League places.
So, what outlandish scenario has Craig the Psychotic Octopus envisioned? How about this: a major, seismic changing of the guard, with a complete revamp of the top three places. Man City and Liverpool will improve considerably on last season’s points tallies (67 and 63), while Spurs (fourth last year) may not have finished improving either. All three must be considered live title contenders.
Spurs had the look last year of a team who were truly enjoying their football. Harry Redknapp may not be the greatest X’s and O’s tactician in the world, but the players clearly adore him. Confidence is through the roof. Jermain Defoe is scoring for fun. Most strikingly of all, Spurs’ squad depth now compares favourably with the established top guns. They can field two first-rate starting line-ups, which suggests that the Champions League campaign may not be a prohibitive impediment to domestic success. For 20 years now, the mere words ‘Tottenham Hotspur’ have been a black joke: no longer.
I could (and someday probably will) write a book about the unimaginable humiliations and degradations involved in following Manchester City’s fortunes since the 1981 FA Cup Final (the first football match I remember in any detail). United’s stranglehold on world supremacy didn’t exactly help, nor did the fact that you suddenly looked around in 1993 and noticed that 90% of the Irish population had become lifelong United fans overnight. These same creatures are now moaning about City’s spending power, enviously eyeing the Sheikhs’ largesse while darkly muttering about the poverty inflicted upon them by the Glazer regime. To these pathetic bleatings, one can only answer: get a fucking grip and listen to yourselves.
With apologies to the minority of genuine United fans who are prepared to engage with the new realities as stoically as the Citizens who kept turning up for battles against Bury and Stockport, we must try to analyse City’s prospects on the pitch this season dispassionately. They are more difficult to assess than any other team, because of the sheer amount of new blood involved. What we know for certain is that David Silva and Yaya Toure would compete for a place in any line-up in world football, that Jerome Boateng is a colossal impovement on Joleon Lescott, that Aleksandr Kolarov has possibly the most ferocious strike witnessed anywhere since Ronald Koeman’s heyday, and that Carlos Tevez will score goals against anyone.
The jury is still out on Roberto Mancini’s managerial abilities. His air of self-regard doesn’t endear him to everyone, nor does his tendency to favour conservative safety-first football with a distinctly Italian flavour. But the man has won three Serie A titles, hardly the work of a cretin. I might have liked to see a shade more attacking adventure from time to time, but I don’t doubt that the man knows exactly what he’s doing and has a clear-eyed vision of where he wants City to go. I won’t be stunned if it all clicks into place this year. And of course, when the January transfer window comes around, there’s presumably a wad of cash there with which to blow everyone else out of the water.
Have I forgotten anyone? Well, there is the small matter of the Liverpool challenge. They finished an appalling seventh last year, two points above Everton, and a full 23 behind Chelsea. The doomsday scenario contends that Pool may have to get used to a lot of seventh-place finishes from here on in, with the Yank owners dragging the club down the tubes. This hypothesis isn’t instantly contradicted by a look at the club’s recent purchases: Danny Wilson (£2million from Rangers) and Jonjo Shelvey (£1.7m from Charlton). Joe Cole and the mysterious Serb Milan Jovanovic have also come on board: I haven’t seen enough of Jovanovic to form an opinion, but Cole surely deserves his day in the sun, having been treated abominably by a sequence of Chelsea managers.
There is one key area in which Liverpool have ‘traded up’ this season more than any of their rivals: the dugout. Football can be fickle, and it may be premature to hail Roy Hodgson as a Messiah. But there are powerful grounds for believing that the unassuming Londoner represents a gigantic improvement on Rafa Benitez, who started his Anfield career with an unforgettable Champions League triumph before losing the plot completely.
Hodgson has been a winner everywhere he’s gone, one unfortunate stint at Blackburn Rovers aside. He has a professor’s eye for detail. So did Rafa, but he allowed it to become a hindrance rather than a help, with an obsessive-compulsive insistence on excessive squad rotation, a propensity to make baffling substitutions at inopportune moments, and a pernickity cold-fish personality which one suspects didn’t endear him to the dressing room. I’m not attacking Rafa here or dismissing what he achieved, but it clearly was time for a fresh approach.
Hodgson transformed Fulham from relegation dead-certs into a European force (watch them fall apart this season) and Liverpool fans can now approach the season in the knowledge that they have a manager who won’t ‘rest’ his best players at daft moments or yank off Torres or Gerrard in the last 20 minutes of a must-win game. Hodgson seems to have talked both of them into staying: at their best, both are incalculably valuable to the team. Mascherano may go, but if Christian Poulsen replaces him, he won’t be missed. Alberto Aquilani, to use the cliché, will be like having a new player. David Ngog is young and hungry. Pep Reina is the best goalkeeper in England.
With Torres fit and firing on all cylinders, Gerrard no longer tearing his hear out in frustration at dodgy decisions from above, a back four likely to benefit from Hodgson’s renowned organisational expertise, the atmosphere around Anfield transformed, and the strong probability that most of their rivals will be making backward progress, I don’t think it’s insane to speculate that Liverpool might do the unthinkable for the first time since 1990.
For those of you who fancy living the rest of your lives on a Pacific island courtesy of Foul Play’s clairvoyant genius, a Liverpool/Man City/Spurs 1-2-3 tricast pays at least 500/1, but you should be able to negotiate a four-figure price if you ring your bookie and do your best to sound completely insane and borderline retarded as opposed to shrewd and prescient.
At the other end of the table, Blackpool’s line-up initially screams ‘instant relegation’ but so fearlessly positive was their football en route to promotion (their 3-2 play-off final victory over Cardiff was the best game I’ve seen all year), so sky-high is the morale, and so unwelcoming is their Bloomfield Road patch, that I’ll take them to emulate the Hull of two years ago and surprise enough teams early on to rack up a valuable store of points to see them through the harsh winter.
While Bolton or Blackburn could easily sink, I’ll nominate Wigan, West Brom and Fulham for the bullet. Wigan shipped some dreadful beatings last year (9-1 against Spurs and 8-0 against Chelsea) and seem to be trying to play just a little too much free-flowing football. I fear it will cost them.
The same applies to Di Matteo’s West Brom, who came up playing enterprising passing football and may well go straight back down doing exactly the same thing. I would also have grave fears for Fulham now that Hodgson has been replaced by Mark Hughes, who showed no signs whatsoever of being able to organise a defence effectively at Man City, and inherits a squad which was punching miles above its weight under Hodgson.
We shall see. It all commences with Spurs against City on Saturday lunchtime, a thoroughly mouth-watering prospect. Stack the fridge with beers, break out the peace-pipe, switch the phone off and tell your girlfriends they’ll see you next May. As Jimbo once said, the ceremony is about to begin.