The league's ahead

At last, normal life can resume. In fact, it already has, the season sparking spectacularly into life last weekend with a pulsating Community Shield.

For the last quarter-century, the Shield has been something of a must-miss event, a tiresome irrelevance of no consequence whatsoever to the serious battles ahead, a meaningless waste of everybody’s time. Yet you couldn’t escape the sense that last weekend, it was very meaningful indeed, as the two Manchester heavyweights traded blows in an absolutely gripping contest that would have done justice to any Cup Final. In terms of psychological warfare, it could hardly have been more significant: United overhauling a 2-0 lead to nick it 3-2 with a winner in injury time is so typical of the relationship between United and City down the years as to be beyond cliché.

Roberto Mancini can console himself with the thought that no points were at stake, and that for much of the first half, City looked like champions-in-waiting. Not for the first time, he took the handsome half-time lead as his cue to retreat into a shell of classically Italian negativity, yanking off Balotelli for Gareth Barry, generally ceding the initiative, and essentially inviting United to burn the house down. The outcome was all too predictable, with United’s Rasputin-like qualities rising to the surface as the match’s momentum turned on its head. Fergie’s delirious reaction to the winner told you everything you needed to know about whether the outcome mattered.
Of course, from Saturday onwards, all parties will start with a clean slate. United lifted the title almost by default last season, with a relatively modest tally of 80 points proving more than enough to comfortably ease home. Chelsea were stricken by a catastrophic mid-season run which saw them haemorrhage points at a shocking rate, City frittered away too many points through lack of adventure, Arsenal choked horribly when the pressure mounted, Spurs seemed too distracted by their maiden Champions League adventure, and Liverpool didn’t get started until January. This season, there are solid grounds for thinking that all six of the aforementioned have squads theoretically capable of winning the title. The general trend of the last two or three years has been towards a more even and competitive contest at the top, a hugely welcome development after the dog days of the mid-Noughties when the then-’Big Four’ usually raced 50 points clear of the rest by October. The League is still disfigured by a huge imbalance in terms of financial resources, which means you can get a damning 400/1 on anyone outside that top sextet defying gravity and finishing top of the pile, but it’s still a far more attractive and intriguing landscape than was the case a few years ago.

No-one in their right mind would question United’s status as favourites, the biggest imponderable being whether 20-year-old David De Gea is quite ready to step into the shoes vacated by Edwin van der Sar, who was twice his age. Clearly, at £18 million, the Spaniard is a long-term investment, but the here and now always takes precedence, and there were hints at the weekend that he may be in for a turbulent baptism of fire over the coming months (he might have done better for City’s first goal and was visibly at fault for the second). The last time United had to replace a great goalkeeper (the immortal Schmeichel) it took them years to fully get over it, as the likes of Massimo Taibi, Mark Bosnich, Roy Carroll and Tim Howard singularly failed to look the part, and it wasn’t until the unflappable Dutchman took over the gloves that they started winning trophies again on a regular basis.
For all the heroics of Rooney, Ronaldo, Scholes etc., the fact remains that van der Sar was the single most important contributor to United’s achievements over the last few years, and won’t be easily replaced. Regular De Gea-watchers from his time at Atletico Madrid are unanimously agreed that for all his agility, he is vulnerable to shots from long range, and United simply can’t afford the luxury of letting him learn on the job in a position where experience counts for more than anything. None of this is to dismiss the possibility that De Gea may turn out to be the greatest keeper who ever lived, but for the moment he remains a largely unknown quantity, and consequently United enter the season with a biggish question-mark hovering over the most important position on the pitch, in stark contrast to the situation at City and Chelsea where both Joe Hart and Petr Cech can be considered safe as houses.

Other than that, there doesn’t appear to be a whole lot wrong with United. Midfield has been a relative problem area for the last couple of years, and (like everyone else) they could use a top-drawer reinforcement, but a quartet of (let’s say) Nani, Anderson, Cleverley and Ashley Young doesn’t look too shabby. They are excellently equipped in defence with eight quality operators all worthy of a starting berth, and up front, Rooney and Hernandez will put countless opponents to the sword. They may still be playing catch-up to Barcelona on the European stage, but it seems reasonable to conclude that overall they are in at least as healthy a state as they were last season.
That being the case, significant improvement will be needed from the others in order to catch up. Chelsea haven’t recruited much this summer (Thibaud Courtois and Oriol Romeu are not exactly marquee names) and their key operators have plenty of mileage on the clock. A vastly more productive Fernando Torres could certainly catapult them to a lengthy winning streak, especially if he remembers how to score 20-25 goals a season. But even that might not be enough to nose out the competition from the two Mancunian dreadnoughts. A drop in performance levels from any of Terry, Essien, Lampard, Anelka or Drogba could be costly, with the squad looking a little short of cover in most areas, and though new boss Andres Villas-Boas shouldn’t experience any great difficulty fitting in (he was an integral part of Jose Mourinho’s staff and has worked with many of these players before) there has to be a suspicion that this is a team in transition.

So, what of City? Notwithstanding last weekend’s setback, they have demonstrated beyond dispute that they now know how to beat the big teams, United included, in one-off matches. The worry would be that trips to Bolton and Fulham are still fraught with stalemate potential if Mancini persists with his policy of treating ‘lesser’ sides with exaggerated respect, deploying too many holding midfielders, and generally winding the footballing clock back to 1990. Team spirit may also be an imponderable, with the squad now verging on the point of being too large for its own good.
But the positives are many and persuasive: Joe Hart may already be the league’s best goalkeeper, there are now twenty-odd players of A-list quality battling it out for the other ten starting places, and a few of their second-season performers — David Silva and Yaya Toure in particular — may be set for a massive improvement after a year of finding their feet. It may be unwise to count on Carlos Tevez replicating last year’s displays in view of his recent antics, but if one (or preferably, two or three) of Balotelli, Dzeko or Aguero can hit their stride, the attack should be less one-dimensional and predictable than it was last year. City will improve on last season’s 71-point haul: the question is by how much. Developing a mentality that they can beat United would be the biggest leap forward of all: last season, they took one point from the two Manchester derbies, and looked far too keen to settle for a draw on their own patch. A less deferential approach is required. The FA Cup semi-final of last year should serve as a template, though I remain unconvinced whether it was against United’s best line-up.

And the others? Arsenal are no further advanced than they were five years ago. More weeks than not, they will play devastatingly beautiful football that leaves opponents chasing shadows and observers purring. But the negatives are, by now, so obvious, glaring and persistent that it has become tiresome to list them: second-rate goalkeepers, dodgy centre-backs, a terminal reluctance on Arsene Wenger’s part to open the wallet, and an appalling record when they engage other title contenders in direct combat, especially United. They won’t win the title, and may do well to stay in the Champions League spots.
Optimism appears very plentiful in Liverpool for a side which finished sixth last year and lost 14 League games; the optimism is, of course, mainly due to the immediate improvement effected when Kenny Dalglish took the reins in the New Year. Under Houllier, Benitez and Hodgson, a bewilderingly vast number of players arrived, a lot of them frighteningly mediocre: while some of them are still there, the sense is that Liverpool are now starting to resemble a team again rather than a randomly-selected collage of moderately talented individuals. Whether Dalglish’s purchases to date represent value for money is open to question, but with Stewart Downing whipping in crosses for Carroll/Suarez/Kuyt (take your pick) they look like being a more trustworthy crew this time around. However, the next step (title contention) is unlikely to happen this year. They still look vulnerable at centre-back, still a little too reliant on Steven Gerrard’s fitness and will still probably run into trouble against the biggest teams while slipping up occasionally against the others.

Spurs, a shade disappointing last season, at least will have the opportunity to focus on their domestic challenge this time out without Champions League distraction. They’re a hugely watchable outfit with a pleasing sense of freedom about their play, the best pure penalty-box predator in the League (Jermain Defoe) and a playmaker in Luka Modric whom you could watch all day. Then there’s Gareth Bale, whose best displays last year on the Euro stage re-defined the perfect modern full-back. The suspicion remains that Heurelho Gomes is not a keeper whom you would entrust with your life’s savings if they led 1-0 in injury time, but the team has a helluva lot going for it, and could well enter the title reckoning if they get on a roll and any of the big guns are misfiring. Third place, anyone?

Look for a straight shootout between City and United for the title, probably going down to the final couple of weeks. The heart, obviously, says City. But the events of last weekend just reinforce the conviction that, yet again, Ferguson’s old black magic is still working its spell. Through gritted teeth, Foul Play hereby curses the Red Devils in the best way he knows how, by tipping them for the title, a massive pre-season blow which has surely ruined their hopes beyond repair.

Here goes. Strap yourselves in for the ride, and enjoy every minute.