"Best league in the world"
Now we have another international break, it seems like a good time to assess the general state of the Premier League, Premiership, EPL or whatever you want to call it.
Chelsea and Liverpool currently lead the way. I still have something of an aversion to watching both of these teams, especially the former given their ruthlessly efficient, football-is-for-winning-rather-than-entertaining philosophy under Jose. And under Avram, who didn’t really change anything. Scolari on the other hand does appear to want to actually play a bit of football, with full backs running past the halfway line and everything, so I may have to give them a go again.
The BestClubInTheLand (TM) appear to have bucked their ideas up somewhat after my furious rant at them - having beaten Everton and both Manchester clubs on their own patches using varying degrees of skill and luck, they may just be actual title contenders. Torres is back on last season’s form and Robbie Keane is too good a player not to settle in there eventually.
They don’t, of course, have as much money as Chelsea or indeed Man U, who are currently a little off the pace thanks to the pointless European Super Cup and the aforementioned pointless Liverpool fixture. Their main problem appears to be having too many good forwards, which is rather like someone complaining about getting too much sex. We should all be so fucking lucky.
Rather improbably, Hull sit in third place, having taken advantage of both North London sides’ various weaknesses (although to be honest, one of those sides seems to have no actual strengths). Phil Brown is being lauded as the new Big Sam, but if he’s such a good manager how come he did so rubbish with Derby? Let’s see how the season pans out before we start praising him too much. Tigers fans should be worried too, as generally the better you do in your first post-promotion season the more spectacular your fall will be next year - hello Reading!
Things not having settled down yet is the only possible explanation for West Ham sitting in 6th, although the weekend’s loss to Bolton, a manager who seems to have been hired on the strength of being a nice chap and the Icelandic economy’s total meltdown all show the way they’re likely headed.
I do love Arsene Wenger’s bloody-mindedness, but as my (admittedly Spurs-loving) brother points out - why is Arsenal’s average age not steadily increasing? For some reason, Wenger seems to have a real problem in persuading players to stay put in the way that, say, Fergie doesn’t, which is bizarre given the quality of the football they play. It doesn’t matter how many exciting Congolese 12 year-olds you discover if you have to end up playing them right away because your senior players have buggered off somewhere nicer.
Villa, Portsmouth and Man City are the most likely candidates to leapfrog the Arse into a Champions League place next season. City will be fascinating to watch, because even with all that money they may have simply left it too late to catch up with the big guns. The best players are still likely to go to established Champs League clubs, except for perhaps the odd romantic/adventurous type and mercenaries like Robinho, who may well not like it up them, whatever “it” is.
Villa have spent an awful lot of money and appear to be running to stand still. All credit to Martin O’Neill for predominantly buying English, but it’s not the most cost-effective way to negotiate the transfer market. Pompey should be in Europe again or thereabouts but are having problems with their creaky-looking defence, and Younes Kaboul is possibly not the answer seeing how he was deemed not good enough to play in Tottenham’s defence. Let’s just pause to take that in for a moment. More crap to follow...
Chelsea and Liverpool currently lead the way. I still have something of an aversion to watching both of these teams, especially the former given their ruthlessly efficient, football-is-for-winning-rather-than-entertaining philosophy under Jose. And under Avram, who didn’t really change anything. Scolari on the other hand does appear to want to actually play a bit of football, with full backs running past the halfway line and everything, so I may have to give them a go again.
The BestClubInTheLand (TM) appear to have bucked their ideas up somewhat after my furious rant at them - having beaten Everton and both Manchester clubs on their own patches using varying degrees of skill and luck, they may just be actual title contenders. Torres is back on last season’s form and Robbie Keane is too good a player not to settle in there eventually.
They don’t, of course, have as much money as Chelsea or indeed Man U, who are currently a little off the pace thanks to the pointless European Super Cup and the aforementioned pointless Liverpool fixture. Their main problem appears to be having too many good forwards, which is rather like someone complaining about getting too much sex. We should all be so fucking lucky.
Rather improbably, Hull sit in third place, having taken advantage of both North London sides’ various weaknesses (although to be honest, one of those sides seems to have no actual strengths). Phil Brown is being lauded as the new Big Sam, but if he’s such a good manager how come he did so rubbish with Derby? Let’s see how the season pans out before we start praising him too much. Tigers fans should be worried too, as generally the better you do in your first post-promotion season the more spectacular your fall will be next year - hello Reading!
Things not having settled down yet is the only possible explanation for West Ham sitting in 6th, although the weekend’s loss to Bolton, a manager who seems to have been hired on the strength of being a nice chap and the Icelandic economy’s total meltdown all show the way they’re likely headed.
I do love Arsene Wenger’s bloody-mindedness, but as my (admittedly Spurs-loving) brother points out - why is Arsenal’s average age not steadily increasing? For some reason, Wenger seems to have a real problem in persuading players to stay put in the way that, say, Fergie doesn’t, which is bizarre given the quality of the football they play. It doesn’t matter how many exciting Congolese 12 year-olds you discover if you have to end up playing them right away because your senior players have buggered off somewhere nicer.
Villa, Portsmouth and Man City are the most likely candidates to leapfrog the Arse into a Champions League place next season. City will be fascinating to watch, because even with all that money they may have simply left it too late to catch up with the big guns. The best players are still likely to go to established Champs League clubs, except for perhaps the odd romantic/adventurous type and mercenaries like Robinho, who may well not like it up them, whatever “it” is.
Villa have spent an awful lot of money and appear to be running to stand still. All credit to Martin O’Neill for predominantly buying English, but it’s not the most cost-effective way to negotiate the transfer market. Pompey should be in Europe again or thereabouts but are having problems with their creaky-looking defence, and Younes Kaboul is possibly not the answer seeing how he was deemed not good enough to play in Tottenham’s defence. Let’s just pause to take that in for a moment. More crap to follow...
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