First Impressions

Forget about what’s going on over in Beijing, the Premier League is back, and better than ever.

The Big Four:

Chelsea
Only one game down, but Chelsea’s demolition of Pompey on Sunday afternoon has made it hard for us not to get carried away. Match of the Day 2’s commentator struggled to find any word other than “magnificent” after 45 minutes, as Luis Felipe Scolari demonstrated his intentions to go on from 1 or 2-0 unlike his predecessors. Scolari looks like sticking to the tried and tested attacking methods which brought him international success. Allaying fears about a lack of width in midfield by encouraging the full-backs to move forward at every opportunity (new signing Jose Bosingwa is certainly better going forwards than backwards), Scolari can pick all of his midfield superstars. Essien, Lampard, Ballack and Deco make up the world’s strongest midfield on paper, but Chelsea must avoid falling into Barcelona’s trap – too many brilliant attacking midfielders, not enough directness. Drogba’s physicality will help prevent that, but more important still is Joe Cole. Deco is one of the best passers in world football, unparalleled when it comes to dictating the tempo of a game. But he needs somebody to pass to, and should not be played just off the striker, but deeper, with Cole moving in front of him. But Scolari knows that by now. If they get a bit of luck with injuries for the first time in a while, Chelsea should romp to the title as they did in Jose Mourinho record-breaking first two seasons. Deco may even be the man to make Chelsea loved again, although I wouldn’t hold your breath on that one!

Man Utd
John Terry got it spot on last week when he said “I don’t think United have another level to go to.” Ronaldo, Rio and co. had the season of their lives last time round and still only beat a Chelsea side missing the spine of their team for large chunks of the season, losing others to the African Nations Cup and suffering from the turmoil of Jose Mourinho’s departure, on the last day of the season and on penalties in the Champions League final. After drawing at home to Newcastle, United now face successive away trips to Pompey, Liverpool and Chelsea without the services of their prized Portuguese. More worrying than a lack of creativity however, was their defensive frailty on Sunday. Missing none of their usual defenders, they left Obafemi Martins totally unmarked to score from one corner, and he should have had another. Equally disturbing was first team coach Mike Phelan’s admission, questioned on whether the Old Trafford side expected to secure a big-name signing in the coming weeks: “I hope so, that’s what we’re about.” Ironically I’ve only noticed now a great young prospect has turned up in the shape of Frazer Campbell: the huge dearth of talent that has come out of United’s famous academy in the last 10 years.

Arsenal
So, another season of transition for Wenger’s boys? Yes, it looks that way. Nasri’s not the next Zidane, but he is very good and is a straight swap for the departed Hleb, whilst Diaby will step up to replace Flamini. You’d be a fool to doubt Arsene Wenger’s faith in his youngsters and at the moment, considering the lack of funds at the Emirates, another third place finish should be viewed as a fair effort.

Liverpool
Every pre-season Liverpool make big noises about how this is finally their year to win, or at least challenge for, the title, and then disappear without a whimper by mid-October. But this year, I think they might just put up a fight, and not because they played well to beat Sunderland 1-0 on Saturday. Of the 24 Premier League goals Fernando Torres scored last season, only 3 were away from Anfield – for all the talk of ‘best debut season by a foreign player in England’, a return that simply wasn’t good enough for a striker whose role is not as a creator or a link man but a straight-up goal-scorer. Just like you can’t win the league before Christmas, you also can’t win it at home; it’s the away victories at places like Ewood Park and The Stadium of Light that really count, and on Saturday evening Liverpool, largely outplayed, got one of these through an 83rd minute Torres strike. The side’s been strengthened by the capture of Robbie Keane, overpriced but proven at domestic level, but would have been improved still had the Gareth Barry transfer farce not ended with him staying at Villa. (Why are Liverpool, and for that matter Manchester United, incapable of conducting their transfer dealings behind closed doors, rather than conducting negotiations through the back pages of The Sun all summer?) His place in midfield will be filled by Xabi Alonso, who, for all his qualities, will be a luxury and not a necessity. Given the mega-bucks he has spent (over £60million on Torres, Mascherano and Keane alone in just over a year), Rafa Benitez must know that anything other than the title would be another failure, and surely his sacking. Either that or the Barry saga was all part of Benitez’s mind games with Martin O’Neill as the battle for 4th place hots up!

The best of the rest:

Aston Villa
All Barry needs to do, and vitally for Villa’s success, is take a leaf out of Steven Gerrard’s book. Seemingly a toned-down version of Sepp Blatter and Cristiano Ronaldo’s drivel about modern footballers being slaves, Gerrard angled after a move to Chelsea in 2004 to fulfil his desire “to win trophies”, as Barry has done to “play in the Champions League”, before the transfer fell through and he managed to slot back in as Mr Liverpool. All Barry needs to do now is produce a couple more performances like this week, when he set up Agbonlahor’s second and third in an all-action display, kiss the club badge whenever possible and in a couple of months all will be forgotten. As displayed by the 4-2 defeat of Manchester City, O’Neill will play attacking football reliant upon his two young pacemen, Gabriel Agbonlahor and Ashley Young. Surely Agbonlahor is the long-term partner for Wayne Rooney in the England side. Only 21, as proved on Sunday a natural finisher, managed buy the best man you could pick to keep a youngster grounded, and, most importantly, with pace to burn. (Capello’s made some strange decisions this week, notably Heskey’s inclusion, but at least he’s got the big one right, in giving the long-term captaincy to the outstanding natural leader in the England ranks, John Terry).

Spurs
I was almost quivering with excitement on seeing Spurs’ line-up on Saturday afternoon, the midfield of Lennon, Jenas, Modric and Bentley in particular. But once again, after talking the talk before the big kick-off, they came up way short, the midfield looking spectacularly unbalanced. For all of his Spanish pedigree, Juande Ramos’ recent decisions, both in transfer policy and team selection, have been bizarre. Why buy Bentley when you’ve already got Lennon? Why offload Defoe and Robbie Keane when you know Berbatov’s unlikely to be sticking around for long? Why pick the hapless Assou-Ekotto at left-back, and stick Didier Zokora at right-back? He seems to have made a rookie error in signing an abundance of attacking midfielders, with nobody in the holding role and a shortage of strikers. He’ll need to sort it out by the end of the transfer deadline if Spurs are to finish in the top 8.

Pompey
Despite Pompey’s less-than-spectacular first game, they’ll be scrapping for a EUFA Cup spot again this season, Harry having taken them from 18th to 8th in three seasons. They’ve brought in top quality in the shape of Sylvain Distin, Lassana Diarra, Jermain Defoe and Peter Crouch in the last year, and Fratton Park will always be a tough place to get points.

Newcastle
When Kevin Keegan made his glorious return to St James’ Park in January, everyone who expected an instant return to the adventurous football which made Newcastle everyone’s second favourite team in the mid-90s was sadly disappointed. Unfortunately average players don’t play great football. But he’s now brought in some South American flair (remember Tino Asprilla?) in the shape of Argentinians Fabricio Coloccini (who’s trying to win his manager’s affections by replicating the boss’ 1970s hairstyle) and Jonas Gutierrez. I remember Dennis Wise continually saying how the English boys at Chelsea stepped up their technical game enormously just from playing with talented foreign imports every day in training, and this will surely happen at Newcastle too. An exciting, and reasonably successful, season to come for the Geordies.

Relegation:

When it comes down to staying up, it seems to me that it is often just one or two match winners, or unfortunately more often at the bottom of the league match losers, who settle things. Think Carlos Tevez saving West Ham single-handedly or Roy Hodgson doing the same for Fulham from the dugout last year. I reckon then, that all you need to survive is a decent goalkeeper, a dependable goal-getter and a joker card. Sunderland will be fine because they’ve got Craig Gordon, El Hadji Diouf and their inspirational manager Roy Keane. Fulham likewise thanks to Schwarzer, proven finisher Andy Johnson and the fantastic Jimmy Bullard. Bolton will be well clear of trouble this season with Jaaskelainen between the sticks, EUFA Cup-quality Johan Elmander up front, and, most importantly, their joker Kevin Davies – the long ball game, based around the robust target-man, is not pretty, but very difficult to play against. More daringly, Hull will escape the drop with the highly-rated Boaz Myhill in goal and Brazilian striker Geovanni ‘doing a Tevez’ as both goal scorer and joker. So that leaves Stoke, West Brom and Wigan in the relegation spots. Simple!

Some more predictions:

The new “get on with the game” scheme to actually get somewhere with stamping out both disrespect for referees and diving. Putting the onus on the captains to sort it out is the best long-term solution, but only if, like in Rugby Union, the captains themselves begin to be punished, and so discipline originates within.

Match of the Day 2 to continue to out-entertain its big sister, mainly due to Lee Dixon actually providing some insight, as Alan Shearer regularly fails to do on a Saturday night. Dixon even brought out the best in Alan Hansen this week: “Newcastle, the last 4 or 5 years, they’ve had some mingers.”

Chelsea to win the title having been top from start to finish… Oh no, that’ll already be ruined this weekend when The Blues have to wait for another 1.30 on Sunday kick-off, as TV continues to run the show.