As I eagerly await next weekend’s start of the 2014-15 Premier League season and Arsenal’s specific brand of superb football, I would like to duly note that today Arsenal (the 2014 FA Cup winner) defeated Manchester City (last season’s Premier League trophy winners) 3-0 at Wembley Stadium to win the FA Community Shield*.
More trophies for the Gunners! More to come!
Some “humble” predictions: Manchester United will continue to be frustrated and mediocre. Manchester City will tumble off their perch. Liverpool will find a way forward without Suárez the Biter, good for them. Chelsea will play terrible anti-football. St Totteringham’s Day will come earlier this season than last.
This seems like an interesting assertion - on what do you base it? He’s 27, he should be in his prime, and if he didn’t look brilliant last season, that could just be because Barcelona were coming down from their highs of previous seasons and the team were performing less well. Whenever I saw him play, I thought he looked alright. I suspect that he’ll do quite well for Chelsea this year.
I think it will be Chelsea v Man City for the title this year. I suspect Man United will rebound under Van Gaal and get back into the CL places without really threatening a title win - they’ve got to do some gelling but I think Van Gaal is pretty sharp and will get them into shape reasonably quickly. As a result, I think one of Liverpool or Arsenal will get squeezed out - probably whoever copes with injuries the best.
Burnley, Leicester and Hull to go down. QPR will be down there too but I fancy them to somehow survive.
The season started in the lower leagues this weekend. My team lost 1-0 at home to Luton Town having been relegated last year. It’s going to be a long season. I can’t believe it’s started again so soon. I guess the World Cup only just finished but it really does feel like it’s too soon for us to be seeing another football season just yet.
I should also qualify this backing of Chelsea to challenge for the title by saying that a lot will depend on how their strikers perform. That was a bit of a weakness for them last year.
Badly I suspect. Torres has been misused by Chelsea except when Benetiz was around. Costa is too much like him, an old fashioned CF. Same with Scevchenko. Chelsea prefer people like Drogba or before him Duff.
But, with Fabregas in midfield old fashioned strikers might hVe a chance.
Man City need to dump Joe Hart.
Not saying he’s useless or incompetent, quite the contrary. But he’a shown little of the previous brilliance in the past few years, for either Barça or Spain, basically since he left Arsenal. Having said that, he’s still very good, but for me the bottom line is that I don’t think his presence is a game-changer for the [del]enemies of football[/del]Chelsea.
My saying “far behind him” is too extreme. The right circumstances could bring the brilliance back, probably. I doubt Chelsea will provide them, but I can see why they wanted him.
Arsenal are deeper this year. You might be surprised; I genuinely believe the Gunners can make a serious challenge this season. After all, we were only 7 points adrift from Manchester City by last season’s end.
What happened when the pressure was on and Arsenal looked like they could contest the title? Arsene wet his little knickers. Then when the pressure was off and they had no shot? Pulls on the daddy pants and starts kicking ass and taking names. That, in a nutshell, is why Arsenal will never win the league again with Wenger in charge - he now wilts under expectation.
Spurs had a peculiar season last year - seemed like a worse circus than usual, 100 million apparently tanned down the karzi, a comedian at the helm, but they still finished on 69 points! Improvement surely to be expected.
I’m really looking forward to getting into EPL for the first time. I’ve never liked [del]soccer[/del] football, but I’m really starting to develop an appreciation for the beauty of the game. I’d like to experience more than just the World Cup… but I have to find a team to root for. Anyone have suggestions on a good beginner’s primer that could help educate a newbie on each team and the history/prospects going forward? Also, for someone in the States, what’s the best way to watch?
Sometimes I forget what’s been said on which board but the best way to pick a team is to let it pick you. PL often televises five of its 10 games on NBCSN on a weekend and it won’t take long at that rate to see 'em all. Some team’s style and panache will surely appeal to you in a couple of weeks.
Personally I think you also need to find a connection. Even if it is along the lines of “great grandfather born in XXX” or something in the club’s history or the first English club you got to see live in the flesh.
But you are correct - let the team find you and then find the justification. The style of a team is not a fixed thing (look at Arsenal - maybe attractive going forward now but they are still in pay back to me for 25 earlier years when they were the dullest side on the planet, “1-0 to the Arsenal” went their song) - historical or geographic connections are permanent.
I support Spurs (Tottenham Hotspurs) for family and geographic reasons but also because there is such a thing as “the Spurs way” - it normal ends in ultimate disappointment but it is glorious disappointment. It was Danny Blancheflower who expressed it best, "“The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It is nothing of the kind. The game is about glory, it is about doing things in style and with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.”
Argh, I hope some other Gooners show up to this thread.
This is not an illuminating analysis.
What happened last year was a streak of horrible luck: a bunch of our best players were injured all at once (Özil, Ramsey, Wilshere, Walcott, Ox), and our lack of depth in the striker position put undue strain on Giroud. The squad is deeper this year; a similar bad luck streak of injuries should have far less effect.
If you can criticize Wenger for anything, it’s not for lack of tactical understanding for the game or some puerile accusation like “wetting his little knickers.” It’s for his reluctance to adapt to the modern rules of player acquisition. That issue seems to have improved greatly.
I chose Arsenal, or as Red Wiggler put it, they chose me, because I observed for weeks on end that they played the most attractive football in all the Premier League, win lose or draw (but overwhelmingly mostly win). I admit I came onboard during the Wenger era, so I feel considerable loyalty to him for all he has done for the club.
But I will say this, I looked into the history of the supposedly boring Arsenal of the 1970s and 80s, and it wasn’t nearly as many 0-0s and 1-0s as people make it sound, no worse than average for soccer from that era. But anyway Arsenal are far better now, without question, with far more style and imagination. And that’s due to Arsène Wenger, who represents a rarity these days: a manager dedicated heart and soul to a single club, for the long haul. One could reasonably argue that Wenger didn’t just revolutionize Arsenal, but that his influence revolutionized all of English football for the better.
There are Gooners who call for Wenger’s head when a streak of poor performance inevitably appears, as it does for all clubs. I’m not one of them.
There has been something wrong at Arsenal in the Wenger era with training or recovery or treatment or a combination of them all - as year-in year-out they suffer key injuries at key times. I saw some analysis better than this but this will do:
For how long can you claim to be unlucky? A great manager would have got to the bottom of it - I suspect Wenger is the cause of it. Old fashioned training methods? Reluctance to rest players that are showing wear? Typical gooner to blame the refs for allowing teams to kick Arsenal to death. Does he really think the hammer-throwers only kick Arsenal? So conclusion probably wrong but the stats are revealing.
On your other point, I’ve been watch footy since 1975 (Spurs v Leeds Utd) and I can assure you that it is not just down to scorelines but style. Arsenal were mind numbingly dull - and their fans were proud of it!
Here’s what I think is a very pragmatic and bite-sized approach to this exact question. The little nuances of the culture you pick up a little bit here and there, same as any other sport, but for a big picture you might as well start there. Also, back when google homepages were a thing, one of the items on my front page was a Yahoo blog called The Dirty Tackle. It’s extremely silly and maybe even childish, and mostly jokes, which I found to be exactly correct given my needs, which were to be kept abreast of major developments in world soccer in a few minutes a day and in an entertaining way.
Anyway, enough neutrality: you want to watch the Chip Kelly offense of the EPL, am I right? That’s what you need. You want to be a Liverpool man.
Tell me if this sounds familiar: a long-running club with a storied history whose last championship was an effing long time ago. An extremely controversial and much maligned player who has recently departed. A famous set of supporters known for speaking their own particular brand of English, singing a super sweet fan song, and being unfairly pilloried in the press. A massive rival who “everyone” “loves.” A famous stadium that’s really hard to play in. Almost, but not quite, winning a championship with a talented offense and a flawed defense.
That’s the backdrop. This season, they hope the handful of new players they’ve brought in with the money they made on Suarez is more than enough of a replacement, and they hope their young talent continues to come into its own, and they keep playing an aggressive, counter-attacking, pressing style. Goals by the bagful.
But one thing that was not inconclusive was it knocked your “unlucky” Arsenal theory into south London. It’s being going on for over a decade - inconclusive as to why but a great manager might have got to the bottom of it, perhaps?
Rubbish. It did no such thing. Excessive opposition tackles and fouls against Arsenal are explicitly a component of the stated conclusion (such as it is). I.e. misfortune.
I don’t accept all of the methodology or the conclusions (such as they are). But, besides, that analysis is not remotely as damning of Wenger as you apparently would like it you be, nor as dismissive of the simple misfortune hypothesis, either. Shit happens. But you seriously think this point hasn’t been considered by Wenger and his staff? Maybe this is the year we get past it, maybe not. I certainly hope we do.
Also, I was talking about a specific season, last season—you know, the one where Arsenal spent more than 100 days on top of the league table—not trying to identify trends spanning about half of Wenger’s tenure at Arsenal. I said it was bad luck last season. But a manager who can get a club to spend 100 days on top of the league can solve the issues that caused the club to fall out of the top.
Of course really there’s no such thing as luck, exactly—everything that happens has a cause—but clearly misfortune had a lot to do with it and anything else is conjecture. Shit happens. Wenger may not be a perfect manager (who is?) but he’s a damn great one. Only haters can’t see that.
I stand by a deeper squad being one solution towards mitigating the problems of injury pileups, which we have this year.
Just so you know, I have zero interest in engaging in a typical pissing match about this with you or anyone else, and won’t be arguing every nitpicking detail.
Mainly I’m here to celebrate the great sport that is the Premier League!