The season is underway with the opening game on Friday night being won late on by Manchester United 1-0 against Fulham at home. Today newly promoted Ipswich Town play their first game back in the Premier League in more than twenty years. They host Liverpool in the first post-Jurgen Klopp era match. Tomorrow has Chelsea with their latest new manager under Todd Boehly and another batch of new signings coming through the door playing the four times in a row defending champions Manchester City. Chelsea’s manager incidentally was Pep’s former assistant. And my team Tottenham Hotspur begin our season on Monday night against Leicester City. I am excited with our new signings and seeing the progress that can be made with a very young squad.
At this point I think it will be five in a row for City but they haven’t been that busy in the transfer window for once so if they slip up early in the season which never happens under Pep it will be interesting to see who takes advantage. The standards they set have meant even the second placed teams have to play near-faultless seasons and they still fall short. I think it will be his last season in England too.
I think it will be very tight at the top.
(I give below the current bookies odds for each club winning.)
Manchester City (13/8) are used to winning under Guardiola (a world-class manager.)
Arsenal (37/20) came close last season and their manager Arteta sounds confident.
Liverpool (7/1) have to cope with Klopp retiring, but they have consistency.
Manchester United (22/1) have had good results recently.
Chelsea (25/1) continue to spend enormous amounts of money (meaning trouble meeting Financial Fair Play?!)
Tottenham Hotspur (28/1) are gradually completing Big Ange’s transfer plans - and have great chants: Robbie Williams sings new version of hit song ‘Angels’ - about Spurs coach Ange Postecoglou (youtube.com)
My Dad took me to watch Spurs in the 1960/61 season, when we did the double.
Trophies have been scarce since then - but I live in hope.
Of course I’m a Big Ange fan - watching full-backs like Porro play up the pitch and score goals is wonderful.
Did City replace Julian Alvarez? If not, depth at striker is a potential issue especially since they’ll probably play 60+ games.
A theoretical issue that’s mostly ameliorated by playing with like 6 different players that can all score a lot, but if you’re looking for weaknesses, maybe?
Spreading the goals around multiple attacking players is what I think they will do rather than replace Alvarez. They won a league title before Haaland joined where they didn’t really use a proper number 9 anyway because Aguero was injured. One thing that could hurt them is their core group of players who have been together for years are getting towards 30 if not already on the other side of 30. That’s why I believe Pep will leave at the end of the season as they will need to rebuild sooner or later but we don’t know what punishment if any they could face that will impact the future transfers.
You probably age out Walker, Stones, Akanji, Kovacic, KDB, and Bernardo SIlva is the next ~5 years. Rodri, Grealish, and Ederson would be getting at the end of their useful life too. They have a pretty decent core to build around though: Gvardiol, Doku, Foden, and Haaland are all < 25. Age doesn’t strike me as as a super pressing issue.
Looking at their roster 5 years ago and they’ve moved on from Otamendi, Mahrez, Aguero, Sane, Sterling, Fernandinho, Gundogan, and David Silva. They’ll be fine.
Guardiola has been there a while and finally got the UCL with them, so I wouldn’t be surprised if moves on or teaks a break like Klopp.
Anyone notice in the City-Arse game today…after the last second goal, Haaland corraled the ball out of the net and bounced it off an Arsenal players head?? I didnt see the announcers say anything nor did he get a card.
Someone I follow on Twitter talks a lot about people having “wide receiver energy” which is basically arrogance combined with being a weirdo. I think a lot of strikers have that too. I could see Luis Suarez doing the exact same thing pretty easily.
Brentford have mastered strong starts. Today they scored after just 34 seconds but this was almost twice as long at it took in their previous two games (22 seconds and 23 seconds)
To give you an idea how unlikely that is,
Last week Brentford become only the second team in EPL history to score in the first minute in consecutive matches (after Man City in 2019) now they have made it 3 in a row.
Only once before have a EPL team scored a 1st minute goes in 3 matches in a season (after Everton in 1998/9)
My team Spurs put in the best performance I’ve seen in years on Sunday winning away at Man Utd 3-0. Complete dominance from start to finish and makes me really pumped up now. Ange’s style of play has always looked easy on the eye attacking but I didn’t think we could sustain any meaningful trophy push unless he compromised a bit because we concede way too many goals. But his response to questions about not having a Plan B was to keep making Plan A better and now I can see what he means.
Although I’ve been a Spurs fan since 1960 , think Big Ange is just what we need and agree that we were great on Sunday (go Micky! ), Man Utd were really poor.
I think the picture will become clearer after our next tow away matches (Ferencváros and Brighton.)
1960, wow that’s loyalty there! I hope Ange gets to be your second wave of the Bill Nicholson era and for me the first as all I know about his title winning team has been in clips and books. I liked Poch a lot but it never got over the line. Ange is the one I think has the right attitude unlike the last few managers in playing entertaining football and we have one of the youngest squads in Europe.
I agree that the picture will come clearer after the next two away games. Especially Brighton as they put four goals past us in the fixture last season. I hope now we have laid the marker down that this is the standard to go both in the attacking play but also defensively. I feel if we can just tighten up defensively then we can steamroll a lot of teams.
I was only 7 in 1960, but still have some memories.
White Hart Lane was mainly standing and much smaller than today.
Our midfield was Blanchflower, Norman and Mackay (class + toughness!)
Bobby Smith was centre-forward (in those days if the opposing goalkeeper caught the ball, you could shoulder charge him into the net. )
I think we won a lot of games at the start of the season (at least 10.)
Pochettino was a jolly good manager - after we reached the Champions League Final, the board should have backed him with loads of transfer money. Opportunity missed.
Spurs definitely look better, but they still have an issue against teams that are actually organized and can defend.
This Manchester United is the exact opposite of that. I’m not sure I’ve seen a less impactful defensive midfield. I’m reasonably sure there isn’t another team in the EPL that would let van de Ven run from well inside his own half all the way to the goal line to cross for a tap-in. It was laughable. I get that he’s fast but you just have to pull him down if it comes to that.
Then United went down to 10-men (unfairly, the league later admitted) and it was all over.
This is an exageration teams like Southamption and Wolves would love to have a defensive midfield as impactful as Man Utd.
This type of talk comes from many Man Utd fans that feel it is their right to win the title on a regular basis. I remember one fan just after Liverpool won the title in 2019 that United would never go 30 years without a title, forgetting they went 40 years between 1911 and 1951 and the gap between the Buzby and Fergusan eras wasn’t much less at 25 years.
Fun fact only 3 managers have led Man United to a league title (and on of those was before world war 1)
, think Big Ange is just what we need 