Wait until next year

August 14, 2009

What I’m looking forward to in the Premier League this season

The hype and the expectation will soon be over – the Premier League kicks off tomorrow. Here we go again, then. As a Liverpool supporter I have already braced myself for another season of dissapointment, essentially playing a trick on myself to save heartache further into the season, and to make any sort of success a nice surprise.

So, beyond wall-to-wall football, what am I actually looking forward to?

Well, I think we could be looking at an even closer title battle. Last season showed just how narrow the margins of error are. Liverpool lost only two games, but didn’t win the title. It wasn’t the ‘big four’ games that decided the title, it was winning week-in, week-out against the smaller teams. So, essentially, every game matters from day one. This could be the most competitive title race yet.

How Manchester City progress should be fascinating. I’m not convinced they will gel right away, but Mark Hughes has done a good job of bringing in some proven Premier League would should settle soon enough, so they do seem the great unknown quantity.

The relegation fight could be fiercer than ever too. Hull and Stoke showed last year that you just can’t write off any team coming up. And Newcastle showed anyone can do down. And this year there are so many clubs who conceivably could get relegated. Taking a quick look at the Paddy Power site, seven teams are 4-1 or worse (down to odds-on) for the drop. There are probably ten or eleven clubs who will be looking at getting the mythical forty-points-for-safety before worrying about getting into Europe or anything fancy like that.

Finally, World Cup year. Everyone is going to be out to impress.

So, I’m strangely optimistic about this season. Hopefully no one team will run away with it, and no team will stay rooted to the bottom, and things will stay interesting. How do you think this season will pan out?

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August 13, 2009

Why I won’t be watching the England/Holland game tonight – addendum

Well, for various reasons I and my Significant Other didn’t make it out for dinner last night. And I was almost a man of my word when it came to not watching the England/Holland game. Admittedly I listened to the first half on the radio while I cooked dinner. Dinner was eaten without TV. After that, I even did the washing-up, a rare moment of awesome-boyfriend-ness. With the radio commentary on, but still.

In fact, I only watched the game when I returned to the living room to find that my S.O. had turned the television on to watch it herself. What a girl she is.

So, I caught the last 25 minutes, plus I saw the goals in the dreadful punditry roundup that followed. Surely ITV could find some more eloquent people than Andy Townsend and Teddy Sheringham?

My thoughts:

Friendly or not, there can be no excuse for the lapses in concentration that let in Holland for their two goals.
England would never have got back in the game if it wasn’t a friendly, with the substitutions (that Holland wouldn’t have made in a competitive game) unsettling the Dutch.
Defoe took his first goal really well, and did a good job poaching the second, yet for some reason I’m still not convinced he is international quality.
James Milner looked really good – very assured. A fine debut.
I enjoyed the Babel/Johnson duel. I thought Babel looked good, but his final ball still leaves a lot to be desired.

August 12, 2009

Why I won’t be watching the England/Holland game tonight

OK, so I agreed to an evening out with my Significant Other tonight, forgeting a game was on, but that’s not the reason. Genuinely. Honest.

Even if I wasn’t spending this evening with my S.O. I’m not so sure I’d go out of my way so see tonight’s game, even though ITV are showing it – so I could potentially watch in the comfort of my very own Land of Leather recliner. Mmm. Cheap leather sofa.

But why?

1. Friendlies aren’t much fun

Has there ever been a more meaningless pre-season friendly? I can see that in the year prior to a major tournament it makes sense to have your squad to play together as much as possible. It’s certainly worked in the past for smaller footballing nations such as USA in ’94 and South Korea in 2002. But this doesn’t necessarily make for great viewing. Non-competitive England games tend to fizzle out in a sea of substitutions soon after half-time. It’s hard to get excited over a game that doesn’t matter, essentially an extended training exercise.

2. Terrible, terrible timing

Who schedules an international friendly now? Clubs are reluctant to release players at the best of times, so having an international as Europe’s seasons begin is idiotic. Why not start the season a week earlier and have an international break further into the season?

3. The players don’t want to play

The players themselves aren’t going to want to over-exert themselves for fear of injuring themselves (or even tiring themselves) before the season has even properly begun. Or, in the case of Steven Gerrard and others, they’ll remove themselves entirely, to be fit for the weekend. Sensible, I say.

4. Clive Tyldesley

Clive Tyldesley will probably be commentating. And probably trying to shoehorn in Champions League 99 and 05 references at inappropriate moments.

5. Pizza Express is nicer than pre-season internationals

And we have a voucher! Cheap pizza!

3 Comments

August 10, 2009

It’s started already? The new football season begins

It’s hard to believe that the new football season has already begun. With post-season internationals and pre-season friendlies it doesn’t feel like there’s been any real break from last season, even without an international tournament this year.

Plus, these are the ‘phoney war’ weeks, with transfers still taking place, teams still being tweaked and the real competitive end of the season still a long, long way off. With sunny skies and the cricket still in flow, there is a certain unreality about August fixtures. There needs to be at least a few games before we see just what the stories of the season might be, such as Hull’s amazing run early last season, that essentially kept them up.

Not that the Premier League has begun of course, but that’s not to say there wasn’t interesting events elsewhere.

I suppose the result of the weekend has to be Colchester’s 7-1 thrashing of Norwich at Carrow Road. Such a heavy home defeat for a newly regulated side, and supposed ‘big club’ of League One was quite the shock. How do you pick yourself up after such a dreadful result, one that saw Norwich fans leave before half-time, with a couple of them throwing their season tickets at manager Bryan Gunn (a little premature, chaps?). Also, how will Colchester build on this, and how annoyed are they that the focus has been on Norwich’s collapse, rather than Colchester’s performance? Probably not that annoyed, but still…

Also, the Sven Show began in style for Notts County with a 5-0 win. How long do we think that will last?

And finally, to put things in perspective, another football death. Espanyol’s captain, Daniel Jarque, died of a heart attack on Saturday, aged 26. A truly shocking and tragic death, but this sort of thing seems to be becoming more and more common. I wonder what research (or at least thought) is going into the possible reasons for this increase in young players dying, and what preventative measures can be put in place.