All aboard the hype train for the new football season

    Ladies and Gentlemen, take your seats and open a packet of minstrels. In just over one week’s time, the 2013-14 Premier League season will be underway. No more watching Bargain Hunt to while away a Sunday afternoon. No more pretending to give two figs about athletics and golf. No more incessant transfer related drivel. The English top tier will be back in full force, so I hope you have your TV’s tuned, your schedules cleared and your fantasy teams picked. I have a gut feeling this one will be a cracker.

    Rarely have we gone into a season following such a period of intense change. The league is almost unrecognisable, with new managers, new players and even new TV channels. Many teams have spent big; others have spent very little. Some teams have been going about their business in the public eye; others have been quietly improving under the radar. There is the potential for this to be the most unpredictable season in many a year.

     None of this typifies these upheavals more than the managerial changes at the summit of the Premier League. Of the top six teams last time around, four now are under new management. Issue number one is how Manchester United adapts to life without Ferguson? It could be a huge culture shock for the team and their fans, regardless of how fast David Moyes makes his mark. And with their two closest rivals spending big with new managers of their own, the title fight could twist more often than a gin soaked grandma playing blackjack.

     Throw into the mix another intriguing fight for fourth between the two North London clubs, and the scrap underneath between the two Liverpool clubs, and you’re left with a potent mix. With the squads these top seven teams have now developed/bought it’s easy to see them all taking points off each other left right and centre. And with the saga of the Three Musketeers (Bale, Rooney and Suarez) yet to be completed at the time of writing, who knows how any of these teams will ultimately line up come September 1^st?

    Yet it’s not all about the top of the table. Swansea have again spent promisingly and will be looking to cement their place in the top half of the table (and whisper it, maybe even nip at the heels of Liverpool and Everton). They’ll want a good season now their local rivals have finally made it to the Premier League. A top flight Welsh derby between Swansea and Cardiff is going to be tasty. Also watch Norwich win Match of the Day’s ‘wow-how-have-they-started-playing-so-well’ award, even though anyone who has been paying any attention will have noticed Norwich make some canny signings.

    Stoke will have to adapt to life without Tony Pulis, and history suggests this might prove a tough call for them. Fulham will have to adapt not only to their new super-rich owner and his moustache, but also to how they are slowly becoming the Spurs side of the late noughties (with Darren Bent potentially joining Jol and Berbatov if you believe the transfer gossip). Up north the Newcastle circus of crazy continues, the bizarre appointment of Joe Kinnear bound to cause some friction with Alan Pardew. On the subject of crazy will Sunderland improve with Paulo Di Canio at the helm from the offset? Will Aston Villa bounce back from their Annus Horribilis, and can Southampton build on their good work last season? We haven’t mentioned Crystal Palace and Hull, and how their spending sprees will see them fair as they return to the top flight?

     Really, when you list the travails and fortunes of all these teams, you realise the only two currently in similar positions to last year are West Ham and West Brom. The occurrences of last season and this summer mean very few Premier League footballers will be having a sense of Déjà vu when they walk out the tunnel. The eyes of the footballing world maybe on a select few superstars, but you cannot ignore the good work done by many of the Premier League teams. So many things we took for granted last season; the magic chewing gum which seemed to grant Alex Ferguson immortality, for example. But with plenty of intrigue yet to come, and with this particularly tedious transfer window about to come to boil, who knows what will happen when we come to actually kicking a football?

    But if you want my predictions, so you can laugh and point at me in twelve months, I would tip Manchester City for the title with Chelsea second, Manchester United third and (unless Arsenal actually buy someone of note) Spurs hitting fourth. Liverpool I can see getting sixth, with Swansea, Everton, West Brom and Norwich making up the remaining top ten. As for relegation, ultimately I think the bottom three will be Hull, Crystal Palace and Stoke.  As for eleventh to seventeenth, God knows.