Flawed EPL season
> How fatigue and hangover from the WC could frame the entire 2018/19 edition
SO THE most bombastic show in the game is back, but now encountering a difference - and something that could make a difference to how it all goes this season.
It still feels like the Premier League is in the shadow of the World Cup. The riveting electricity that is still coursing around the game from Russia 2018 means the opening of this season just doesn’t have the same energy, isn’t capturing the attention in the same way.
That is partly because this is the shortest break - at a mere 26 days - there has been between the World Cup final and the start of the English top flight since 1966. There’s been no chance for football to breathe, and little chance for players to get a breather - in a literal sense.
All of this is further complicated by the bizarre decision to shorten the transfer window in a World Cup year. The fact that most teams’ stars will start the campaign without a proper pre-season could greatly warp the opening games, and thereby condition the rest of it.
It does look like one thing won’t change, even from the start: Manchester City’s supremacy.
The expectation was always that they would excel again, but with Pep Guardiola himself talking about how it will be impossible to replicate last season’s record breaking.
And yet the performance in the Community Shield, for what the fixture is, still set an ominous tone for everyone else.
That could change one of the patterns of the last decade: a side actually retains the title, for the first time since Manchester United in 2009.
Liverpool at least look best placed - and best fired - to prevent that, and maybe end their own 29-year wait.
As for the rest of the top-six pattern the Premier League is conditioned to fall into, we’re seeing old themes at Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United, very new ones at Arsenal and a mix of both at Chelsea.
The deposed 2016-17 champions have again changed manager, but there is a sense that Maurizio Sarri will finally bring something different, something fun and exciting.
There is meanwhile the danger of Spurs staying still despite moving to a new stadium, because they suffer from a curious dilemma – financial constraints.
United meanwhile look the opposite of that, and so much lesser than their financial size dictates they should be, with all of that resulting in the same old complaints from Mourinho.
At Arsenal, there is quiet optimism as this is the first Premier League season to start without Arsene Wenger since 1997.
Whether Unai Emery is the change required is open to question but one aspect of his management is not. His players will get the coaching they have lacked for some time.
As to whether the rest of the League falls in the same order? One of the flip sides of the Premier League’s growth been an extreme stratification, with the table essentially split into groups of 6-1-14.
Everton - usually the 1 - have notionally gone against that by replacing Sam Allardyce with Marco Silva. West Ham United, who should realistically be challenging for that 1 to become 2 by fulfilling their potential as a club, have done similar by bringing in Manuel Pellegrini for David Moyes.
Fulham and Wolves may challenge both, though, as they have by far enjoyed the best business beyond Liverpool.
After that, it feels like it will be another free-for-all again. The climax, however, is still a long way off. – The Independent