The summer break barely feels like it has begun and already we are looking ahead to the start of the next Premier League season. Champions Manchester City will begin their title defence on Friday, August 11th against newly promoted Burnley at Turf Moor.
The following day Arsenal will welcome Nottingham Forest to the Emirates Stadium, but the pick of the action will undoubtedly be at Stamford Bridge where Mauricio Pochettino’s Chelsea will host Liverpool in the first Super Sunday clash of the season.
It will be an exciting weekend of action for football fans far and wide, but what about the rest of the campaign? In this article we take a look at 5 things to look forward to this season in domestic football’s most watched league competition.
- Manchester City’s Total Dominance
If you’re not a Manchester City fan (chances are you’re not as there’s not too many of them) then this one is nothing to look forward to really, but we were once told that it’s always better to get the bad news out of the way at the start…
And the bad news is this, Manchester City will win the Premier League title again and become the first side in history to win four English top flight titles in a row. After winning a stunning treble last season, City have – at the time of writing – improved their squad with the addition of the highest rated defensive talent in the world in Josko Gvardiol and reinforced in midfield.
With the best manager in a generation in charge and the freakish talent of Erling Haaland up front, City will be unstoppable once again this season rendering all Premier League predictions redundant. That said we have heard that Netflix are currently in discussions about a documentary on Manchester City’s recent rise to success called ‘115 Reasons Why’…
- The Luton Town and Sheffield United Stories
Forget Burnley, they were the Manchester City of the Championship last season and shouldn’t be praised for winning promotion back to the Premier League with a humongous budget and a generous amount of help from manager Vincent Kompany’s former club Manchester City.
The real stories from the Championship last season were how a Sheffield United hamstrung by boardroom issues and transfer embargoes managed to win promotion playing swashbuckling football under a manager previously written off as a busted flush and Luton Town!
Luton Town! The Hatters! The team that were once given a 6 million point deduction by the EFL and wrestled down into non-league. The club that faced footballing oblivion and absolutely, definitely 100% play their home games in someone’s back garden. They are in the Premier League and they bloody well deserve to be as well.
How they and Sheffield United get on this season will be truly captivating for not just Premier League fans but fans of clubs throughout the footballing pyramid.
- Manchester United’s Resurgence
Stop the press! Manchester United are back baby! That’s what Gary Neville and his former United teammates were telling us last season after the Red Devils won the League Cup, finished third and got knocked out of Europe’s secondary cup competition by a team fighting relegation from La Liga.
With David de Gea out of the picture and Onana in to replace him and the possible addition of a superstar striker United could actually have a really successful season this time round which would put that rather premature false dawn of last season into perspective.
- Can Klopp Adapt?
Jurgen Klopp is one of the best managers on the planet and has had enormous success at every club he has managed but, whisper it quietly, this season could be make or break for the German. His Liverpool team floundered last time out and he was one of the main reasons behind his team’s downturn in fortunes.
It took him far too long to invert Trent Alexander-Arnold and take him out of the defensive firing line and his decision to persist with a number of ageing players extremely reduced the intensity of his team’s main creative outlet – their press.
With a number of new faces in through the door this summer Klopp has a real opportunity to prove that last year was a one-off and get the Reds back into title contention. If he doesn’t there will be calls for his head.
- The Chelsea Clown Car
Last year Chelsea were not only the exploding clown car of English football but of world football too. Owner Todd Boehly’s insane reluctance to stop buying players and interfering with the running of the club led to the Blues posting one of their worst finishes to a Premier League season since Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich bought the club in 2003.
Boehly bizarrely made the rather astute decision to appoint Mauricio Pochettino as manager over the summer. But will he make his job that much harder by selling a key player from under his nose and replacing him with another winger?
Will he plunge the club into sanctions galore with his devil may care attitude to financial fair play? Or will Chelsea somehow emerge from the ruins of Boehly’s avarice and win a first league title since 2017? Who knows?
