EPL SEASON PREVIEW: The drama of the Premier League returns for a 26th edition this weekend with the stakes - and transfer fees - higher than ever.
For a competition currently dwelling in a degree of nostalgia, on the occasion of its 25th birthday, sentiment is in paradoxically but predictably short supply at the top end of English football.
Just 83 days after Chelsea lifted the Premier League trophy, Arsenal and Leicester will kick off the new season in the early hours of Saturday morning with all 20 teams necessarily and urgently looking forward rather than backwards.
A sense of renewal - as ever between seasons but heightened by the latest round of mind-bending outlays of cash in the transfer market - is the prevailing order of the day.
With the best part of three weeks still to go before the transfer window closes, approaching $2bn has been spent by teams restructuring their playing squads with the same enthusiasm whether designed to land honours or merely survive.
The figures have become so routinely grotesque as to render them almost meaningless. The auction for a right-back of any standing now seemingly kicking off with a starting bid around $70m.
Such figures seem almost quaint, of course, when held up against the $300m plus that was needed to free Neymar of his purgatory of playing in possibly the finest front three ever assembled, at one of the giants of the sport in one of the world’s finest cities.
The Brazilian’s move from Barcelona to PSG the latest evidence of a game hell bent on selling out its dignity at the altar of ambition, status and sovereign wealth, but one which remains an unparalleled box office attraction even when there’s no actual sport being played.
Looking back at the photos of that first ever Premier League promotional campaign, with Oldham Athletic’s Andy Richie front and centre, and representatives from Coventry City, Sheffield United and Ipswich Town gleefully grinning for the camera, it doesn’t just feel like a quarter of a century ago.
A lifetime more like.
The past the most foreign of countries. On which, just 13 non-British or Irish players embarked on that campaign and the record transfer of the summer saw £3.6m paid out to take Alan Shearer from Southampton to Blackburn Rovers.
A different age, then; a more innocent time, perhaps. But times change. And in the Premier League at an unstoppable pace, a theme that has characterised the latest summer feeding frenzy.
Many of the defining characters of the more recent editions of the Premier League have now exited stage left. The last relics of Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United have been purged with Wayne Rooney returning to his boyhood club. John Terry, the last true survivor of Jose Mourinho’s first, all-conquering Chelsea, has finally switched from pantomime to actual Villain. He’s Burton Albion and Bristol City’s problem now.
If the last couple of off-seasons were notable for the influx of many of the leading managers in the game, this coming one will be the true measure of them.
The honeymoon is long over for Jurgen Klopp, Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola. Antonio Conte and Mauricio Pochettino have set standards they must live up to, or better. Arsene Wenger needs prodigious success to avoid another season of discontent at Arsenal.
That six way gunfight in which two men will be left fatally wounded will be the compelling feature of the season ahead.
The merit of the business done will only become evident once the new combatants take to the field. But optimism is being most keenly felt in Manchester.
Mourinho has always won the title in his second season at a club. And in Romelu Lukaku, Nemanja Matic and Victor Lindelof he has formed a spine in keeping with his previous models of success. United were hard to beat but not easy on the eye last season. With Paul Pogba now likely to roam free there is reason to believe they will challenge for the top honour seriously for the first time since Sir Alex Ferguson hung up his wristwatch.
Across the city, Guardiola has signed almost an entirely new back line. A necessary investment after last season’s attacking verve was compromised by defensive frailty. When you can draft in the quality of Danilo from Real Madrid for over $40m to play first reserve in the full back position, anything less than first place will be an abject failure for the Catalan and his paymasters from the Emirates. The double signing of Benjamin Mendy and Bernardo Silva from a now cannibalised Monaco means City are justified favourites and on paper have the strongest squad in the competition.
Arsenal have added brute force at full back in Sead Kolasinac and elegance up front with Alexandre Lacazette – though retaining the services of Alexis Sanchez, even at the cost of losing him for nothing next year, may prove their best bit of business - while Liverpool’s off-season is still very much a work in progress. Defensive recruits are necessary at Anfield, as is a bulwark in midfield, to improve on last season.
Chelsea have finessed rather than revolutionised a winning side. Alvaro Morata, Tiemoue Bakayoko – another purchase from that most fashionable of footballing boutiques in southern France – and Antonio Rudiger having replaced exited or exiting players. A strong defence of their title is likely but the improvements in Manchester and with Champions League football this season, the workload as well as challenge will be greater.
Tottenham have bucked the trend in having spent precisely nothing on new players to date, a situation that, as Danny Rose clumsily but probably correctly identified, needs to change if the momentum of the last two seasons is not to be becalmed. Especially when they spend this season squatting in Wembley Stadium, a venue they have an uncomfortable relationship with.
The gulf last season between the top seven and the rest was as vast as the difference between the remainder of the league was illusionary - 16 points separating Everton and eighth placed Southampton; a mere six more splitting Saints and Watford in that alternative summit of ambition, 17th.
The spending in the off season – for all that West Ham, Leicester, Watford and Bournemouth have recruited smartly - suggests that top order will not be breached. Everton have been lauded for their transfer business that has seen more than $300m spent on quality. The harsh truth, however, is that a repeat of last season’s league position and a better showing in the cups remains their most likely positive return on that investment.
That imbalance does, at least, make the relegation contest a production of many characters and all the more intriguing and deliciously fraught for that.
Burnley, Swansea and Stoke City look the most vulnerable targets as the newly promoted sides - Newcastle United, Brighton and Huddersfield - look for teams less able than themselves to claw their way above across the 38 games.
Few give Huddersfield and Brighton a sniff, though their very appearance at this level offers the romantics something to enjoy. Aaron Mooy and Mat Ryan will have their work cut out fighting fires at their respective clubs, but regardless, the fans will enjoy their merited season in the sun, even if it sets before May, as it surely will for one or both of them.
Nonetheless, the lull before the start of any season in which we briefly reside, when all teams are, however fleetingly, equal, remains a precious moment of calm amid the madness.
In football there is always next year. And when that year begins as soon as this week, the hand-wringing over obscene transfer fees and the painful need to acquaint oneself with the nuances of third party ownership and comparative tax rates to get your football fix dissipates.
And the simple pleasure of blind faith and giddy anticipation can be enjoyed. Some things change, some, mercifully, stay the same.
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