The English Premier League, which Sky Sports endlessly promotes as the “greatest league in the world”, will start its new season on August 16, but already most pundits are predicting a two-horse race between the same duo that took the title to the wire last year – Manchester United and Chelsea. In the world’s richest league, the quality that defines the ability to sustain a title challenge well into spring appears to be money.
It’s hard to dispute that the millions of Roman Abramovich at Chelsea and the unrivalled match-day revenue from United’s Old Trafford ground have allowed the two clubs to build the strongest squads in the league. And even though only two other clubs, Arsenal and Liverpool, are credited with any realistic odds of triumphing as champions, the race for the title promises to be even closer than last year’s 11 points that separated the top four clubs.
In a league where new signings are the equivalent of the Cold War-era arms race, Manchester United’s most important one was the transfer that did not come to pass, when after a protracted transfer saga that lasted the entire summer, Cristiano Ronaldo decided to stay at Old Trafford for at least one more season. Manager Alex Ferguson has made it clear he was happy with the squad he had and was only interested in getting a new striker to replace the often-injured Louis Saha. Reports in Britain agreed throughout the off-season that Bulgarian captain Dimitar Berbatov was the player that Ferguson had set his sights on. For all the protestations from Tottenham that it would take a king’s ransom to prize the Bulgarian away from White Hart Lane, the Bulgarian could yet get the move he has, reportedly, been yearning for.
Chelsea, which took the title race to the wire in May and then lost the Uefa Champions League on penalties to Manchester United, have so far only brought in full-back Jose Bosingwa and midfield virtuoso Deco, but the most important change has been the hiring of Luis Felipe Scolari as manager. Whether it brings owner Roman Abramovich the Champions League trophy, which he is coveting so much, is anyone’s guess, but even in the hands of the virtually unknown Avram Grant the team has come close to it, so the addition of a World Cup-winning head coach could not possibly hurt.
Arsenal suffered the highest-profile departures, with Alexandre Hleb choosing to leave for Barcelona and Mathieu Flamini capitalising on his stand-out season to earn himself a lucrative contract with AC Milan. To offset those, Arsene Wenger signed one of France’s top young talents in Samir Nasri and followed it up by snapping 16-year-old Aaron Ramsey, one of Britain’s most highly-rated teenagers. Liverpool, for their part, went for a proven Premiership performer and shelled out the highest transfer fee of the summer so far in England, paying 20 million pounds to secure the services of Tottenham’s Robbie Keane to serve as a foil to Fernando Torres, but had to let England striker Peter Crouch go to make space for the Irishman.
But the fans of neither of the Big Four teams can completely avoid uncertainty on some issues. Will Ronaldo replicate the form that has made him the odds-on favourite for World Footballer of the Year and how will Manchester United cope with the departure of assistant manager Carlos Queiroz, the man who has in recent years taken over the tactical drawing board of the team? At Chelsea, will Scolari’s lack of club management experience in Europe and lack of proficiency in English prove too much of an obstacle to overcome? Can Arsenal’s young team last longer this year and will its mid-winter injury curse finally be lifted? And will Liverpool’s boardroom struggle make a re-appearance this year again to provide off-the-pitch distraction as pressure grows on Rafa Benitez to deliver the title after a wait of 19 years?
The title will go to the team that will play most consistently against the rest of the league, rather than its direct rivals for the Premiership crown, recent seasons have shown. In the world’s richest league, where bare survival guarantees more prize money than winning the title anywhere else, the have-nots will put up the occasional fight against the title challengers, but the real entertainment might often be found away from the matches of the Big Four.
