Saturday, August 11, 2007

A Few Quick, Dirty, Random EPL Predictions

As the new season gets underway, I just want to get this down so I can look back in May at what a moron I was.

As much as I hate to say it, I think ManUtd will repeat as champions.

I think people are underestimating how much Chel$ea will be affected by the African Nations Cup this year, where among others they will lose the services of their 2 best players from last year, Drogba and Essien. I have a hunch that between this and the soap opera of Mourhino, Abromavich, and the new director of football {Isreali dude whose name I cannot remember}, they will not offer the challenge to ManUtd that everyone expects. I think they will finish 3rd.

Liverpool- no idea, but somewhere between 2nd and 5th {duh}.

The Arsenal- I for one am extremely excited about this Arsenal team, and I honestly think they will be better this year without TH14. In every single player interview so far players are going out of their way to talk about how great team spirit and the desire to fight for each other is- read between the lines and it seems to validate the rumors that the dressing room was not a united cause of peace, love, and happiness with the moody & mercurial Henry as captain the past 2 years. I also think Van Persie is going to blow up this year and score 20 goals, and in Eduardo hopefully Arsenal at long last have a clinical finisher. If they convert even 10-15% more of the million chances they created last year and missed, they will be massively improved. Also Rosicky and Hleb should both be better this year, as so often foreign players need a season to adjust to the EPL and in year two they vastly improve. I seriously think that they will surprise everyone who is automatically slotting them 4th or 5th. I think they will finish 3rd or even 2nd, and I fancy their chances at legitimate cup runs.

I also think that West Ham will be relegated. They stayed up by the skin of their teeth last year, with Tevez carrying them on his back the last several games to do so, and now he is gone. Sadly Ljungberg is past it, and without his pace he is much more limited in what he can do. So give me a fiver on West Ham going down.

So I'll take:

1. ManUtd
2. Arsenal
3. Chel$ea
4. Liverpool

And Pressed Ham going down.

That's it for now.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Love your blog! Liverpool looked good yesterday... I hope there's a more dramatic fight for the top spot toward the end of the season this year.

Michael said...

You had to be loving life after conceding less than a minute into the season. Arsenal looked the same yesterday as they have for the past couple years: dominant build-up and then total panic in front of goal. They'll be better when da Silva is acclimated and can play up front, pushing Van Persie to a Bergkamp #10 role. Agree?

Anonymous said...

I think that a broken metatarsal on Rooney may have put a different spin on this season's likely results. What a kick in the ass for day one.

beast in 'bama said...

It sure was gratifying to see Herr Dickhead humiliated in the first minute yesterday. If something like that happened to him once per week - and then his teammates could immediately make up for it and level things up - I would be quite happy.

As a whole, Arsenal looked like their old selves and deserved the win. Were it not for Lehmann, I would like Arsenal a lot better. I certainly enjoy watching them play.

In other games, did you see the bicycle kick by Martins of Newcastle? Spectacular! It was a like a Louganis dive or something out of a video game.

My relegation favorite is Wigan. They are going to be horrible this year.

I'll be watching Reading's game with Chelsea with great interest. If they can get a result out of that game, they'll have gotten half their games with the two giants out of the way in the first week. Coppell is my favorite manager in the EPL, and it's not even close.

Kanu said...

TL- I walked into my apt at 2 a.m. on Sunday a.m. and drunkenly flicked on the TV just as Stevie G was lining up his kick- good stuff.

Michael- fucking Mats- there's really nothing one can say about his gaffe. It will be interesting to see RVP & Eduardo playing together as they are both left footed and selfish {in a good way} finishers- neither one is really a setup man. In the preseason and on Sunday Hleb played the DB10 role, so it looks like Wenger is going to experiment with that- Hleb much prefers that role to playing on the wing- he plays that role for Belarus and played it for Stuttgart, where he played it very well, and last year on the wing he didn't do so well, was frustrated, and has stated that he doesn't care for it. It will be interesting to see how that works out- Sunday he did well but also was clogging Fabregas' space a little- we'll see how things develop in the first 12 games or so.

DCT- If I was Rooneh, or his doctor, or hi coach, or his agent, or his advisor, or his girlfriend, or him mum or dad, I would tell him to tell Nike to fuck off and go out and get him some old skool Adidas Copa Mundials from 15 years ago. What is that, 3 broken metatarsals in 3 years thanks to the new super ultra light, modular plastic Nike boots? Damn, get that dude some proper cleats with some padding, who cares if it makes him 0.05% slower?

BIB- I love Mats, but readily acknowledge, that like Pires before him, he is a player that if he played for any other team I would despise him. You just have to wait till next year and then you can support Arsenal, as Lehmann will be most likely be gone.

Martins' goal was sweet, but Stevie G's was the goal of the weekend. When you see the angle from the back, it's just crazy. The size of the spot that he had to hit so that the keeper couldn't get it was not much bigger than the size of the ball, and he curled it right into that exact spot- top notch, that.

Yeah, Wigan may very well go down too, but I am damn near certain that West Ham will, and they didn't do anything to convince me otherwise when they lost 0-2 to Man Citeh.

Great stuff this weekend- bring on Week 2!