The beauty of watching football (i.e. soccer) is that it’s essentially a year-round sport. The summer is typically filled with international tournaments and clubs on promotional world tours. This weekend the 9 month long English Premier League season starts again…and it starts with a bang for any Spurs supporter. In no less then 8 days, Spurs play their first 3 games (Sunday, Wednesday, Sunday) of the season.
The general opinion from what I can tell is that the league title should be contested by Chelsea and United once again. Chelsea seem to be getting most of the nods, mainly due to the fact that their team remains relatively unchanged since last year compared to the changes at United, Liverpool, and Arsenal. I could see it going either way between Chelsea or United with Liverpool maybe in the mix early on in the season.
For Tottenham fans, the stability that our manager Harry Redknapp has brought to our club is a welcomed relief. Not much has changed for us except that we sold a few players we expected to sell this summer and brought a few more in. Compared to the wholesale changes we’ve experienced the last few years, this was a relatively quiet summer. The most notable transfers have been the sale of Bent (striker) and the signings of Crouch (striker) and Bassong (CB). We signed Bassong from Newcastle to help plug our holes in the defense, since our 3 best CBs either have a chronic injury problem or are current out injured.
All things considered, I think many fans are cautiously optimistic this season. As Matt mentioned, the gap in class this year may be very large. Top to bottom, there are many mediocre to poor clubs this year. The real battle might be at the bottom of the table again. So, there may be many points for the taking. Additionally, we’ve had stability and kept our core of players from last year together. If you take the points per game that we earned over the 30 games last season under Harry Redknapp and apply it to a full 38 game season, over the past 5 years that’s been good for 4th and 5th place at the end of the season. I’m not predicting that’s where Spurs will finish next spring – I’m using that as a way to support the opinion that we shouldn’t be battling relegation at all this year. If I had to pick right now my guess is we’ll probably finish in 7th place plus or minus one. Most Spurs fans are also predicting a stable, mid-table finish with maybe a good run in one of the cups. Boring is beautiful this year…or, at the very least, highly acceptable.
Perhaps the biggest controversy of the off-season was the introduction of our new kit. I won’t beat around the bush – it’s ugly. It was so well received by the fans that a petition was started (and gathered thousands of signatures) to have the club redo it. Most of the complaints are about the yellow and the yellow stripes. I haven’t heard or seen a message board post or podcast where any fan has said they are going to purchase a kit this year. I’m sure that after half a season or so it will grow on me…especially if we start winning.
So on Sunday we open up the league season at home against Liverpool. They may have some injury issues of their own and if we can continue our home form from last season this may be a decent game. I don’t expect to win, but I can envision a draw or at least a competitive match. Anything can happen in the first game of the season. We could be rusty and get overrun, or conversely, surprise Liverpool. I’d much rather play the top 4 clubs early on in the season for that reason and to get them out of the way early. Come On You Spurs!