Arsenal are kidding themselves and Liverpool are back. Chelsea have stagnated and Manchester United are disjointed. Leicester will be fine and Sunderland are screwed. Well…maybe. And maybe not. It’s been 77 days since the end of last season and obviously we’ve really, really missed football because a few of us are reading a bit too much into the results from the opening weekend.
On last season’s opening day, Manchester United were beaten at home by Swansea, but Louis van Gaal’s team went on to qualify for the Champions League regardless. Later that day. Hull City beat Queens Park Rangers at Loftus Road, but both teams were relegated in May. The following day, Liverpool beat Southampton at Anfield, but then slid out of the top four and ended up finishing only two points ahead of the Saints in sixth. Come back to this weekend’s results in May 2016 and you can be sure that we’ll find a selection of new oddities.
The one thing on which we can agree on is that this has been an eye-popping start for the division. Five of everyone’s expected top six played at the weekend and only two of them won, neither of them in convincing style. Perhaps this is a sign of things to come. Perhaps the surge of money from the new TV deal has raised the level of the chasing pack, providing them with a significant financial boost, as opposed to the less significant effect it had on the already vastly wealthy elite. Maybe. Maybe not. You really can’t read a season from a weekend’s worth of results.
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Having said all of that, it was interesting to watch Paris Saint-Germain beat Lille on Friday night. Laurent Blanc’s side haven’t always convinced in the early stages of the season. Indeed, this was the first time they’d won their opening fixture since 2010. Sometimes, you wonder if the motivation is there for the nitty-gritty of a league in which they don’t always need to be at their best in order to prevail. But on Friday, they really impressed. Reduced to ten men long before the break, they kept their cool, controlled the game, took the lead and held it until full time. It wasn’t spectacular, but that was the whole point. They dug in, showed character and got the job done. They’re getting better and better.
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It was a privilege to be at Dean Court/The Goldsands/The Vitality Stadium on Saturday for Bournemouth’s first ever game in the Premier League. Much has been written about the club’s rise from the brink of oblivion, but very little has been said about the work behind the scenes as the club prepared for the logistics of staging top flight football. Last season, for example, the press room was a small, converted classroom on the far side from the dug-outs, while the press box itself was a handful of seats at the back of the stand. Now there’s a big press lounge with plenty of workspaces, there’s wifi everywhere and the press box has monitors for every other seat so you get a second chance to figure out what on earth just happened. Which is handy when Rudy Gestede is in town. On top of all of this, they’ve got Bovril. Hardly any Premier League clubs have Bovril. I think I’m going to like Bournemouth.
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It’s difficult to know what to make of Liverpool. Take Philippe Coutinho’s goal out of the equation and they weren’t particularly good on Sunday. Mind you, if you take John Wilkes Booth out of the equation, Abraham Lincoln really enjoyed his trip to the theatre. The addition of Christian Benteke this summer was an odd move, given that Brendan Rodgers had flogged off Andy Carroll on the basis that he didn’t want a target man disrupting all the pretty football. No-one really seemed to know what to do with Benteke on Sunday. They were torn between the occasional punt, offered artlessly and with very little support, or they just ignored him altogether. It will take time for everyone to grow accustomed to each other, but time is an asset that is unlikely to be given to Rodgers in this, his fourth season in charge. At least the defence looked solid, especially Dejan Lovren. And that is not something that I expected to write.
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There are some excellent books coming out in the next month and Alex Stewart will be reviewing them for us in full soon. But for those who want an early tip-off, look out for Rafa Honigstein’s Das Reboot, Mike Calvin’s Living on the Volcano and Martin Hardy’s Touching Distance. I’ve burned through them all and they’re all fantastic. I’m very glad that I don’t have to pick a favourite.
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Later this week, we’ll have news on the final of the Football Manager Cup. That beautiful and iconic trophy is going in the post soon. Thanks so much to everyone who entered, especially those of you who were so creative with your coverage. I’d also like to thank everyone at Sports Interactive for helping us out, particularly the wonderful Henry Charnock who made it all happen. We’ll now go away, review the competition, see what worked and what didn’t, and perhaps it will return next year.
