Will it be Nunez or Haaland who decides the destination of the Premier League title?
New men up top: With the title all but certain to be going to either Anfield or the Etihad, Darwin Nunez and Erling Haaland are likely to have a major say. Pic: PA Wire/Examiner graphic
It seems hard to imagine he won’t score a lot of goals, however, the potential for a less-than-stellar season is definitely there. Against Liverpool on Sunday he was clearly unfit, lumbered around, took only 16 touches, won zero headers, made no interceptions or dribbles and completed just seven passes, missing two sitters. More worrying than that was the fact City looked far a more ordinary, unsophisticated and predictable side playing with a big man up top. That being said, Pep Guardiola relishes coaching players to work in his teams. Whether Haaland can learn quickly will determine how well the season goes for him.
Liverpool and Manchester City were in a different class to the other 18 last year and there’s no reason to think that it won’t be exactly the same this season and every season going forward, until either or both managers depart. As good as the football both play is, there is something vaguely depressing for everyone else about their dominance. More than that, the other four places are almost certain to go to Spurs, Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United. A competition where 18 know they have almost zero chance of winning it and 14 have almost zero chance of getting higher than seventh is a watery competition indeed.
It looks as though he will mostly play through the middle of the front three and if Sunday was anything to go by, will play the game with directness and aggression. Liverpool tend to recruit very well and Jurgen Klopp will know exactly how and where he wants the player to operate. He will certainly add a threat in the air and he’s got the pace to play the Reds' counter-attacking style. However, he looks like the sort of player who could start a fight in an empty room and is prone to get what my mother used to call ‘a proper nark on’. So perhaps we should expect a couple of red cards from the Uruguayan, especially in the Champions League, though to be fair, he’s only been sent off once to date and that was in the Spanish second tier. He just looks very angry all the time.
Given he’s coming from last season's all-time Premier League nadir, improvement should not be difficult. Fans will be looking for them to establish a style and mode of playing and stop just drifting through the season looking bored and uncommitted. He needs to sort out the Ronaldo situation, bring harmony to the squad and stop it leaking stories to the press. Lisandro Martínez arriving from Ajax should improve their defensive solidarity. With further signings to come, Christian Eriksen may hold the key to their success this campaign, feeding their excellent forwards. It’s not hard to see them improving significantly because they have some excellent players, but the gap to the top two is a massive 34 points. The best they can do is get that down to 15 and take third. Most fans would take that now but it is far from guaranteed.
No-one doubts Arteta can get Arsenal playing some sweet football, but can he make them do it consistently? While buying Gabriel Jesus should improve their goal total, Oleksandr Zinchenko is their most striking signing. The Arsenal defence was their obvious weak spot last season with seven clubs conceding fewer goals than the Gunners and he should help address that. But the feeling that Arteta needs a good start is widespread. Restlessness will not take much provoking. However, they were only five points off third last season, so it may not be such a big push to return to the Champions League positions. If he can’t do it, it may be time to look for someone who can.
Starting in the third week of November, there has never been such a major disruption to a season as this World Cup. The clubs with fewer players playing in Qatar can give them a winter break, before the December 26th return of domestic football which, you’d imagine will make them fresher for the second half of the season. Whereas players who are involved in teams that get to the latter stages will get little rest. That said, even if someone plays every round, they won’t play radically more football than they normally would. So it may be that it makes little difference, even if every failing team’s manager will certainly lay blame on it for that failure.
Gianluca Scamacca has cost over £30 million, is 6’5” and at first glance looks like the kind of battering ram that David Moyes likes to head up his often somewhat dated tactics. He scored 16 in 38 for Sassuolo, which is OK but hardly startling and it is a lot of money to gamble on someone who might turn out to be rubbish in England. The Hammers have form in this regard buying Seb Haller for nearly £50 million turning him into a much worse player before selling him at a £25 million loss, only to see him thrive at Ajax scoring 47 goals in 66 and looking like a world beater in the Champions League. Moyes benefits from a friendly press but he needs to keep his side in the top half or he’ll suffer the wrath of East London’s finest football fans.
Putting aside the appalling ownership fiasco, acquiring Sven Botman, Matt Target and Nick Pope are all solid transfers but hardly the sort of acquisitions that will have fans dancing in the streets dressed as sheikhs, with other targets finding other clubs far more appealing. This is all fine for now, but if Newcastle are just mid-table and not tearing up any trees by Christmas, how much patience will they have with Eddie Howe? Howe took a lot of credit for their revival last season, though the £100 million spent surely helped, but with plenty of money to pay a far bigger name manager, his support may yet prove brittle, irrespective of his bumper new contract. There is only so long he can live off the successful decision to move Joelinton into midfield. His stonewalling of questions about the ownership have cast him in a disreputable light with neutrals and his limitations are all too obvious to those observers not blinded by the light from their owners’ money.
He scored 43 goals in 46 games last season and was unstoppable but has never scored more than 11 in a top-flight season. Last time out at this level he netted just four times. Some players are built for the Championship but not the Premier League and it's not overly cynical to think Mitrovic is one of those. Fulham will hope that's not the case as they will have a fight to avoid immediate relegation once again.
One of Antonio Conte’s challenges for the season is first to eradicate those ‘dead’ games where they don’t turn up, look slow, leggy and idea-free. Just as urgent is to find more goals from players who are not Kane or Son. Between them, they netted 40 of Spurs’ 69 last season. Dejan Kulusevski was their next highest scorer with five, but did show very good form for a January signing. However, it is not yet obvious where those extra goals will come from.
He was brilliant last season on loan at Crystal Palace and won himself a place in the England squad. Now he’s back at Chelsea, what sort of opportunities will he get? It would be tragic for a player of such vitality and dynamism to be only a bit part player. If he does get a chance, he’ll need to seize it with both hands.
Despite the fact that Lampard didn’t acquire any more points for the Toffees than Rafa Benitez did, there was no doubting the good vibes the fans had towards the former Chelsea man at the end of last season. This suggests that he has some capital in the bank at Goodison, but things do need to improve radically and if they don’t, they will turn on him by the autumn. Two signings from Burnley, James Tarkowski and Dwight McNeill, will not have set pulses racing and there is a feeling that Everton will be playing the role of the now relegated Burnley this season. If that’s the case, Lampard will not see the season out.
They conceded 20 last campaign and it beggars belief that Brendan Rodgers can’t train his squad pre-season to at least half that number. However, they have yet to make any signings and unless that changes markedly in the next month, another season of mid-table mediocrity or worse is on the cards. Rodgers may be ready to move on should a better opportunity arise. Having won the FA Cup and finished fifth twice, there seems little left for him to realistically achieve.
Before a ball is kicked Bournemouth, Fulham and Nottingham Forest are a lot of people’s picks for relegation. It is actually rather unusual for the three promoted clubs to go straight back down and if you had to pick one to survive, it’d probably be Forest. They’ve thrown £85 million on transfers and have got nine incoming. The acquisition of Jesse Lingard is astute, as is signing Wayne Hennessy and Dean Henderson as experienced Premier League goalkeepers. Taiwo Awoniyi is a great striking prospect with 20 goals in 43 games for Union Berlin last season, add in a new left and right back and a centre half and it all begins to look like a cohesive acquisition strategy. However, it is equally possible the newcomers will take months to settle by which time they’ll already be adrift. It’s always a gamble, but there’s no doubt that the club is backing manager Steve Cooper.
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