I spent this summer parked in front of a television watching all or part of every one of the 104 World Cup matches, and I figured that would hold me for a good long while. It didn’t. A month after Spain lifted the trophy at MetLife, the Premier League opens tonight in north London, and I’m right back in the chair.
Arsenal host Coventry City to get it started, which is a fitting piece of scheduling. The champions on one side, a club that hasn’t seen the top flight since 2001 on the other. Twenty five years is a long time to wait for a Friday night in August.
Arsenal Finally Got There, and Staying There Is the Hard Part
It took 22 years. Arsène Wenger’s Invincibles won the thing in 2004 and then the Emirates went quiet, and for the better part of two decades Arsenal were the club that always had a nice February and a miserable April. Mikel Arteta broke that. Eighty five points, a plus 44 goal difference, seven points clear of Manchester City, and Arteta walked off with Manager of the Season while David Raya took the Golden Glove.
The bookmakers have them at better than 40 percent to do it again, which is a bigger number than any defending champion deserves and also, I think, about right. Continuity is the reason. The spine that won it is still in place, Raya behind Declan Rice, and Arteta didn’t feel the need to tear anything up. Instead he went and got Bruno Guimarães from Newcastle for a reported 75 million pounds, a proven Premier League midfielder in his prime, and let Leandro Trossard go to Beşiktaş. That is what a club does when it likes what it already has.
Arsenal also beat City in the Community Shield, which counts for nothing and tells you something anyway.
The worry is the one every champion carries. The margin at the top is thin, the Champions League is a meat grinder, and Arteta has never had to manage a squad that arrives in August already satisfied. Simply put, hunger is the variable nobody can put a number on. I’d still make them the favorite, and I would not be stunned if they were caught.
Nine New Managers, Which Is a Record for a Reason
Here’s the number that jumps off the page. Nine clubs start this season with a manager they did not have last August. That is the most in an English top flight season since 1946 to 1947, when the league was restarting after a world war.
The biggest of them barely felt real when it happened. Pep Guardiola left Manchester City, and City hired Enzo Maresca to take over, the same Enzo Maresca who was fired by Chelsea on New Year’s Day. City did not just lose their manager. Bernardo Silva, John Stones, Manuel Akanji and Nathan Aké all went out the door, and Elliot Anderson arrived from Nottingham Forest to start rebuilding the middle. Erling Haaland is still there, and he still scored 27 goals to win his third Golden Boot in four years, so the floor is high. The ceiling is a genuine question for the first time in a decade.
Liverpool are in the same boat, only wetter. Fifth place, 60 points, Arne Slot gone, Andoni Iraola in from Bournemouth, and Mohamed Salah off to Trabzonspor on a free transfer after a decade at Anfield. Ten years, and it ended with a two year deal in Turkey. Victor Muñoz has been brought in to fill the shirt, which is a lot to ask of anybody.
Newcastle sold Bruno Guimarães to Arsenal and Sandro Tonali to Tottenham and cleared north of 240 million pounds in player sales, then hired Matthias Jaissle. Oliver Glasner took over at Forest, Marco Rose at Bournemouth, Álvaro Arbeloa at Fulham, Pierre Sage at Crystal Palace. Gary O’Neil landed at Ipswich. In short order, half the league changed its mind about who should be in charge.
Chelsea Have a Grownup in the Room
Chelsea finished tenth in the Premier League with 52 points and no European football, which for a club that has spent north of a billion pounds assembling a youth academy with a first team badge is close to an emergency. They fired Maresca in January, ran Liam Rosenior out the rest of the way, and then went and got Xabi Alonso.
That is the most interesting hire of the summer. Alonso won a Bundesliga title at Bayer Leverkusen with a squad nobody thought could do it, and he did it by giving young players a clear job and a clear structure. Chelsea’s problem was never talent. It was that nobody seemed to know what the team was supposed to be from one month to the next.
The business backs him up. Morgan Rogers came from Aston Villa for a fee that reportedly cleared 150 million dollars, with Alejandro Garnacho going the other way on loan. Maxence Lacroix and Marco Palestra came in for the back line. Marc Cucurella went to Real Madrid. And then, in the move I like best, they signed Jordan Henderson and Danny Welbeck on the cheap. Two players in their thirties who have won things and can tell a 19 year old what a title race actually feels like in March.
I’d put Chelsea back in the top five. Fourth is reachable. The title is a year away.
Manchester United Are the Team Nobody Saw Coming
Third place. Seventy one points. Manchester United. I did not have that on my card last August, and neither did you.
Rúben Amorim was sacked on January 5, Michael Carrick took over on the 13th as an interim, and United went 12 wins in 17 and never looked back. Bruno Fernandes set a Premier League record with 21 assists. Benjamin Šeško and Bryan Mbeumo each got 12 goals, Matheus Cunha got 10, and the defense finally stopped leaking. Carrick played a plain 4-2-3-1 and asked everyone to do their job. Radical stuff at Old Trafford.
The summer was sensible too. Andrey Santos came from Chelsea for around 50 million pounds, Youri Tielemans from Villa for 35 million, and Rasmus Højlund’s loan to Napoli was made permanent. That said, the schedule is the thing now. Carrick has never coached a Champions League campaign, and midweek football has broken better United sides than this one. Top four again would be a real achievement, and I think they get it.
The Three New Faces
Coventry City are the story. Frank Lampard won the Championship by 11 points with three games to spare, and his team led the division in points, wins, goals and goal difference with five players in double figures. That is not a promotion, that is a demolition. The catch is that Haji Wright, who scored 17 of those goals, is out roughly 12 weeks, so Brandon Thomas-Asante and Taiwo Awoniyi have to carry it early. Aurele Amenda arrived from Eintracht Frankfurt to shore up the back. Lampard wants the ball on the grass and the ball out wide. It will be fun. It may also be brief.
Ipswich Town came straight back up after one year down, finishing second with only eight losses, and then lost Kieran McKenna, the man who took them from League One to the Premier League. Gary O’Neil has the job now. Daizen Maeda came from Celtic, Saša Lukić from Fulham, Julio Enciso from Strasbourg, and Azor Matušiwa, their player of the year, anchors the midfield. This is the promoted side I’d bet on to survive.
Hull City got here the hard way, sixth in the table and then a 95th minute Oli McBurnie header at Wembley to beat Middlesbrough 1-0. Their first top flight season since 2017. Sergej Jakirović plays a pragmatic 4-2-3-1 built to counter, with Charlie Hughes at center back, Ryan Giles at left back and Liam Millar and Mo Belloumi running the flanks. Hidemasa Morita came from Sporting to add 40 caps worth of Japan international composure. They will need every bit of it.
What I Think Happens
Arsenal win it again, but closer than last year. Manchester United and Chelsea take two of the other three Champions League places, with City and Liverpool scrapping over the last one while their new managers figure out what they’ve got. Sunderland proved last season that a promoted club can finish seventh, so I won’t insult Coventry by writing them off in August.
And somewhere around Boxing Day, one of those nine new managers will already be gone.
Kickoff is today. Grab a chair.
assist by Claude, tags: Premier League, Arsenal, Frank Lampard, Mikel Arteta
