SOCCER ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE:FOR ALL the excitement that makes the Premier League so addictive to a global audience it has also been a conservative institution in which clubs generally know their place. In five of the past seven seasons, Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool have been at the head of the table, with only the seating arrangements to be decided.
It did feel novel in May when Tottenham Hotspur came fourth, three berths above Liverpool, but the threat to the established order was just starting. In the commercial environment of football, revolutionaries need to be moneyed, and Manchester City have certainly spent enough to bring down the hierarchy of the Premier League.
Their situation is briefly enviable because few people have yet worked up much loathing for them. Perhaps the public cannot shake off the assumption it is the club’s destiny to blunder and make everyone chortle.
City, it is true, have still to be hailed as a model of iron discipline. “For the first time in my life I’m having problems to find something that motivates me,” the striker Carlos Tevez said this month.
Despite such musings, it lies with City to invigorate the upper reaches of the table. Tottenham and, in 2004-05, Everton have broken the cartel, but each did so to the minimum extent by filling fourth place. The agenda is utterly different for City, who open the season at lunchtime with their fixture at White Hart Lane.
The aim now is to make themselves unpopular fast, as the hostility of the public will start when City begin having the impact for which they have paid so much. It was soothing for everyone else to see undistinguished results in some friendlies, but Roberto Mancini did not look as if he had more footballers than he knew what to do with when a well-ordered side beat Valencia last Saturday.
The manager, too, is far from being a novice when the inevitable difficulties arise in a campaign because he has prevailed with Internazionale in Serie A. Whatever one makes of yesterday’s endeavours to spend lavishly on Mario Balotelli, a problematic young man, and James Milner, the second-last of England’s half-dozen substitutions on Wednesday, City’s outlay is galvanising the Premier League scene at a moment when others are broke.
A kinder interpretation would be that clubs are being shrewd in their spending and, in that context, Stoke City’s €9.8 million purchase of Kenwyne Jones from Sunderland was astounding. It will be more common to see managers bragging of their budgeting, and Newcastle United are out to re-establish themselves in the Premier League with no sign of a spree.
Means are scantier still at Blackpool, who have already achieved the unthinkable by climbing out of the Championship.
Ian Holloway’s case is extreme at Bloomfield Road, but many managers are redefining themselves as bargain-hunters. Alex Ferguson is absorbed in the type of unexpected deal has secured the little-noticed Bebe. While there was a brightness to United that might not have been anticipated in Sunday’s Community Shield, the virtuoso presence was that of Paul Scholes. His vision and excellence of technique made your head swim, but he is 36 in September and it is still to be confirmed that a United squad in the process of reconstruction is ready to take back the title.
Chelsea, for their part, defend the title and FA Cup with, in some cases, senior figures who will bear the fatigue of the World Cup in mind and body. The club was once a prototype of the new Manchester City and Roman Abramovich has gradually accepted the extravagant budgeting was unjustified when it brought no absolute guarantees, particularly where the Champions League is concerned.
If anyone should feel their moment is approaching it is Arsenal. After five years without silverware, it is incumbent on Arsene Wenger to prove a redevelopment project is on the verge of completion. The inadequacies were still glaring last season, with the four league matches against Chelsea and United lost by an aggregate of 10-2. Sturdiness is still being sought, but Wenger’s pursuit of a goalkeeper and his purchase of a centre half in Laurent Koscielny do show him concentrating on the basics.
Arsenal could well take the title for the first time since 2004 if a little more transfer business is completed this month. Cesc Fabregas has been retained for a bit longer and in Marouane Chamakh they have a centre forward who can be a challenger to Robin van Persie or a deputy should the Dutchman be injured again.
Several clubs will feel their situation is encouraging. Everton can field a potent side and they will make their presence felt if they are not afflicted by the sort of injuries that meant Phil Jagielka and Mikel Arteta were fit for only a small number of fixtures last season.
Normally, too, there would have been conjecture about Aston Villa inching upwards, but their minds are occupied with the appointment of a manager following Martin O’Neill’s resignation. Liverpool, with the tortured issue of the club’s ownership inescapable, do not look ready to ascend either despite Roy Hodgson’s know-how.
Nonetheless, Manchester City’s means have delivered a stimulating uncertainty about the course of the months to come.
Guardian Service
