It’s been a good summer for sports. But as enjoyable as the Euros were, as inspiring as the Olympics were, we can officially welcome back the big daddy of sporting spectacles.
The English Premier League starts today, and girls around the country will look begrudgingly as men will prefer to exchange petty insults with rival supporters than go out and enjoy Saturday nights.
So what can we expect this year?
1Goals, Goals and more Goals
Last season Manchester City thrashed Manchester United. United thrashed Arsenal. Arsenal thrashed Chelsea. Logical conclusion, teams need better defenders? Don’t be ridiculous! Need more attackers.
Sir Alex Ferguson called in a personal favour to get Robin van Persie while leaving Roberto Mancini to whine about having ‘only four’ world class strikers. Arsenal compensated by getting three players to fill the gap left by RVP while Chelsea brought Eden Hazard, Marko Marin and Oscar. You score four, we’ll score five.
2 The Boooo Boys
As we are told on our first day of school, if we let the bullies know how much we are affected, they will continue unabated.
Luis Suarez clearly missed this talk (as well as the one about not digging your hole deeper) as he went back to Uruguay and cried about how the England crowd boo him.
This will surely continue throughout this season. A ‘boo-off’ against John Terry will probably cement his place in the EPL history.
3 The most anticipated rivalry of all time
It’s all about numbers. 50 million vs 35 million. 7 league goals vs 6. We bring to you, Fernando Torres vs Andy Carroll, Season 2.
To be fair, both have had successful summers. Fernando Torres ended up as the Golden Ball winner of the Euros while singlehandedly proving that statistics don’t tell the full story.
Andy Carroll meanwhile also managed to sneak into Poland and Ukraine and later subverted his new Liverpool manager’s attempt at getting the ponytailed striker off of Liverpool’s payroll. Watch them battle it out for the 2012/13 Worst Open Goal miss award.
4 Predictions
United and City will fight it out for the title with United winning by five points.
“Arsene Wenger Out!” petitions will start in September before dying a slow death by February as Arsenal close in on another Top 4 finish.
Also, Harry Redknapp will replace Sam Allardyce at West Ham by January. These things will definitely happen, but I shall not give my well-thought out reasons so as to prevent any mockery that can be posted on www.facebook.com/footballchronicle [1] at any point this season.
Links:
[1] http://www.facebook.com/footballchronicle