Sport
PREMIER LEAGUE NEW BOYS TO SURPRISE EVERYONE?
PREMIER LEAGUE NEW BOYS TO SURPRISE EVERYONE?
Your mind is already made up isn’t it…
Norwich, Watford, Bournemouth – favourites for the drop right?
Another three whipping boys making the transition to the Premier League who might start off with a win or two as the feel good factor left over from last season continues, but who’ll make up the bottom three positions in the table come the end of the season.
Admittedly the gap between the EPL and the Championship is now a cavernous abyss.
Those outside the top 20 teams in the country are being cast aside as the rich get richer and English football takes on a familiar narrative.
However, this season could finally buck the trend.
Watford’s Quique Sanchez Flores, Bournemouth’s Eddie Howe and Norwich’s Alex Neil are all renowned for having their teams playing attacking and inventive football.
In Howe and Neil particularly, the EPL has two of the youngest and brightest managers that the top league has to offer. Any opposing sides under the misapprehension that their fixtures provide a guaranteed six points will be sorely mistaken.
All three teams play football in the right way and, importantly, play to entertain. That aspect of the game seems to have been sanitised to such an extent as to be almost non-existent.
Supporters now pay what amounts to a vast financial outlay for many and in return entertainment is the minimum requirement and expectation.
Of course, the upgrade in quality cannot that the three teams will face cannot just be dismissed because entertainment alone might win them friends but won’t augur well for actually winning too many games.
“Winning ugly” is a trendy catch all for what used to be termed the grinding out of three points and a solid backbone throughout each side is therefore essential. Here too all three are onto a winner.
The Cherries in particular have talent right through the spine of the side.
Callum Wilson missed a couple of months of the 2014/15 season but still managed to fire 23 goals in Bournemouth’s race to the Championship title.
His understanding of the game has developed immeasurably under the tutelage of Howe, as has Harry Arter’s, a footballer who plied his trade in the non-league set up just a few season’s ago.
A tigerish midfield dynamo, Arter is intelligent in a football sense and a sound passer of the ball, but adds to his skill set with a physicality to his game which will hold him in good stead for the demands of Premier League football.
Tottenham could well regret letting Adam Smith, a 23-year-old competent central defender leave White Hart Lane.
Smith is combative, competitive, and hard but fair in the challenge. He’ll ruffle a few feathers for sure, but Bournemouth and the other promoted teams are going to need just that mentality to ensure they don’t become one season wonders.
Watford and Norwich have their own star players too who can more than hold their own against supposed superior opposition.
For the first time in a while, there is a genuine chance that the three teams that come up will use their debut season back in the big time to consolidate and prosper.
And English football will be far better for it.
