At the start of last season I was warned to be careful what I wished for and would happily have settled for a more entertaining brand of football while consolidating our place in the Premier League with another mid table finish.
Looking back objectively on the season only the most difficult to please supporter would dispute the view that the on-field achievement outperformed all expectations. A collection of inspired transfers and a more expansive style resulted in a creditable 7th place finish that included notable victories over Arsenal, both Manchester clubs, Chelsea and a double over Liverpool that finally ended the 50 year hoodoo at Anfield.
The flip side of taking welcome points from teams that we had traditionally rolled over to were the tame defeats to Bournemouth and Newcastle and dropped points against Villa, Norwich, Stoke and the Baggies. Had we beaten the teams we might be expected to beat then it was maybe the golden opportunity to secure the holy grail of a top 4 finish.
Now it is one year later and we begin the new season with relatively short odds for a top 6 finish and well off the radar as relegation candidates. As a long time hope-for-the-best, expect-the-worst type of supporter I wonder whether this optimism is justified considering how much cash is being flashed by all and sundry during the transfer window.
The 2016/17 season has new brooms at both Manchester clubs and Chelsea while Klopp begins to sweep away all of Brendan’s dead wood at Liverpool. Each of these clubs have been spending big as manager’s frantically attempt to build squads in their own image and will likely continue to do so until the window (slams) shut. In North London, Levy’s usual haphazard approach to transfers with all the discernment of a finalist is a Supermarket Sweep competition is now tempered by a competent manager advising him to steer clear of anything past its best before date. Over at Arsenal there is even the possibility of the Gunners making a late appearance at the transfer party as soon as Wenger remembers where he left his ATM card.
We look to have made some shrewd additions to the squad but I don’t believe we have adequately resolved the full back and striker situation. This will be a tough second season for Slaven Bilic as far as Premier League position is concerned especially with the prospect of Europa League to contend with. My heart wants glory but my head sees a repeat of last year’s seventh place at best. Here are my full selected standings.
1 Man City
2 Man Utd
3 Tottenham
4 Liverpool
5 Arsenal
6 Chelsea
7 West Ham
8 Leicester
9 Everton
10 Crystal Palace
11 Stoke
12 Southampton
13 West Brom
14 Bournemouth
15 Sunderland
16 Middlesbrough
17 Swansea
18 Watford
19 Burnley
20 Hull
And of course nobody did bag the £50 million. The odds of correctly forecasting 20 different clubs to finish in a particular order is, according to my calculations, somewhere between 2 and 3 million million millions to one. That’s 18 noughts. I’d call it trillions but that’s not strictly correct. Even if you thought that the top six were cast in stone, and the 14 other clubs had no chance of coming out on top, then perming the favoured six in any order followed by the remaining 14 in every combination would still result in around 63 million millions to one.
These days it doesn’t happen like that. The bottom three divisions all kick off a week before the Premier League. Sky Bet Leagues 1 and 2 have a full league programme on the Saturday with all the games kicking off at 3.00 on Saturday, but the Sky Bet Championship has one game on Friday evening, nine on Saturday afternoon, and a further two on Sunday.
Ironically if the Premier League table is printed in the Monday morning newspapers, we will not be at the bottom although we won’t have played a game (unless of course all the nine games played end in draws – most unlikely!). We will have zero points with a goal difference of 0, whereas it is likely that some teams will have lost their opening game and therefore have zero points with a negative goal difference. So without playing we will have a game in hand over all the other teams (bar Chelsea) but sit above the relegation zone. Of course once the game has been played we could move to either the very top or very bottom of the league!
Under The Hammers 