Barclays Premier League 2016-17 starts tomorrow and it will be one incredible season with new quality players and, more than ever, quality managers. Jose Mourinho, Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp and Antonio Conte will battle it out with Arsene Wenger and the title holder Claudio Ranieri.
So let’s play the prediction game, or power ranking if you want to call it that, and see who will finish where in this BPL season. Will it be United with Pogba and Zlatan? Chelsea to reclaim the throne? City with their £50m signings?
Let’s go through the list from 10 to 1.
10 Southampton
The Saints lost Sadio Mane, Graziano Pelle and Victor Wanyama. And even with them, in 2015-16 they were hovering around the 10th position before their incredible March-April-May run which saw them win seven out of last ten and finish sixth. Four points less, and they would have been 9th.
With main players no longer at the Stadium of Light, expect Southampton to sink. So many things went their way in 2015-16 and if we’d only take that away their league positioning would have been much worse. Take away the players too, and you get a team which will be lucky if they don’t go back to the relegation candidate status which has been associated with them for many years.
9 LEICESTER
They won’t repeat what they’ve done last season, and can’t be expected to. Ranieri and the boys took everyone by surprise, and when everyone thought it’s just a surprise, they kept surprising some more. And won the title.
They live and die by Riyad Mahrez’s goals. Not performances but goals, as Leicester rarely dictate play. They’re mostly about Mahrez doing a mazy run and scoring against the run of play. Can any player do that over the course of two seasons? Will he even stay with the club?
8 WEST HAM
It’s still difficult to see West Ham finish in the top six, as for all their efforts in 2015-16 they were rewarded only with a seventh-place finish despite losing only eight games and despite beating each and every big club in the BPL. That’s how competitive this league is, and West Ham are not yet on a level where they can consistently win points. Namely, they were punished for their 14 draws. Expect their tally to be less than 62 points they’ve won last year.
An important thing to note is that West Ham will now be playing on their brand new stadium – and that will have a negative effect on points. Upton Park often won points for this club, and Olympic stadium won’t do that for this team.
2015-16: 7th
7 CHELSEA
The magic is gone and we’ve already seen the best from Diego Costa and Eden Hazard. The team has imploded since Jose Mourinho left, and now Antonio Conte has to create his own team from the ashes of Mourinho’s. Problems run deep in Chelsea however, and are not only related to player quality but to player psychology as well. If Conte can assume control of the locker room – which will waste a lot of his nerves and time – he’s only halfway there as he still needs to make this team perform on the pitch again.
Can he? Not with these signings done so far he can’t. And, knowing that Conte is an obsessed perfectionist, and knowing how Hazard & Co react to such characters, Conte might soon have a mutiny on his hands. This will be one long season for Chelsea fans.
2015-16: 10th
6 EVERTON
Surprised to see Everton here? Ashley Williams is the reason. The die-hard Welsh defender is one of those rare defenders in football who can handle the entire defensive line singlehandedly, and it’s exactly what Everton need. While John Stones is a major talent, his defence conceded 55 goals last term. OK, Williams’ defence conceded 52 in the end, but all fantasy managers know how many clean sheets Williams provided.
What we want to say is this: should Everton take care of their defensive problems – and Ashley Williams is the best step in that direction – they might join the CL race. Plus, Ronald Koeman is here now and his die-hard attitude is just what this team needs in order to break out of their loser attitude which has been embedded in this team for years.
Expect good things from Everton if they can retain Romelu Lukaku.
5 ARSENAL
Arsenal always finish in top four, but this time they might miss out on a top-four finish for the first time since 1994-95. The transfer policy is just abysmal, and the hunger to get the title is non-existant as Arsenal prefer to hover in the CL spots and let someone else go for the title.
In fact, Arsenal were saved from a major embarassment as Leicester won the title, as the Foxes became the main story, otherwise Arsenal squandering the title they already had in their pocket would have been it. Arsenal were the team that finished second behind Leicester, and had a league lead around Christmas, wasting everything in January and only starting to perform again around mid-March. Horrible.
We can expect a better season from Alexis Sanchez, whose ability to shoot as much as he does and not put the ball in the net was just incredible in 2015-16.
4 LIVERPOOL
It’s safe to assume Jurgen Klopp knows what he’s doing. Just look at his transfer policy and his careful planning of all areas of the team. He brought on Sadio Mane and Giorginio Wijnaldum, arguably the two most potent players in the previous season, while getting rid of some lousy players such as Joe Allen.
Liverpool still need to find a proper striker but don’t be surprised if they start making things happen in a strikerless formation, with Mane, Wijnaldum and Firmino doing their magic in the final third.
Liverpool will definitely do better than in their previous seasons, though the lack of a finisher might cost them points just often enough to keep them away from the title battle. It will be a good season for the Reds though.
3 TOTTENHAM
Tottenham had a fantastic season in 2015-16, they kept the team together without any worries they wouldn’t, and brought in Vincent Janssen and Vintor Wanyama who will definitely add to this team’s overall quality.
However, Spurs will likely be overtaken by big spenders and they can’t (yet) hope for a title. In the last season, all big clubs underperformed and left the title race wide open for Leicester and Tottenham. It’s unlikely that will happen again.
2 MANCHESTER CITY
Manchester City and Josep Guardiola splashed out more cash then ever, spending £160m on players, but they’ve done stuff like that before and it hasn’t worked out for them. Most notably, Pep now has to invest a lot of time and effort into making John Stones a defender he is destined to become, and that won’t happen instantly. Without injury-prone Vincent Kompany, City will be shaky at the back.
Expect healthy Sergio Aguero to still be by far the best player on the team, and talents such as Leroy Sane, Raheem Sterling and Kevin de Bruyne will be finding form and losing it over the course of the season.
It shouldn’t be enough to win the title as Manchester City have a big problem with playing against the top teams. They should take care of most minnows though. For all the talent in the squad, Man City still have to become a winning team.
1 MANCHESTER UNITED
While Jose Mourinho is usually at his best in his second season in charge of a club and that’s when he wins the title, this time around he doesn’t look like he’ll waste the first season on slowly educating the players on what he expects of them.
This time he’s much more radical and has been given the world’s most expensive player in Paul Pogba and one of the top strikers in the world in Zlatan Ibrahimović. This would indicate Mourinho’s “second season” could come early.
While Manchester United are not without problems – especially in the defensive department – it doesn’t have to mean anything. With Jose Mourinho, United can be expected to do well against the title candidates. Zlatan will be in charge of winning those unpleasant small matches which may cost you the title if you don’t win them. And that will make all the difference.