Hull City Tigers
That`s what your cookie cutter official
website calls you, so suck it up Hull fans. The website is also holding a riveting
poll on which shirt you would buy, home, or away? Why would you choose the away
kit, unless you secretly wanted to hide your allegiances behind a strip so
plain and white you could pass for a county cricketer. The Hull City Official
Supports club website runs a far more interesting poll about when was your
favourite Hull game at Wembley. Though I’m a bit suspect of this site, as no
one comments on anything, and they seem to be excited by the new shirt sponsor.
Three years with a Kenyan betting site across my chest wouldn`t exactly get my
pulse racing.
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| Oompa Loompa Cosplayers pictured at the recent ComicCon. |
Why This Won’t Be Your Year
When your own manager wants nothing to do
with you after promotion, you know you’re in trouble. When some of your best
players are more than willing to drop back down a division rather than tog out
in the top tier, you should probably think twice before forking out for that
season ticket too. With the opening day looming it seems you will be reduced to
picking eight fit players, a cream telephone box in midfield, with two airfix
planes up front, to make up the starting eleven. That opening day fixture is
none other than Premier League Champions Leicester City, who will be more than
happy to come and win one nil, leaving you with that faint hope that maybe you
can compete this season.
Of course lots of people blame the owners,
the Allam family, for this state of affairs. But what did you expect a
billionaire to do with an exotic wild animal, only to shoot it dead, skin it
into a nice rug, all before giving it a cute nickname? The club is currently up
for sale (kind of), but not before the owners get that sweet, sweet TV money,
sucker some fans into season tickets, and perhaps some of that parachute
payment cash after inevitable relegation. Buying Blackpool probably looks like
a safer investment at the moment, plus you`d at least get a successful ladies
team with them.
The team captain is sidelined for three
months with injury. The caretaker manager has never managed an actual game from
the dugout as a manager before. All your best players played in the Premier
League two years ago and they were crap then, so why would this season be any
better?? Oh those heady days of Phil Brown. In fact they should build a statue
of Phil Brown serenading Giovanni and Bernard Mendy outside the KCOM stadium to
remind fans of the good old days, Hull City Council should get on this right
away.
You Couldn`t Write The Script
If they can keep all the other more
ambitious teams from buying all their half talented players then perhaps they
have a chance of staying up. You don`t get out of the Championship without a
somewhat decent first eleven. Another bright spot has been the preseason form
of Adama Diomande. The Norwegian was one of the top scorers in the Tippeligaen
not so long ago and could transfer that to the Premier League, where you don`t
have to play as many games in the Arctic Circle.
Burnley
Face it Burnley fans, this is just a year
of travelling to strange places to watch football games before the serious
business of gaining promotion from the Championship in 2017/18 begins next
August. You know this, I know this, the manager knows this, and the owners
definitely know this. So let`s be realistic here before any talk of `doing a
Leicester` enters our heads.
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| What was it like to be on the conveyor belt of great Liverpool defenders Jon? |
Why This Won’t Be Your Year
You might come from a small town, but you’re
not even interesting enough to have the smallest stadium. Your captain is from
Chester, which is bloody miles away, and your top scorer comes from the far
flung lands of Wolverhampton, so stop pretending like you’re the guardians of English
football parochialness. Your manager is from Kettering; it’s easier to get to Paris
from Kettering than to travel up to Burnley. So stop pretending you`re a small
club. Ramsbottom United are a small club. You are not a small club.
Speaking of your manager, I guess the best
thing that can be said about him is that after Burnley sold all their `stars`
when they dropped out of the Premier League two seasons back, they all turned
out to be a bit crap without him. Oh how Kieran Trippier would love to be
supplying long balls to a grateful Danny Ings right about now. He was also
linked with the English manager’s job during the summer. It seems the FA
decided to go with the one manager who probably plays more long balls than Sean
Dyche. England play once a month, and most of those shouldn`t even be classed
as a competitive international. Dyche could have managed the two jobs easy.
What did the FA think he was going to do? Call up Dean Marney??
Also, what’s up with your club crest? It
looks like something drawn on the ZX Spectrum. A colour bleed of garish purple
and yellow. The club should go back to the crest they had which featured two
lions and a bee, and didn’t have a stork at the top. But I guess it’s not as
boring as the West Ham crest.
You Couldn`t Write The Script
This side is surely better than the team
that couldn’t get a win in the Premier League until November in 2014. Plus
Andre Gray is definitely better than Danny Ings and should help them get more
goals than the pathetic effort of 28 goals in 14/15.
They’ve also dodged a bullet when Joey
Barton decided to retire to write a few chapters of his autobiography up in Scotland,
as he hasn’t been good in the Premier League since about 2010. He surely would
have seen red under the bright lights of Match of the Day, before getting into
an altercation with one of Turf Moor’s racist bottle throwing fans on the way
to his early bath.
Another positive is that majority of the
league is composed of teams barely better than most of the sides in the
Championship, and if they can make themselves hard to beat they can reach the
promised land of finishing ahead of Sunderland or someone…
Middlesbrough
Seemingly by default Middlesbrough are
everyone’s favourite team in the north east. Or at the very least, in their top
three or four. The `Boro have been knocking on the door of promotion for so
many seasons now everyone was just waiting for them to just give up and accept
a life of Championship obscurity, a la Ipswich Town. But no, they seem
determined to eke out a season in the top tier before doing that, probably
after Steve Gibson has gone through everyone on his LinkedIn account in January,
all their players leave after getting a taste of Premier League action and
think they are bigger than the club, topped off with a Lee Cattermole goal at
the Riverside in March rooting them to the bottom of the table right before
Aitor Karanka`s heart explodes, leaving the dream team of Gareth Southgate and
Gordan Strachan to be drafted in to sort things out. Enjoy it `boro fans.
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| Maybe he thought there was no relegation like in the MLS? |
Why This Won’t Be Your Year
And what`s going on with signing all these
players in pre-season? How many new faces do you need? You know what clubs
signed a stupid amount of players last year? Yep, Aston Villa and Newcastle,
and it worked out great. You even went and signed Villa`s goalkeeper. The team
that conceded the most goals in the league, you went out and signed their
goalkeeper. I never understand why you would let your squad be infested by
players who only a few months previous were strolling around as their team was
getting embarrassed. Yeah, that’s the kinda spirit we need. Middlesbrough even
played Villa in a friendly recently, and beat them (thank god). Luckily your
manager seemed to take positives from it, saying the game was good for
everyone. Oh great, a run out against Villa will prepare you for the exertions
of the Premier League. It`s like pushing over a bunch of toddlers in preparation
for a fight in the UFC. And once again, Brad Guzan, jeez, you might as well
have loaned Bruno Zuculini again to see if he was any good in goals.
Of course everyone is getting excited about
Alvaro Negredo. A player so good he couldn`t get a game at Madrid. A player so
good Valencia let him go on loan despite only having one senior striker in
their squad. A player so good Spain didn’t bother bringing him to EURO 2016
even though they were crying out for a goalscorer. But what about all those
goals at Man City you ask? Well, he only scored nine league goals in his one
season there. The same amount as Danny Welbeck that year. But if you need
someone to score a hat trick in the league cup, Negredo`s your man. So when Middlesbrough
draw Gillingham in the EFL cup, high tail it down to the bookies and lump on
boro fans, you`ll be swanning around the banks of the River Tees like Alfie
Common the next day.
You Couldn`t Write The Script
Hey, but you never know. Perhaps this is
the season that Stewart Downing finally delivers on that promise he`s been bottling
up for the last 15 years. Remember that time he was your top scorer? The same
year that saw Middlesbrough beat Man City 8-1! How long will it take the team
to reach eight goals this year? I`m guessing halfway through October.
Even if things fail to click up front early
on, at least things will be safe at the back. Victor Valdes has won more
honours in his career than Brad Guzan has clean sheets in the Premier League (I
did not make this stat up). Valdes went on a short holiday to Belgium a few
months back, and he still somehow managed to win the Belgian Cup.
Sunderland
Do you know that if you go to every other
Premier League club`s Wikipedia page it will say that `Team X plays in the
Premier League`. Not Sunderland though, their page adds the beautiful caveat of
`currently plays in the Premier League`. Even random compilers of arbitrary
information realize this team is on a stay of execution, and soon it will descend
towards the light of the Championship.
The only reason to go to the stadium is to
take in the `Officer and a Gentleman` ladies nights, unless you find some
perverse pleasure in seeing Man Utd and Spurs rejects try to do an impression
of a back four. I believe the two corners of the main stand have a shrine to a golden
boot and a pair of hooped earrings in honour of the only two people to bring
joy to the ground in living memory, Kevin Philips and Beyonce. It`s going to be
a another long season Sunderland fans, and a long way from the clubs heyday of
the 90s (that`s the 1890s).
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| David Moyes slowly morphing into Roy Hodgson here. |
Why This Won’t Be Your Year
So your manager left to pick an England
squad every few weeks. This is perhaps good news for Jermain Defoe, who surely
should have been rewarded for coming out of retirement in the MLS to rescue the
Black Cats from relegation with a call up to EURO 2016. Though it`s probably
for the best in the long term, as he would have only come back with his soul
crushed like all the other England players.
And who`s the new manager? ……………. drum roll
please …………… David Moyes! I bet that sets the pulse racing doesn`t it. He
followed a tough act at Man Utd and made them worse. He then went to Sociedad
and somehow made them worse too. The pinnacle of his career has been taking
Preston out of the fourth division. You can point to his 11 years at Everton,
but he just made them a sterile club that was happy to finish around sixth
every year. He`ll be the manager everyone forgets managed their club, even
Everton supporters. The managerial equivalent of a blind spot, that tricky
table quiz answer you won’t be able to answer as you down your fifth pint of
Double Maxim.
Before a ball is kicked Moyes is already
rabbiting on about his win percentage. You are solely employed to win football
matches, that`s all you have to do. You could watch animal porn on a projector
and loud speakers in the club museum, but if you win football games no one will
give a crap. Unless your win percentage is hovering around 90%, don`t talk
about your win percentage. I can just see Sunderland winning on the last day of
the season and reaching 40 points to stay up. Only for Moyes to be sacked
because he drew the 37 other league games, leaving him with a shocking 2.6% win
percentage.
You Couldn`t Write The Script
Well, the club isn`t harbouring a pedophile
anymore, so that`s always a plus.
This could be the year Fabio Borini catches
fire and loses the use of his baby finger after celebrating one too many goals.
It could also be the year Defoe swaps his Spurs pillow cases for ones featuring
Samson the Black Cat, and he decides to score goals before Sunderland are six
points from safety sometime in March.
Also, what have you done with Wes Brown? Is
he not a player there? When did he stop being a registered player? I`m half
expecting a Panorama special entitled `The Disappearance of Wes Brown`. Where
they show grainy footage of a figure going up for a corner, only for the away
team to break down field and score. As the camera pans back we can only make
out a cloud of smoke and perhaps the flag of a long extinct fifth or sixth
official.
Bournemouth
Or AFC Bournemouth as they insist on being
called. Is all this just a ploy to be top of the league on opening day? And
what`s with the A anyway? Athletic. Are you sending guys to the Olympics now? Perhaps
Tyrone Mings was bought because of his proficiency in the pole vault. Maybe I
should head to the official club website to find out. Oh dear, oh no, my eyes!
The site is all written in red and white on a black background, I know that`s
the colour of your kit, but why do you assault me like this. A.C. Milan have
the same colour jerseys and their website is far more readable, and that’s in Italian.
Possibly taking more cues from the Italian giants, AFC could stand for `Associazione
Faceto Calcio` but I guess we`ll never know.
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| Hmmmm should've gone for the England job... |
Why This Won’t Be Your Year
Dean Court is getting a second season of
top tier football. This would have been unthinkable back in the days of Harry
Redknapp and Tony Pulis. Thankfully you`ve got a hot young manager who likes to
spend money like a born again Brendan Rodgers, in the effort to keep the
Cherries in the top flight. He also looks like the newborn baby of a tryst
between Dan Dare and an Easter Island head. I`m sure that’s why all these
fringe Premier League and middling Championship players flock to the south west
to be with him.
The season couldn`t start out much tougher
for Bournemouth, as they host Man Utd. If you thought Leeds supporters rioting
through the town in 1990 was bad, wait until Zlatan is finished with you. Artur
Boruc won`t be able to sleep for a month. Josh King will forget where the goalposts
are after seeing his incredible haul of six goals in one season get obliterated
in one afternoon. The team won`t be able to lift themselves off the bottom of
the table for two months. The only highlights in that time will be some of your
new signings snapping their cruciate ligaments after tumbling down some steps
in the Ted Mcdoughall Stand in an ill-advised photo-op.
The Cherries got nine points off the trio
of teams that got relegated last year, that won’t be happening again. They had
the worst defence of all the teams that stayed up last year, so what have they
done to remedy this? They`ve loaned one defender who really wants to be a
midfielder, while paying six million (Yes, 6,000,000) for another player who
has more studs on his boots than first team appearances, and also, doesn`t
really want to be a defender.
You Couldn`t Write The Script
You know, that Jordan Ibe can be quite
handy. He can play on either wing. He has an eye for the odd goal or assist. If
he helps them stay up his fee will seem like a bargain, plus they can sell him
on to Chelsea at three times the price at the end of the season.
Bournemouth overall are a very young squad.
A few good results and they could be this year’s surprise team. A poor man`s
Spurs if you will. Except lacking the flair, and the nagging self-doubt.
