The Barclay’s Premier League began with Jamie Vardy and Leicester City, now the hunted, falling to Hull.
Guy Bailey
Editor’s Note: Guy Bailey writes columns for The Yanks Are Coming throughout the Barclay’s Premier League season. In those columns, he’ll discuss the happenings overseas in the world’s most popular sports league, as well as The Championship, where many Americans ply their trade. Guy offers a unique perspective on the league as a Brit who lived for a long while in the United States before moving back to Teeside a year ago. He can be reached at guyrbailey@gmail.com and you can follow him on Twitter all EPL season at @guyrbailey.
It’s been a while
There have been two British governments, three Prime Ministers, two Presidential terms, the rise of the smartphone, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tinder, Grindr, Uber, Tesla, and let’s face it – Drumpf – since my own team, Middlesbrough, last troubled the Premier League. Heck, it was still the Premiership and I had just moved to Atlanta with a one year old as we slid embarrassingly into the Championship in 2009.
A lot of things in the big league are the same – Manchester United are still the biggest name in the show with a punchy, pugilistic manager who can turn from bully to confidante in the blink of an eye although this time his nemesis is just on the other side of town. Wenger still holds onto the Iron Throne in North London but he has two insurgents nipping at his heels for the title of top dogs in the capital. Mauricio Pochettino, who really does remind me of Bruno Kirby in Donnie Brasco, and Iggy Pop tribute act Antonio Conte picking up the baton at Chelsea. Meanwhile big news and noise to the East as West Ham move into their publicly funded stadium at the old Olympic park seemingly in the ascendancy but such displays of hubris rarely end well in this land of morality tales made flesh.
Ronald Koeman has tried rapidly to use the John Stones money to make Everton great again.
Ronald Koeman has left Southampton promising to make Everton great again, and after selling John Stones to Manchester City, has embarked on a spending spree with the same verve and determination as a dad who remembers it’s his son’s birthday tomorrow ten minutes before Toys R Us closes. Meanwhile Jurgen Klopp, who in another life would be running a startup or a cult in the North California mountains – the architect of Gengenpressen appears to be bringing in some pieces that make sense.
One year Southampton will get their annual reboot wrong and struggle but not this season despite losing Wanyama, Conte and Mane while Watford and West Brom look to have enough. Burnley are leaving their retooling late although compared to basket-cases Hull, missing a manager and enough players to fill the bench on opening day, they look like Real Madrid. Bias aside, Middlesbrough do look the best equipped of the new boys to make a fist of survival with Alvaro Negredo and Vitor Valdes being bona fide top level stars with exciting youngsters Viktor Fischer and Marten De Roon coming aboard. With a core of local British talent like Stewart Downing and Ben Gibson with the likes of George Friend, Albert Adomah and Jordan Rhodes ready to grab their shot at the big time with both hands, Boro could be this year’s Watford or at least Bournemouth who both look to have enough to be clear. Swansea worry me, losing two main men from last season – Ashley Williams to Everton and Andre Ayew to West Ham – they resemble a man who popped out to Kroger and come back to find his wife, dog and best friend missing – they could retool with steel or fold like a deckchair.
Sunderland replaced England-bound Sam Allardyce with David Moyes, a manager with a reasonable pedigree and face you would not want to see peering into your bathroom window at 3am, who will do his best to steady a ship that is already three quarters underwater but they might benefit from a weak intake this year. And what of the Champions of England, the swashbuckling Leicester City – heading the charge into the Champions League?
Well, chuckled genial Claudio Ranieri, as soon as we get 40 points we might let loose again.
The footballing equivalent of Ike gathering his commanders on the eve of D-Day and giving them a lecture on the benefits of combined home and car insurance. Footballers as we know can really only retain one idea in their heads at any one time and if this is “pressure’s off boys” then it might be harder to reapply the iron to their heels if they get off to a sticky start.
Regardless, as I write watching two Chinese eight year olds flying about the Gymnasium like Pokemon escaping a ball and a bunch of Roller Derby players turning up on a basketball court sans skates and claiming they’ve invented a new sport called Handball, it’s good to have the BPL circus back.
Joe Hart is Pep’s first victim.
Broken Hart – 17.8.16
The new season got underway with some old certainties broken and new ones established. Leicester City started the defence of their title at 12:30pm but it might as well have been after midnight as the four elegant chargers – Mahrez, Vardy, Okazaki and Drinkwater turned back into mice and the stone hearted defence became as soft as an old pumpkin as crisis club Hull City turned the Princes back into Cinderellas for 90 minutes.
Hull, in the midst of a fractious takeover, at war with fans and with only 13 fit senior players, managed by caretaker Mike Phelan after Steve Bruce walked out in protest over no incoming transfers, gave the underdogs a taste of their own medicine using their own template – tireless midfield work epitomised by Sam Clucas and Robert Snodgrass out Vardying the man himself with a tireless display up front and a touch of class for his winner.
While their title odds won’t be anything like the 5000-1 of last season, they may have drifted a little out now especially with Arsenal coming to town, themselves wounded by an opening day defeat themselves to Klopp’s Liverpool who after the hosts missed a penalty, started partying on the touchline after taking a 4-1 lead. They hung on but whatever patience and leeway Wenger had looked to have evaporated away like the last of the summer wine (British aging joke there).
Pep Guardiola unveiled his template for the new Manchester City although limping past a limited Sunderland with an own goal three minutes from time probably wasn’t in the tiki taka template. The biggest surprise was the omission of Joe Hart to put the cap on a desperate Summer for the declining England stopper. This may come as a surprise to anybody who wasn’t aware of the Spaniard’s predilection for footballers over goalkeepers but frankly Hart has brought a lot of it on himself – see below – a mooted loan to Everton might be the best thing for all parties.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06di41rUOdo
Ibrahimovic continued to write his own headlines with the winner in a 3-1 stroll at Bournemouth to get the Mourinho Utd bandwagon rolling and the headline writers are just waiting for the first misdemeanour with the only thing missing from his villains ensemble of tache and brylcreemed bonce being a black cloak, top hat, and a railway line to tie a blonde to.
New Season but we saw some new rules brought in with the most eye-catching being the zero-tolerance approach to visible dissent.
This was most prevalent at the Riverside with Stoke City’s Shay Given getting a justified yellow for racing 20 yards outside of his box to complain about a tackle on one of his defenders and another for peroxide top-knotted hoodlum Marko Arnautovic slapping the turf and flinging his arms about like your three year old if you brought him fishsticks and peas WHEN HE DIDN’T WANT ANY PEAS!!!
The new rule- and the differing manner in which it will be enforced, simply because of human error- stood out even more when the referee in the Chelsea v West Ham match ignored a typical low-level assault on Adrian by the Ant Hill Mob’s leader Diego Costa.
Like most things in the EPL, this will last as long as it doesn’t affect a big club then as soon as it does and Klopp, Conte, Pep or Jose bleat to the press about vendettas then it will quietly be tucked away and it will be four letter open season on the officials once again.
As noted, Guy Bailey writes on the Barclay’s Premier League for The Yanks Are Coming. Want more Guy Bailey? We highly recommend his new book, Blessay From America, a collection of writings made while living in America, where he was married to a southern belle and saw his son born. Wnat to read the book? Then purchase here.