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Will Liverpool canter to another title? Have Manchester City rediscovered their mojo? Have Arsenal finally found the missing pieces of the jigsaw? Will Chelsea’s midsummer Copa Gianni endeavours catch up with them? Can any or all of the three promoted sides make a decent fist of not going straight back down this time? Will Fulham finish 11th or 12th? How adverse an effect will being the father of twins going through the terrible twos have on the form of Jarrod Bowen? Some early clues to the answers of these and many other questions will be provided this weekend as the latest beautifully packaged model of the Premier League rolls off the assembly line, kicking off with tonight’s ding-dong between Liverpool and what’s left of a Bournemouth carcass that has been feasted upon by a wake of vultures during the transfer window. A club so resilient and resourceful that at one point they exhibited the massed ranks of their lame and halt David Blaine-style in a perspex box at the Vitality Stadium, Andoni Iraola’s side will almost certainly be just fine.
Hopes are high that we might have a title race on our hands and in Viktor Gyökeres, Arsenal have finally got that big No 9 their fans have craved for so long. With decent cover in every position and another graduate from the Emirates creche, Max Dowman [born December 2009 – Football Daily Ed] ready to take his first tentative steps into the top-flight cauldron, there are high hopes this season might finally be the mythical “next season” we’ve been assured has been coming for the past four years. Of course, it’s all fun and games until somebody loses one or more key players to the random vagaries of mid- to long-term knack, gah and ouch as Arsenal, Manchester City and various other clubs discovered in the last campaign, while others – including the reigning champions – remained comparatively unscathed.
