Man Utd title tilt? Man City quad? Checking in on our pre-season target for each Premier League club
Way back in the far off mists of time – or ‘July’, if you prefer – we arrogantly and presumptuously set each Premier League team a target for the upcoming season. You can tell how long ago July was by how mental some of them now sound.
Some teams are already doomed to fail – admittedly because in, say, Manchester City’s case the entirely reasonable target was ‘Win the Quadruple, you frauds’ – but others are firmly on course to meet or exceed their goals. We say ‘their goals’. Our goals. For them.
There are snippets of all those July targets included here but if you want to read the whole thing and laugh at how silly some of it now sounds, you can do so right here.
Arsenal – Another top-four and identifiable if not necessarily successful title challenge
Winning a trophy would be great, but far more important in the longer term to prove to themselves as much as anyone that they’re here to stay. Another top-four finish, a decent run beyond the last 16 of the Champions League and something that can at least be pointed at and called a title challenge of some sort for a reasonable period of time would fit the bill.
Nailed it. Whether they win the title or not, a title challenge it most certainly is. Arsenal certainly don’t look like any kind of flash-in-the-pan one-season wonder and they would certainly expect to come through their Champions League clash with Porto to satisfy the ‘beyond the last 16’ element of the above list of tasks. Next season’s target is going to be much harder, though: Mikel Arteta to remain within his technical area for the entire duration of a competitive football match. Will never happen.
Aston Villa – Win the Europa Conference League
West Ham had a near-flawless record in the competition and with all due respect to everyone involved, they gave no indication across the remainder of the campaign of being a team who might go through a competition with a near-flawless record. It’s a wonderful opportunity for Villa and who knows when it might come around again.
Yeah, we under-clubbed here. Villa may well win the Europa Conference having topped their group (albeit not quite so impressively as West Ham) but the Conference is not the primary target any longer. They’re in the actual for real title race, which to be fair to us was not a widely predicted scenario in July despite their vast improvement over the second half of last season.
Bournemouth – Avoid becoming a ‘careful what you wish for’ cautionary tale
If by October or November people can write drab, ambition-blaming pieces admonishing Bournemouth to be ‘careful what you wish for’ then things have gone wrong. And absolutely none of those pieces will acknowledge the possibility (even likelihood) that O’Neil would have been even less likely to defy gravity.
Those pieces absolutely could and were written in October and (early) November after Bournemouth made a grim start. Those pieces absolutely could not and are not being written in December. So Bournemouth have achieved the overall goal if not quite hit the unnecessarily specific parameters we foolishly included.
Brentford – Top-half finish
European qualification a la Brighton would be the stretch target, but Ivan Toney’s absence will surely be keenly felt and it’s unlikely quite so many members of the Big Seven will quite so violently shit the entirety of their beds this season, so if Brentford just quietly keep on keeping on that will be grand.
Currently 12th, three points behind Chelsea. Still possible, but unlikely. That ‘stretch’ target is right out. Been a tough season, really.
Brighton – Top eight and a decent run in Europe
It’s going to be great fun if they go well in the Europa without entirely f**king their league efforts into the sun. It’s going to be double hard to do so given their own utter lack of experience at juggling all the extra games and the inherent domestic advantage handed to larger rivals Chelsea and Spurs who find themselves luxuriating in unusually fixture-light campaigns under new managers.
Current status: eighth and in the last 16 of the Europa League having sorted out a group containing Ajax and Marseille. Brighton understood the assignment.
Burnley – Still have Vincent Kompany in charge by May
Obviously, avoiding relegation is goal one but for a Burnley that feels a bit of a low bar. Other promoted clubs with less have done rather more than that, and the Clarets should aim a bit higher than mere survival, surely. How high, though? We don’t know. And thus the cop-out. If Vincent Kompany is still their manager on the final day of the season, the season will have gone pretty well.
Hmm. Avoiding relegation currently looking like quite a high bar for a team whose only Premier League wins have come against the teams promoted with them. We already knew they could beat Championship teams on the regular.
Chelsea – Top-half finish
It’s asking a lot, but there were some small signs at the back end of last season that plucky bottom-half stragglers Chelsea really could be a top-10 side if they pull their finger out. They’ve landed a coup with former Spurs boss Mauricio Pochettino intrigued by a project that would appear to be beneath a manager with his CV, but if they can find another half-billion or so to invest and a few more convenient Saudi Arabian clubs to wildly overpay for their forests of deadwood, then who knows what Chelsea might achieve? Brentford and Palace beware!
Many a true word spoken in jest. Currently 10th but closer in points to the four teams immediately below them than the one immediately above.
Crystal Palace – Feel alive
So this season needs to be something more than just existing between ninth and 12th in the Premier League. An unlikely European push. A proper cup run. Anything to get the blood pumping.
Nope.
Everton – Just please anything other than another desperate, fraught relegation scrap
It’s demeaning and exhausting. You should be so much better than this.
A monkey paw element to this given the whole 10-point deduction thing, but in the true on-field-results table Everton would currently be pushing for Europe and even in the actual table Sean Dyche’s vastly improved Toffees are already well clear of strife having wiped out their punishment and more in a four-game winning streak. They are so much better. Well done, everyone.
READ: Everton huge climbers in latest PL mood rankings, but not even Anfield housery can save Man United
Fulham – Another season where everyone forgets all about you by February
Doing a Brighton or even a Brentford would be lovely, but if you’re Fulham and still scarred by just how grimly awful those last couple of relegation seasons were then another quiet season where nobody has to talk much about you at all will be just the ticket.
If anything, those back-to-back 5-0 wins were a little bit too eye-catching, Clive. But on the whole Operation: Invisibility is well on course. Nice and cosy in 11th, bothering neither European nor relegation places with a distinctly forgettable tally of 21 points from 17 games.
Liverpool – Win the Europa League
Obviously the main target is to get back in the Champions League Where They Belong after last season’s disappointment. Should probably be back challenging for the title, really. But the best way for Liverpool to get back into the Big Cup is undoubtedly to win the Europa League. Be lovely stuff, that. It’s the biggest pot Klopp hasn’t won during his time at the club having lost the final to, inevitably, Sevilla in 2016 and not a competition Liverpool get many cracks at these days.
Very much on track here. Won their Europa League group comfily enough and are solid, deserving favourites even after the arrival of the Champions League dropouts. Very much on course to be back in the Champions League via the league anyway, and are indeed currently to be found back challenging for the title.
Luton – Don’t be Derby, and pull down the pants of at least one big club at Kenilworth Road
Obviously Luton will hope to stay up. And they might. Stranger things have happened. Not many, though, and the first task for any club promoted unexpectedly into the top flight is to make sure you don’t go full Derby. If after a decent chunk of the season people are even talking about Derby’s astonishing one-win, 11-point effort in 2007/08 you’ve already got problems.
There is literally no Derby talk now, with Luton only needing two more points to match that legendary 11-point total. Does the 1-1 draw with Liverpool count for the second part of this? We’re tempted to say yes, especially when combined with the general excellence of Luton’s home efforts against the big boys given Arsenal, Man City and Spurs have all been various shades of fortunate to leave Kenilworth Road with one-goal wins.
Manchester City – Quad
If you’re standing still, you’re going backwards. Shades of the old Sid Waddell quote about Alexander the Great and Eric Bristow here, and if City can win all four then and only then can Pep Guardiola be permitted to shed his salt tears.
F***ed it before September was out by losing to Newcastle in the Carabao. Unless you pretend by Quad we meant the Treble plus the Club World Cup. Or the Super Cup. Which we did not. Also, while the Treble remains possible it’s probably quite unlikely, given the league is going to take a fair bit of winning for a team currently fourth. Pep looking very bald and very fraudulent right now.
Manchester United – Win a bigger pot, title challenge that exists in real world
It’s going to be hard for Erik Ten Hag to easily build on what he did achieve last season, but build he must. United don’t have to win the title, but something approaching an identifiable and real title challenge is long overdue. Goes without saying that the top four is mandatory once again, while winning something bigger than the Carabao would also be welcome after last season’s near-misses.
Ah! Well. Nevertheless,
It would be fair to say this season has not gone to plan. Unlike last season, nobody is even pretending United are in the title race. Apart from Sergio Aguero for some reason. That mandatory top-four finish is looking extremely dicey, and the ‘bigger pot’ now has to be the FA Cup because everything else is gone after United managed to contrive a bottom-place finish in a relatively friendly Champions League group.
Newcastle – Identifiable title challenge, trophy
Newcastle’s season targets are essentially the same as Manchester United’s here, which is an indication of how far they’ve come and how quickly. Consolidating their place among the elite should be a given – it will be for other clubs (Spurs, we are as ever looking at you) to determine whether it’s a Big Six or Seven or Twelve but Newcastle should definitely be in it. Winning the title is a lot to ask, but being there or thereabouts for a decent chunk of the season seems a reasonable request for a club with more money than god.
Similar targets to Man United, and only very slightly less bollocksed up. No title challenge – unless you consider the matchday one table to have any intrinsic value – and ending that trophy drought now, again, needs the FA Cup to come to the rescue. Newcastle’s Champions League group was undeniably tougher than United’s but coming last is not a great look for any English team in the Big Cup. Really should have beaten Chelsea in the Carabao quarter-final, too.
We’re not even sure that Eddie Howe will survive the season.
Nottingham Forest – Stay up, keep Steve Cooper, don’t buy another whole new squad
All very achievable. Says much – good and bad – about the club that the last one is the one we’re worried about here.
Might well go down, sacked Steve Cooper, signed 14 players. FFS.
Sheffield United – a 2019/20 rather than a 2020/21
They’ve been an odd kind of yo-yo club in recent years, the Blades, doing the usual shuttling between the Barclays and the Championship but with their own twist: they spend two years at a time in each division, rather than just the one.
Will not be spending two years in the Barclays this time. Genuine danger of this not being 2020/21 but actually something worse.
Tottenham – Win a cup so we can all move on with our lives
Only two half-realistic chances this year as well with no European football, but perhaps that will give them a chance to use their whole arse in the Carabao and FA Cups rather than the half-arsed efforts of the last 10 or 15 years. Spurs are, one way or another, going to be one of the more interesting themes of the season having fallen into such a state of disrepair that they’ve taken a genuinely exciting but extremely high-risk gamble on a new manager who might well be absolutely brilliant but arrives with zero big-league experience.
Spurs have certainly been one of the more interesting themes of the season, but the arrival of Ange Postecoglou and absence of European football was not enough to trigger a change in the quantity of arse committed to the Carabao as a second-string side went out tamely at Fulham in round two. Surely – surely – going to give the FA Cup a proper crack if they can get past Burnley in round three and welcome back some key players from injury.
West Ham – Enjoy their trophy-winning status, don’t get in another silly relegation battle
Have rather adorably taken to describing themselves as ‘European Champions’ after winning the Europa Carabao but when you haven’t won a trophy for 42 years you have to be allowed to slightly lose the run of yourselves when you finally scratch that itch. Especially after the manner in which they beat Fiorentina with Jarrod Bowen’s last-minute goal. Can thus spend this entire season revelling in it, reminding Spurs about it at every opportunity and just making sure they don’t do anything completely stupid like getting relegated.
Done and done. Have wheeled out the European Champions song at every ground they’ve visited, and have entirely avoided anything so silly as another relegation battle. Might even win the Europa League, you never know.
Wolves – Top-half finish
Their most important work of the summer has already been completed in convincing Lopetegui to stay, but the signings he was presumably promised have not yet materialised. Lots of time, though. No panic just yet.
Whoops. The panic duly arrived right before the season started, at which point this target would have certainly been amended to survival at all costs. As it is, that top-half finish isn’t entirely out of the question. They’re only three points behind 10th-placed Chelsea, who are terrible.