Man United and Spurs fans claim not to be worried…

If you have anything to add on any subject, mail us at theeditor@football365.com

 

Some rare Man United optimism; they will run Man City close
So it seems before a ball has even been kicked in anger one of either City or Liverpool (ever the optimists) are to be crowned Champions, United under Jose will spontaneously combust because you know it’s Jose and the biggest club on the planet will fall into obscurity.

Well it would if you believe what they have to say on Planet Scouse, this is Liverpool who haven’t won the League in 29 years yet for every one of those 29 long years we have been told “It’s their year” and “United are in free fall” well sorry to burst your collective bubbles United may be going through a tough period (still winning trophies mind) and they may have parasitic American owners but they are still United and after a god awful season last year still managed to finish second above the all-conquering Liverpool; we even won the same amount of trophies as them too.

I will make a bold prediction that not only will United finish above Liverpool they will also run City close this season, when the chips are down and you write us off then that is when we come back fighting, Jose loves a battle and we have players who are desperate to show the World they really are good enough.

Lastly to all the United fans bitching and moaning on social media, give your heads a wobble and stop being so entitled, it’s a damn good job you didn’t get to watch United under Sexton, now that was anti football.
Paul Murphy, Manchester

 

…Cheer up Jeffrey Abu, Lagos! Remember the last time Man Utd began their season at home to Leicester? It was a World Cup year, ending in ‘8’ and the previous season they’d finished second behind an irresistible, free-flowing, domestic league-and-cup-winning force of nature. Yet United ended up winning the Treble the following May!

There you have it. Success this season is surely nailed-on! Jose will galvanise our shattered spirits with his uplifting positivity, City will be edged out in the league by one point and beaten in an epic FA Cup semi-final. We’ll win the Champions League with a last-gasp winner from Antony ‘SuperSub’ Martial, Pogba will dye his hair ginger and finally play like Paul Scholes in midfield while Rashford and Lukaku will be the new Cole and Yorke!

OK. Perhaps that last paragraph was a bit of a stretch. Apart from the bit about Pogba’s hair.
Lee, clutching all the straws

Liverpool hype needs to stop now
As a Liverpool fan, I’m very excited about the upcoming season, but also very worried about the disproportionate levels of hype around the team and the amount of Liverpool fans that are really just begging to be force-fed some humble pie (looking at you, Dan from the morning mailbox.)

I’m not hoping that we draw or lose against West Ham, but I won’t be too bothered either if we do just so everyone will shut the f*** up for a while, and the team will be reminded that they haven’t won anything yet and won’t be handed any points on a silver platter.

Dropped points this early wouldn’t kill us, and it’d be a good lesson on the perils of hubris.
Eamonn (Keita does look sexy though), Hanoi

 

Fed up of Arsenal now
Well that’s one way of killing all of the optimism around the new Unai era on Sunday.

Does Stan actually like empty seats?! because after the West Ham game – that’s what he’s going to get.

I’m just sick of it all now.
Graham Simons, Gooner, Norf London

 

Chas Newkey-Burden, you are spot on. I sent a mail a few days ago telling people not to get sucked into the Arsenal optimism and that this was after all Arsenal, so it would all inevitably go t*ts-up at some point.

It has taken Stan Kroenke buying up the club (with a loan no less, copying the Glazier model) to make others notice, but here were are. Back in the safe and comfortable feeling of inevitable misery somewhere down the line for Arsenal Football Club.
Adonis (I stand by everything I said previously about Stan Kroenke) Stevenson, AFC

 

Kroenke changes nothing
Controversial take, but I really don’t care that Kroenke is buying out that last 30%. It’s not a disaster, or a sad day or any of that nonsense. It was an inevitability in this sporting world we live in. One billionaire sells to another. So what.

Plus, is he really the worst? Everyone assumes he’s immediately going to load us with debt, or drain us dry but the man is absolutely loaded. He isn’t an utter liability like the Cellinos and Mandarics of the world, or scum like Ashley. He’s just a boring, private bloke. He wants a steady, profitable ship. Which to be honest we’d get if were were fan owned or any other arrangement anyway.

So yeah, Arsenal has switched from being run by toffs with silly names who were ‘accountable’, whatever that means, to a mixed ownership of outrageously rich people and toffs, to now just one outrageously rich person.

He’s not the sugar daddy of some Arsenal fan’s guilty fantasies and he doesn’t give a shit what the AST think (do I?) but this changes nothing.
Tom (aware the above is a cynical take, of course I wish the Prem had German model, but that ship sailed 14 years ago, so blame Chelsea) Walthamstow

 

Arsenal will finish fifth
So, with another season on the horizon and Man City looking worringly good, I thought I’d shift the focus to my own team’s (Arsenal) performance this upcoming season.

Gazidis is the main man, with Mslintat (Dortmund), Sanllehi (Barcelona) and Huss Fahmy (erm..Sky) in supporting roles. Take 2018 as a whole, and it’s been a good year for transfers. Problem positions addressed, a big name in Aubameyang alongside some exciting players for the future in Guendouzi, Torreira and Mavropanos.

On the other hand, take this summer by itself and our dealings have been underwhelming. Lichensteiner was a good player once, but is hardly an upgrade at right-back–which is damning given how poor Bellerin has been. Sokratis and Leno also scream Europa League quality.

The biggest issue is going into another season with a big player running down his contract (Thanks, Fahmy!). Ramsey’s deal should of been tied up last season. If he hadn’t signed we could have sold him early in the window and reinvested in the squad. That’s not to say I don’t rate Ramsey, but the prospect of being bent over a barrel for the millionth season in a row is one humiliation too far. Especially by a player who really isn’t world class.

Overall I think we’re in for a toughy. As much as Gazidis loves to talk about “ushering in a new era”, it’s hard to be optimistic when this is the third one in ten years.

What happened to the other two you say? Well, they were shit, basically.

My prediction? 5th. Ahead of either Spurs or Chelsea.
Liam Gabriel Hoskins (“Catalyst for change? Catalyst for bullshit”) AFC

 

Some Spurs optimism; rather no signings than another Sissoko
Some Spurs fans are getting quite irate at Mr D Levy and his supposed failings in this summer’s transfer window but I’m not and I’d like to explain why.

It’s Levy – this is the way he does things we may not like it but there’s still time for a couple of players to come in. It wouldn’t be a proper transfer window if we didn’t have Levy time.

The club are way ahead of the plan which was put in place when Poch joined. Sure we’d all love the club to win a trophy, it hasn’t quite happened yet but it’s coming, we have a young settled squad which will only get better under Poch.

We haven’t lost any vital players from last year’s first-team regulars, Alderweireld and Rose may or may not go but they didn’t play a lot last season anyway. They will be a big loss but we’ve shown we can play well without them. Personally I think Toby will leave as he really wants to go and Rose will stay so one of the two late signings will need to be a CB.

Dembele is the player I would be annoyed about if he’s sold, unless it’s a massive fee, as I would use him this year to help the likes of Luke Amos get into the match-day squad. It would give Dembele a rest if a player like Amos can step up to the first team as a sub at first and then a starter if he’s good enough, plus it would show that the academy can produce players of the quality needed for a top-six team. (As a side note I do think a lot of PL chairmen are going to start asking questions about why they should be paying way over the odds for average players when millions are being spent on academies up and down the country.)

Plus there’s absolutely no value in the market if you’re trying to buy squad players. I’d rather we bought no one than have another Sissoko. You may as well promote the academy players and see if they can cut it.

If you want to buy players of sufficient quality to challenge or replace most of our first team then you’re going to have to spend at least 50 to 75 million for each player. Fans bang on about a 150 million transfer budget but this was just press talk I’ve never seen anything from the club about a figure. Personally I think we only have about 50 to 60 million plus whatever we make from selling players and that’s only enough for one great player unless Toby and Rose go for 100 million.

Levy is trying to get the players Poch wants, I’m sure of it but some fans seem to believe every bit of transfer gossip and think all you have to do is rock up at said club wave a load of cash under the nose of the chairman and bob’s your uncle you’ve got the player. We don’t have the buying power of City, Utd, Chelsea or even Liverpool at the moment.

I know Levy drives a hard bargain but so do all the other chairman plus you’ve got the added joy of dealing with agents who want massive wages for their average players and massive fees for themselves, is it so bad that Levy wants value for money?

Levy has done wonders for Spurs, sure he could risk it all and spend big to try and win the league or UCL but we just don’t have the finances to do that were already punching above our weight by staying in the top four for the last three seasons.
Fenspur (Kane to score a bucket load of goals in August) THFC

 

…To the best of my knowledge Spurs will start the season with the very same squad of excellent players as they did last season. Toby wants to leave, that is apparent but he hasn’t left, so as it stands we have the potential of playing Vertonghen, Sanchez and Alderweireld in a back three, in front of World Cup winner Hugo Lloris. Alongside them we have Tripper and Davies as wing backs (perhaps Rose comes in for Davies).

Up front we have Kane, Lucas (trust me, he’s going to be fantastic this season), Son, Dele, Lamela and Eriksen. Bearing in mind that when Kane has missed matches we play with a roaming front four that has been exceptional. Look at the match at Stamford Bridge or Bournemouth last season…seven goals in Kane’s absence alone, that department seems pretty set.

Midfield is where it all starts to look a bit iffy. Dier is a great squad player but limited and sometimes unreliable. That said, for three season I have him as one of our most important players, as does Pochettino. Wanyama, Winks and Dembele are all injured, injury prone or returning from injury. This is clearly a problem. I don’t see Grealish as the answer but am happy to have him as an option.

So unless Skipp suddenly becomes the player he’s anticipated being at least two years earlier than expected, or Winks can come back to full fitness as the player who dominated Madrid in two games last season, we desperately need a midfielder.

I’d love to see Tielemans at Spurs, failing that Ndidi has impressed me no end for Leicester but can’t see that happening without parting for £40m – £50m….

Lastly, this is a fantastic squad of players who know each other inside out. The doomongers might well have a point but I personally can’t see why so many think Spurs are doomed, just because others have bought players in. It’s not as though that is the rubber stamped seal of guaranteed success.
Dan Mallerman

 

What now for Brighton?
Well, seeing as someone has started it, and I have some time free on my lunch break, I thought I’d give my season predictions for Brighton & Hove Albion this season…

Where they’ll finish: 14th. We’ll be a little more comfortable this season than last, we have a much stronger squad and we have the ability to rotate freely in most positions now which will see us not struggle so much due to fatigue at certain points of the season. Our home form should improve and hopefully we turn some of those agonising draws into wins.

Cup Run: 4th round League Cup, 5th round FA Cup – I don’t expect us to give it a massive effort in the cups, but it’ll be a good opportunity to give the squad players a go.

Player of the Year: Jose Izquierdo. He had us on our feet last season in his ‘bedding in’ season. I think he’ll cause many right-backs some severe problems this year with his pace.

Top Goalscorer: Tough one this. I genuinely have no idea, and I’m not sure how quickly Alireza Jahanbaksh will settle in, so I’ll take a punt on Tomer Hemed. He was unlucky last season losing his place to Murray just as he got going, and the luck is with him this season as he looks like being our defacto striker due to injuries to Andone, Locadia and Murray. He’s had a great pre-season so I fancy him making the position his own early on. Which is a nice surprise, as I’ve always liked him.

Best New Signing (including players you think you’ll sign this week): Bernardo. He looks like being the only one of the new signings who should slot straight into the first team at left-back, and he’s clearly no mug after two seasons at RBL in the Bundesliga.

Breakout Season: Ben White, if he stays, could play a big part if we play with three at the back at all this season. If not, young Swedish striker Viktor Gyokeres played a big part in pre season and due to the above injuries I think he’ll get some early game time from the bench. I fancy him to score a couple and stick around in the manager’s plans.

How Long the Manager will Last: All season, whatever happens. We love Chris Hughton!

Player Who Unexpectedly Drops Out of the First Team Picture: Glenn Murray due to old father time catching up with him, otherwise it’s really hard to picture anyone else for any reason dropping out completely. Gaetan Bong is the other obvious choice, but wouldn’t be entirely unexpected if Bernardo is up to scratch.

Best Goal: Izquierdo surely. He’ll take on three or four players on the counter and bang one into the top corner from 30 yards at some stage.

Bogey Team they Won’t be Able to Beat: Liverpool. Not even a hope of a draw at home to be honest. As much as I love Chris, he hasn’t got the best record against them!

Team they’ll Beat When they Shouldn’t: Manchester United, again. We outplayed them three times last season (2 league, 1 FA cup) yet somehow (poor finishing) only beat them the once. We’ll do it again this season.

Most ‘Sorely Missed’ Player: Matty Ryan, when he goes off for a month to play for Australia in the Asian Cup. I hope that our young goalkeeper, Christian Walton, can be recalled from Wigan for the month of January and then sent back at the end of the window to continue his development there

What Gary Lineker Will Be Most Impressed By: The sportsmanship and humility of Chris Hughton, obviously, or Bruno still legging it up and down the wing at RB (he turns 38 in October and doesn’t look like slowing down, he only gets better each season)

What Graeme Souness Will Get Most Angry About: Our signings mostly being foreign, Knockaert waving his arms in the air when things don’t go his way, us trying to play pretty football at times.

Looking forward to the new season, bring on Saturday!
Naz, BHAFC, Staines-upon-Thames


Do we need to talk about Bournemouth?

Many people sending in predictions and who will be the most overachieving team.

Everyone needs to stop and stick to one team for this: AFC Bournemouth.

The fact they are so widely accepted to be a PL team now is one thing. But the way they have been playing in pre-season has been totally overlooked.

Did you see the hammering of Marseille the other day? Did you see the quality of goals scored? If Man City had pulled out a performance like that people would be claiming the PL title is already over.

If you want to look out for a team that will possibly surprise you then keep your eye on the south coast.

Although, should people be surprised by Eddie Howes team now? 4th season in the PL and playing fantastic football with decent players coming in.

£25m paid for a player. Bournemouth. £25m rising to £30m. They have a stadium of 12,000.

Incredible.
The Ginger Pirlo

 

Ed’s predictions
On the subject of predictions, here are some things that will definitely be a possibility of happening this season:

* Ryan Sessegnon will become the new Frank Lampard. By this, I mean his every goal will be followed ‘and what makes it even more incredible is that he’s a left-back’, ignoring that his job is to get into scoring positions inside the penalty area, instead of sticking to the conventions of his nominal position.

* “Selhurst Park under the lights” will become the new “cold, wet Tuesday in Stoke”.

* One person will continue to pronounce Jose in the Spanish rather than Portuguese style in their Totally Football Show appearances.

* Glenn Hoddle will give up punditry and return to singing. He’s not especially good at either but at least he sounded like he was enjoying himself as a pop star.

* Use of the word “footy” will remain an accurate indicator that someone’s opinions will not be worth listening to.

* A relatively unknown player will play really well in the Champions League. The following morning will see both an F365 Says in praise of him, and the first mail in the mailbox from someone wanting Manchester United to sign him.

* The penny will finally drop with some fans about how transfers work, whether it’s that lower clubs are basing their asking price on the cost of replacing their player, or that suggesting their club should simply swap several underwhelming squad players for someone else’s best player is the mindset of a moron.

* Across the whole season, more than 1000 goal kicks at Grantham will be shanked out for a throw-in as visiting goalkeepers fail to deal with the crosswinds.

* Newcastle United’s loan signing of Salomon Rondon will lead one mailboxer to confidently predict him to be the top scorer.

* At the end of the season, the F365 writer with the most correct predictions will win a barbecue, but not a fence.
Ed Quoththeraven