Big Weekend: Man Utd v Arsenal, Chelsea, Florian Wirtz and Eddie Howe

Our great thanks go to England winning the Euros and – to a lesser extent – Chelsea winning the Club World Cup for preventing our football-watching levels dip to a point where we stopped thinking about it every single hour and thus just got on with our lives this summer.

It’s removed the need for a pick-me-up normally required at this time of year to get ourselves ready and raring for the new season. Player welfare, player shmelfare, and while our football itch has been scratched by that delightful bleeding of one season into the next, so too has our great desire to see big football clubs spend the GDP of small countries on new players in a transfer window featuring several middle fingers to the PSR overlords.

All that, the hope of a genuine Premier League title race and the promise of MORE FOOTBALL on TV than ever before and we’re about as giddy as we’ve ever been ahead of a new season and quite the opening weekend of action.

Before you carry on, check out our at-this-point perfect pre-season predictions.

Game to watch: Manchester United v Arsenal
We fully expect Sky Sports to bill this as Benjamin Sesko vs Viktor Gyokeres and for Arsenal fans to wield ‘Chosen One’ signs with the image of their shiny new striker rather than the more accurate ‘The Preferred But Too Expensive One’ tagline.

It’s certainly a point of great intrigue and you can bet your bottoms we will be knee-jerking with the best of them to judge which of the two is the best thing ever and which is therefore a massive flop in comparison on the basis of this single Premier League outing. The only thing conceivably better than both being absolute horses*t would be for Rasmus Hojlund and Kai Havertz to start ahead of them.

This is a much kinder opening fixture for Amorim than it is for Arteta, as all he needs to do is show tangible improvement on last term by not getting walloped by a side for whom anything less than the Premier League title this season isn’t good enough.

Defeat for Arteta to this Manchester United, because it will still be this 15th-placed worst-ever Manchester United despite summer signings, will bring about immediate calls for his sacking from those horrible people and institutions (us) who feed on that sort of thing.

Team to watch: Chelsea
Tipped to win the actual Premier League title by two of our boldest predictors after arguably the best six months of any football club in the world. Champions League qualification was shortly followed by completing the European trophy set before they spanked Paris Saint-Germain in the Club World Cup final to secure the whole trophy shebang.

Goalscoring concerns have been eased and then some through the signings of Joao Pedro and Liam Delap, while further forwards who may or may not be brilliant have been bought to replace those who may or may not have been brilliant and turned out to be the latter.

There are still doubts in these parts over Enzo Maresca’s style of football but no-one will care as long as they’re winning, and we suspect they may do that rather a lot, starting with Crystal Palace at Stamford Bridge on Sunday before a very soft start to the season then sees them face West Ham (A), Fulham (H) and Brentford (A).

With their first game against a team that finished in the top seven last term not until October when they face Liverpool, Chelsea could really build up a head of steam.

Manager to watch: Eddie Howe
Eddie Howe should have been floating on air this summer having been the first Newcastle manager to win a major trophy in 56 years before leading them back into the Champions League last season.

Instead he’s had seemingly endless transfer false dawns and disappointments, presumably bearing the brunt and stress of all of that with no sitting sporting director to shield him from it, while a moping £150m striker decides he doesn’t want to play for a club or manager that’s had a major hand in turning him into that £150m striker.

We imagine he’s dreading this season, not least their opener away at Villa Park on Saturday, in which either William Osula or Anthony Gordon will be leading his line. Having long thought Newcastle would at some point have to upgrade Howe in order to take the next step and challenge for the most major of major honours, we’re now left wondering whether they even deserve him.

He’s now the primary reason, perhaps the only reason, we’re not expecting Newcastle to entirely collapse this season.

READ MORE: Alexander Isak next? Ten Premier League players who went on strike to force a transfer

Player to watch: Florian Wirtz
A combination of the deal being done early, the Hugo Ekitike hijack and the multifarious Isak bombshells since has rendered Liverpool paying a nine-figure sum for Wirtz – which could turn into a British-record transfer fee after add-ons – somehow insignificant.

That can only be good news for him as he makes his Premier League bow against Bournemouth on Friday night, with Enzo Fernandez, Moises Caicedo, Romelu Lukaku and Antony among those in the top 10 most expensive signings of all time who – at least initially – struggled to cope with the pressure of their price tags.

We don’t see Wirtz as a player who will hide in games or struggle to get involved, and we can’t wait to see how he fits into a Liverpool side who never looked as though they were missing a player of his enviable skill in a playmaker role as they stormed to the title last season.

Football League game to watch: Wrexham v West Brom
The Championship newbies conceded 90th and 96th-minute goals to lose 2-1 to Southampton at St Mary’s on the opening day and have a second chance to bloody the nose of another side well-accustomed to the Premier League in West Brom on Saturday. We can almost smell the dozen or so long reads on a first Championship game at a bouncing SToK Racecourse while the travelling Baggies boing in the away stand.

European game to watch: Mallorca v Barcelona
The jeopardy for Marcus Rashford ahead of the first La Liga game of the season isn’t based on whether Hansi Flick will be manoeuvring his team around to hand him a starting spot on the left, but whether Barcelona will actually be able to register him as a Barcelona player in time. They insist that they will, and even if they don’t, this Barcelona is always worth a watch.