Man Utd, Vicario, O’Neil and Burnley: Five things we got completely wrong in the summer

Say what you like about us – and you do, at length, and bless you for that – but we will try and hold our hands up on the, ahem, rare occasions we turn out to have got something wrong. Despite repeated protestations from assorted humiliated staffers every year, the traditional season predictions catastrophe not only still exists, not only is never deleted, but even has attention drawn back to it at least twice every year. It’s cruel is what it is.

But this isn’t entirely about those in some cases already daft-looking predictions. This is about five things we felt quite sure of in the summer that are already looking way off. Football, bloody hell.

1) Guglielmo Vicario and David Raya
We were wrong quite a lot about Spurs, but for the most part it was a question of degree. We thought they’d be fun and good, but not this fun and good. We thought James Maddison was a good signing but not this good. We thought Micky van de Ven was quick but not this quick. And so forth.

What we absolutely got entirely 180 degrees wrong was the wisdom of signing Guglielmo Vicario from Empoli when David Raya was right there. We’ll have to admit to a bit of Our League Bias here, but it’s also true that Premier League experience does count for something, especially in such a crucial position and with a transfer that Spurs simply could not afford to get wrong. Raya, with his spectacular Brentford stats, appeared the very safest of options while Vicario a thoroughly unnecessary gamble even if he was a few euros cheaper.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Highlight reels of his work behind what did appear to be a magnificently entertaining Empoli defence – the perfect preparation, one might say, for joining Tottenham – suggested a keeper capable of the magnificent but prone to the ridiculous. And also pushing shots out straight back where they came from.

What he’s appeared to be in his first nine games for the club is simply brilliant. All the Kane focus of the summer rather took attention away from the fact Spurs also had to replace a keeper who hadn’t always been entirely consistent but had been their well-established number one for a decade. It was a big job and one they could have sorted out for the next decade at a knockdown fee while Raya has struggled on the other side of north London and fellow Big Six newbies Robert Sanchez and Andre Onana have their own moments of angst.

Vicario, meanwhile, is statistically the best keeper in the league. Whoops.

2) Gary O’Neil and Andoni Iraola
Nobody denied that Bournemouth’s sacking of O’Neil after keeping them in the Premier League against the odds was brutal. But we were pretty sure it was also right and certainly justifiable.

There was enough about the whole situation to think it could just have been a lightning strike fluke that wouldn’t be repeated, that a novice manager like O’Neil couldn’t repeat an unlikely trick. And it is worth remembering that once safety was secured, Bournemouth ended the season with a pretty miserable losing run.

Andoni Iraola, an up and coming manager with a big reputation and more experience than O’Neil, appeared to represent a significant upgrade; negligent not to take the opportunity when it was there.

But that winless run from last season is now nine games longer for a Bournemouth side only kept off the bottom of the table by virtue of Sheffield United chucking in the second worst start in Barclays history. O’Neil, meanwhile, accepted the poisoned chalice of the Wolves job on the eve of the season and with a squad shorn of many key component parts. They looked f**ked.

They are not f**ked. They are cosily in mid-table having already beaten Everton, Manchester City and last weekend, most significantly of all, Bournemouth.

O’Neil then continued this season’s welcome trend of Premier League managers delivering a note perfect Spoke Well, I Thought performance on Monday Night Football; most significantly in a thoroughly detailed tactical segment that could have been titled ‘Precisely How I Beat The Former Club That Brutally Sacked Me’.

To O’Neil’s enormous credit, he is earnest and affable enough that he managed to do this without it once looking like a perfectly justified Partridge-style needless-to-say-I-had-the-last-laugh retort. Which is, in itself, almost as impressive as beating Manchester City.

3) Burnley and Vincent Kompany
Thought they’d be quite good, didn’t we? Certainly thought they’d stay up. And a bit like Bournemouth we were too keen for too long to explain away the obvious failings by pointing to a difficult early fixture list. The problem is that difficult fixtures can be a double whammy if you lose the game and don’t learn the lessons because the fixtures were difficult anyway. They can be a masking agent.

That appears to be the case with Burnley, whose only win so far came in a rearranged game at Luton, and some of whose defeats have featured some alarming naivety and odd decision-making from a manager who knows Our League well, but only from an entirely different vantage point: playing rather than managing, and winning almost every week rather than losing.

Burnley are suffering in that way that the very best promoted sides sometimes can; if you get promoted from the Championship playing liquid football, you can be in for a bit of a shock when you can no longer play quite the same way at a higher level. Burnley need a new way of playing and haven’t yet found it. If you have to scrap a bit more just to get into the Premier League, you’re at least better prepared in a way for the struggles that await.

Yes they’ve played some good teams but so, by now, has everyone. And conceding more goals than everyone apart from the team that shipped eight in one game is not a good look for team or manager.

4) Manchester United and being a Football Club
This was really silly of us in hindsight. Manchester United might occasionally oscillate towards competence and away from soap opera ridiculousness as they did last season under Erik Ten Hag, but the general trend will always be towards drama and chaos.

We thought – and looking back now we’ve no idea at all why we thought this really – that last season’s general upward curve would continue under a sensible, proper manager being given the necessary time and tools to deliver his football his way and perhaps return the club to something like where it belongs.

This is Manchester United Football Club we’re talking about here. That’s not how they do things. Not any more. They have been shite, sit eighth in the table and are bloody lucky to be as high as that, and have scored fewer goals than anyone else in the top half. Fourteenth-placed Brentford have scored more and conceded fewer than United, which does highlight just how much worse United’s already bad start could have been.

READ: Man Utd on course for worst Premier League goals tally ever as decade-long issue continues

5) Luton Town and Derby County
We genuinely thought Luton could have a proper tilt at one of the Premier League’s toughest records to beat: Derby County’s Worst Premier League Season Ever.

Yet here we are, not quite a quarter of the way into the season and Luton are already almost halfway to their 12-point target having already matched the 2007/08 Rams for wins and with 40% of their total goals tally for that season.

They’re also trending upwards if anything as they get more acquainted with the rarefied Barclays air. Their last seven Premier League games have been drawn or settled by the odd goal either way. It’s true that this has generally been the other way, but it’s still a workable platform at this stage. Luton are keeping themselves in every game they play, and if that remains the case after their next three games against Villa, Liverpool and Manchester United then they truly have nothing to fear with regard to Derby’s record.

Sheffield United, on the other hand…