Football/Soccer Discussion 12/13

Wow, that came around fast. New season kicks off tomorrow. Time for predictions. Thought I'd add in a poll, too. The question being: Who will win the Premier League?

Man United to win the league. Just.
Man City second.

It's hard to imagine what the rest of the bigger clubs will do. I doubt Newcastle will have as good a season as last again. Without seeing the new-look teams of Liverpool and Arsenal it's difficult to say where they'll finish, but I expect Arsenal in the top four. Liverpool should do better than last year. AVB might give Tottenham that kick they need to solidify top four. Chelsea are short of strikers, but I fancy Torres to do much better. All of these will be fighting underneath United and City and any one of them could win a cup.

In the Champs League, I expect City to go further. Maybe Real Madrid will make the final this time, and possibly win it.

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I jumped the gun on the poll, voted Liverpool like a muppet. The West Brom game was not a good start for us, our problem is the same as it has been for the last 5 years: we don't beat the teams we should beat. Three or four managers down the line, a new-look squad, that still hasn't changed. I question whether we'll get champions league football this season, I hope we come close, but the truth is - no points on the board going into three more potential nightmare games against City, United and Arsenal (I think) - we could be chasing far too early to stand a chance of CL. Hopefully others will slip in the coming weeks too. But I think the difference between when Liverpool lose to a team like that (no disrespect to West Brom) and when any other side from the top 7/8 goes down for a surprise defeat, is that Liverpool get out-passioned every time - we rarely even shoot ourselves in the foot with bad decisions and what not, we just don't seem to display the hunger of a team who actually wants to win week in week out. I don't think either penalties should have been given, I think Agger going off for his tackle is ridiculous, but eh - these are all minor issues compared to our overall mentality. We just don't know what it means to be a big club in the prem anymore.

I think United will reclaim the title if they keep their front-men healthy, City if either Rooney or VP get injured for a spell. I see Chelsea as the nearest contenders to the Manchester lot, mainly because of their decent signings off the back of the CL win. Hazzard looks to be a prem star in the making, and Brazilians will be Brazilians. I think Chelsea will be more tenacious this season. Outside of those 3, I'd say all the remaining top-end sides (Arsenal, Spurs, Liverpool, Newcastle, Everton) could clinch the last CL spot. I'd love Liverpool to clinch it, my gut says Newcastle or Arsenal.

Nice to see Southampton up, I was born there but moved when I was young so I don't feel much of a affiliation with them. Good to see they gave City a game, but no one will have expected them to get anything so only encouraging signs.

Not sure who'll go down. In the CL my favourites are Real, followed by City and Barca.

Glad West Ham won, and it looks like they have Matt Jarvis now. Maiga looked good in the 5 minutes that he played but I definitely think they need to have more than just one striker up front, big Sam's formation is more like 4-5-1 than 4-3-3, but then I guess it doesn't matter as long as they win.

Looks like it'll be a good season, not sure who'll win but Chelsea have a far better chance than last season, Swansea looked good and I think they'll stay up, Southampton played really well against Man City and Reading look like the could stay up, QPR still look bad in defence so despite their signings they're likely to go down. The same could be said for Norwich since they had a bad start. The League's going to be tight this season.

Not sure about QPR, you know. They've got Dawson and Carvalho on loan now, so you'd have thought they'd be okay. I think it's about time Villa went down. Been playing shit football for the last few seasons, even if I do like some of their players - Given, Agbonlahor.

Been reading Fulham are interested in Eduardo. Yes, please come back, Dudu! Miss him so much. Still got two more years on his Shakhtar contract, but would love to see him back in the Prem.

Yeah, I've been thinking Villa are really likely to go down, yeah they've got Darren Bent, but moving there was his biggest mistake, how's he going to score with no-one passing the ball to him?

Wigan are another team that has been flirting with relegation for a few seasons now, but they can be pretty unpredictable.

We'll just have to wait and see as the season unfolds