The new football season.

 The new football season.

The beginning of the new English Premier League season is normally accompanied by a blizzard of Sky Sports razzamatazz, vast showers of confetti, heightened expectations, exaggerated predictions and the firm belief that this season will be infinitely better than the last. Now this season of course will be quite unlike any other conventional season since the whole of this Premier League campaign will be promptly interrupted by the small matter of the World Cup. Here the fun and games may begin. 

In the middle of November both England and Wales will endeavour to represent the British Isles in a World Cup so incongruously scheduled in the middle of November that most of us will probably forget about the Christmas festivities and the intense planning that goes into the yearly end of year celebration. It could have been far worse of course but whoever may be the top four contenders at this crucial point of the season could well find themselves slightly disoriented. Footballers thankfully are creatures of habit so it may be best not to worry about their welfare at the beginning of August. 

The fact is that any season brings with it a whole baggage load of controversy, hugely polarised opinions on the ever sensitive subject of VAR, anatomical analysis of most of the players and whether a toe or elbow constitute offside or not. In the old days of course off side was clear and cut unquestionable that everybody knew where they stood. There are bound to be loud objections to the colour of the referees shirts, the lightness of the ball, the length of the grass and huge outpourings of annoyance about multi million pound footballers who are simply self obsessed, self centred, selfish and materialistic. 

A couple of seasons ago the hugely talented midfield player Jack Grealish signed for Manchester City from Aston Villa for £100 million, a figure so obscenely deplorable and shameful that many of us could hardly believe how much lower football could possibly get. It was the lowest common denominator, the scraping of the barrel, football at its most grotesquely greedy, grasping and corrupt. Telephone directory numbers have now become the accepted norm for modern day Premier League footballers but this was akin to moral sacrilege.

So most commentators, pundits, radio phone in experts and statistical analysts will open up their data, examine their spreadsheets, note down the number of assists, passes, tackles, newly fangled transitions and turnovers of play, zonal systems and then reach some kind of scientific conclusion. We wish them well with that little project. Essentially, footballers are not programmed robots and can never be expected to perform in the way we would like them to play. 

This season will probably follow the tried and tested formula, the customary direction, the familiar route with much the same landscape but one or two unexpected surprises up its sleeves. There can be no definitive pattern nor can their be an outright favourite but usually the Premier League template shows little sign of changing unless they bring back the Third Division North and South and completely re-structure the game's inherent infrastructure. 

It's hard to believe now that victories in football matches were once rewarded with only two points and there were 42 physically punishing matches in the old First and Second Division. Football has come a considerable way since those halcyon days when the likes of Fulham's Johnny Haynes once brought home his £100 a week wage packet home to his family. Over 60 years ago footballers were qualified plumbers, well mannered postmen, milkmen and sheet metal workers before football took over their lives. Tom Finney was the Preston plumber and nobody asked for a rise or pleaded poverty while he was playing They displayed their wondrous ball skills on a Saturday afternoon at 3pm and the fans asked few questions.

Nowadays of course the Premier League is now spread over the entire weekend with matches on Saturday, Sunday and Monday or any random time of the FA's or TV's choosing. One of these days we'll eat our breakfast and find that Manchester United have already played Brighton and Hove Albion just after the last coffee and croissant. It is a game so far removed from the 1950s and 60s that it is hard to imagine a time when it was free from its money grabbers, spoilt mercenaries and the ones who are only concerned with their financial welfare but little consideration of their team's status. 

For what must now seem like an age Manchester United's often brilliant midfield player Jesse Lingard has now finally joined Nottingham Forest. But this wasn't before West Ham had bent over backwards to try and re-capture the player they'd signed on loan during lockdown. It is a damning indictment of the way the game has progressed- or should that be regressed- that Lingard's only motive for leaving his boyhood club was the number of noughts on his bank balance. 

The whole sorry saga unravelled for West Ham in quite the most unseemly way with various derogatory accusations that suggested Lingard only wanted to finish his career with millions in his bank balance. So after much chest beating, agonised delays and broken promises Lingard chose the City Ground at newly promoted Nottingham Forest over the London Stadium at West Ham. Your mind began to wonder how former Forest boss and the legendary Brian Clough would have reacted to Lingard's dithering behaviour. Maybe he would have pointed to the first million pound player he signed when Trevor Francis signed for Forest from Birmingham City. 

Now, the proletarian working classes who used to dominate the old First and Second Division are nothing more than some sepia tinted engraving on a Victorian mantelpiece. The chairmen who used to run timber merchants and local wallpaper shops are just Lowry figures who would stand outside factory gates ruminating over the pennies and shillings at the end of the week. Fast forward 60 years ago and the combination of Arab sheikhs, American baseball enthusiasts and, until recently, Russian oligarchs are in complete charge of their investments as well as the acquisition of new players. 

It could  hardly have escaped your notice that the players too no longer accompany their devoted fans to the ground anymore and that superb photo of Sir Matt Busby joking with his hard core, loyal Stretford End supporters at Manchester United almost feels as if it was captured at the beginning of the 18th century. 

They were the days when your local heroes would quite happily jump onto a tram or trolley bus cheek  by jowl with the dockside labourers and the bricklayers from the building site next to your ground. They would chat and talk, discuss and analyse the stonewall penalty their team should have been awarded to them from an over fussy and officious referee.

It is the madness of football, the game that once treasured its close-knit relationships between both the fans and supporters but can only cling onto ancient memories. That comforting rapport and bond has now been sacrificed by the endless cash machines, the hole in the wall machines that keep coughing up hundreds and thousand pounds given half the chance. It is rampant capitalism at its most abhorrent. 

And so to the present day. Arsenal became the early leaders at the top of the Premier League season with a convincing and, at times, gloriously inventive 2-0 victory over Crystal Palace. Their football at times was a throwback to the memorable days of Arsene Wenger, their passes neat, quick and pleasurable, their movement on and off the ball truly astonishing to behold but this is the opening weekend of the new football season so judgments may have to be reserved until, perhaps, the middle of September.

Tomorrow Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool, who ran Manchester City so close in the run into the Premier League title chase, travel to Fulham who have now developed a habit of bouncing back and forth between the top flight and the Championship. Their once music hall comedian and chairman Tommy Trinder may have considered Fulham fans to be the luckiest in the world but when your team simply seems to lose its identity throughout the season there is little that can be done. Then you remembered the hilarious Alec Stock and the equally as amusing Bobby Campbell and just accepted that the game should never have been taken seriously anyway.

Leeds United, under American boss Jesse March, were, last season, marooned near the bottom of the Premier League season but they face a Wolves side who show distinct promise but then flatter to deceive. Newcastle meet newly promoted Nottingham Forest in a game with echoes of a classic FA Cup tie during the 1970s. Spurs, with the splendidly clever and tactically outstanding Antonio Conte, host Southampton in what should prove a straightforward win for the home side but, given Spurs infuriating unpredictability at times could dissolve into either a goal-less draw or a late Southampton goal in the 90th minute. 

Then there's Frank Lampard's Everton, a side who are sitting tenants in the old First Division for seemingly ages and now in the Premier League. But last season the almost unthinkable happened at Goodison Park. Everton were struggling against relegation and looked decidedly ropy at times but then Everton recalled Howard Kendall's First Division champions during the 1980s and that proved the ultimate antidote to all their ills. 

Then Leicester City who, quite remarkably, won the Premier League several seasons ago, face a Brentford side who were back in harness in football's top flight for the first time since 1947. Under Tomas Frank Brentford frequently delighted the purists among us who, the cynics probably felt, were simply one season wonders and would return from whence they came. But their football was eye catching, adventurous in the extreme and almost carelessly cavalier. They have now lost their one and only genuine playmaker in Christian Eriksen to Manchester United but still look set fair to prosper this season. 

Manchester United could face a critical and defining season for the club. We all know what happened to their Dutch, Portuguese and quite recently German managers but there is another Dutch master in charge of the club this season. Once Sir Alex Ferguson had retired into the sunset we knew that United would dwell on distant glories and somehow Old Trafford would never seem the same. But the Premier League titles have well and truly dried up and the rebuilding work may take much longer than some might have expected. United face Brighton, a side with such a commendable and progressive outlook on the game that you feel sure that the seaside in deepest Sussex will always be the right place to be.

And finally there is your team West Ham who stunned everybody last season with their Europa League semi final exploits. Some of us never really saw Eintracht Frankfurt in the rear mirror but then it all became anti climactic and the Germans moved into the Final. Still, this is a new season and for those who have become almost hardened to the alarming ups and downs at the London Stadium club, anything could and probably will happen.

Five fresh new players have well and truly boosted morale but our friendly Hammers will surely hoping for some kind of continuity rather than that comical decline into nowhere in particular. Wherever your football team are and whatever its trials and tribulations, ebbs and flows, highs and lows, may long term success be your companion in rain, snow and sun. We are rubbing our hands in feverish anticipation.