Source: Daily_Mail
Martin Samuel: City bring on X-factor as Hughes' stars aim to rattle big four
For once, we do not know. Not for sure, anyway. Oh, we could have a good guess and, if we stick with the familiar, we will probably be right. Yet Manchester City, maligned though they may be, have introduced one frisson of excitement into the coming Premier League season, and for that we should all be grateful.
There will be those who remain morally affronted by their new money, as if the choice was to buy Carlos Tevez or build a hospital, which is an argument as fatuous as it is wrong. Others, closer to home, have grown content each season to revel in City’s reputation for ineptitude, wearing their support for this failed enterprise like a badge of honour.
For the rest of us, though, for the neutrals, for those who see sport as art or entertainment and not as an extension of civil service middle management, City’s tilt at the Premier League big time is a wonderful thing.
It is being financed by new money, in the sense that the wealth is coming into English football from outside the game, and the club is not being placed in jeopardy to afford it. The beneficiary is a British manager, Mark Hughes, who could be the first of his generation to have the chance to compete at the business end of the Premier League on an even footing. And City’s arrival means the elite four of English football can stay complacent no longer, protected from the aspirations of rivals by the cushion of Champions League wealth.
Michel Platini, the UEFA president, may dislike parvenu City but it is the exclusionist nature of his competition that has ensured it takes the resources of an oil-rich state to bankroll competition at the top in the Premier League.
It may be that City fall short this season, and if so, it may be that Hughes is not around to see the mission through, but for arguably the first time since the Premier League’s inception, there is talk of a big five with the potential to be champions and that gives England an advantage over most major leagues in Europe.
Take City away and this summer would have been about what English football lost: starting with the Champions League final to Barcelona and continuing through the sale of the best player, Cristiano Ronaldo, to Real Madrid.
Spain may be the place to be right now but, in England, the emergence of a fresh face from the pack of clubs makes for intrigue where there might only have been ennui.
Four-midable: From left, Manchester United’s Dimitar Berbatov, Liverpool’s Steven Gerrard, Chelsea’s Michael Essien and Arsenal’s Cesc Fabregas have all the qualities to keep Manchester City at bay
City’s fate will be a compelling tale, not least because the hastily-assembled nature of the first-team squad could equally mean the club is heading for a humiliating fall, and the best of the rest from last season, notably Aston Villa and Everton, will be attempting to ensure that is the case. City also have the same weakness that could prove the undoing of the speculators at Real Madrid, a defence that cannot keep pace with a stellar forward line.
Blackburn Rovers, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Portsmouth are City’s first three opponents, so the truth should be known by the end of August. It is a very gentle opening and if they struggle at the back through the first month, there will almost certainly be trouble ahead.
Arsenal are, plainly, City’s target, having finished fourth by some distance last season, making it interesting that Arsene Wenger, the Arsenal manager, chose to sell them two of his first-team players this season.
Losing Emmanuel Adebayor and Kolo Toure to such a significant rival is some gamble on Wenger’s part — and one Everton were not prepared to take with City and Joleon Lescott — although he may have had an eye on the African Nations Cup in Angola which could take both players out of the team for most of January and the start of February.
Wenger has driven a hard bargain and neither man was wholly impressive last season but it remains a brave move for a manager who is finding it increasingly difficult to balance his beliefs against the demands of success.
In full flight, Arsenal’s football will result in some of the highlights of the season — it always does — but for how much longer can Wenger take pride in the best turned-out prize while watching others beat him to the finishing line at a canter?
Manager Arsene Wenger of Arsenal
Learning curve: The Professor rejected Real's overtures to continue his work in England
Never forget, he could have presided over the epic project now unfolding at Real Madrid. Its ambitious nature must have been explained to him by an intermediary when the Spanish club made overtures at the end of last season.
What a singular man Wenger must be to have resisted. It is his continuing willingness to work in the Premier League that gives the competition much of its gravitas. English football cannot be all bad, we figure, if Wenger continues to prefer it to Spain.
Indeed, for a league that is, in essence, remarkably predictable, capable of producing winners only from a tiny elite of clubs and with the rest bracketed into equally expected bands of also-rans, mediocrities and cannon fodder, the Premier League still contains a tantalising amount of mystery at this stage in the year.
We think we already know so much, yet so much is also unknown. How will Manchester United solve a problem like the absence of Ronaldo? Can Wayne Rooney deliver on his promise to become a 30-goal striker? Will Michael Owen revive his international career at Manchester United in time for the World Cup? Will the young goalkeeper Ben Foster be joining him in the England team? And these are merely a smattering of the issues at one club, Manchester United, who are settled and successful, with the longest- serving manager in English football.
In the absence of volatility in a competitive sense it is these sideshows and the personalities that drive the Premier League. We wonder whether Carlo Ancelotti will outlast the average lifespan of Chelsea managers since the departure of Jose Mourinho, which would entail keeping his job beyond January, or whether the romance of Burnley’s arrival can possibly have, against the odds, a happy ending.
Hull City’s did last season — it even ended with a song from Phil Brown, the manager — but Burnley’s grand history affords them the greatest appeal.
The main football issue concerns Liverpool, who may well have queered their pitch in central midfield for the second consecutive season, this time by losing Xabi Alonso to Real Madrid.
Until Alonso left, this was shaping up as their year, just as it was last season before they failed to close the deal on Gareth Barry. They were the hot tip; now we are not so sure.
Of course, there will be the usual pious sermons on the subject of greed this week, football played out as a parable for the venality of our times.
Yet there are bigger, more dangerous, fools in the world than are in charge at Portsmouth; there are greater hypocrites than John Terry; more wicked conceits than bidding £20million for Everton’s centre-half.
And, even if you cannot get past those issues, just think that from April 1 next year all of your least favourite people will be taxed at 50 per cent, so the odd hospital might get built, after all.
