The Premier League is the most exciting league in the world. It is also the most unpredictable (revisit Leicester’s remarkable 2016 title-winning season if you are in any doubt about that). That, added to the fact it boasts many of the best players, most respected managers, and most historic clubs in the world then it is little wonder then that it is the most popular sports league on the planet. Just how popular the league has become is phenomenal, especially for anyone old enough to remember the old first division games in the 1980’s.
Beamed into more than 640 million homes in over 210 countries, there isn’t another league that can touch it, in terms of revenue, marketing pull and global appeal. Not surprisingly, it also provides one of the world’s largest football betting markets. This season could very well be the best, most exciting, most dramatic – and most surprising yet. Here is why.
Stories Throughout the League
From top to bottom there are stories wherever you look this season. These are not just in the usual form of the race for the title, the battle for European places or the dreaded scrap to avoid the drop into the second tier of English football. All of those promise to be fascinating and worthy of filling the back pages themselves. But we also have those of great clubs rising from the ashes while others flail in the ashes. The very real prospect of huge clubs facing relegation.
The Title Race
What looked like a two horse race, involving one horse, Arsenal, who no one would have thought stood a chance of competing for the title last summer, now could be widening into a three horse one. Not only have Manchester City and the Gunners encountered a sticky patch, then Manchester United have suddenly hit form. The sort of form that used to carry them to titles in years gone by.
United’s victory over Newcastle to lift the Carabao Cup, their first silverware for six years, has been seen as proof positive that Erik ten Hag has turned this huge club’s fortunes around. That may be premature, and their run for the title may have come too late, but the fact that they are even in the conversation is remarkable in itself.
Manchester City and Arsenal have to play each other in the final run-in, but whatever happens it looks like the race will go down to the final day of the season. We have seen too many times before in this league to discount the fact that it may even go down to the final few seconds.
Avoiding the Drop
The EPL is so congested that practically any club who isn’t hoping a run will take them into the European places, will have one eye on the dreaded trapdoor. Or they will already be in the thick of a relegation dogfight. With no one all but mathematically down, it is a genuine ten team scrap for survival. What makes it even more spicy is that of the three newly promoted sides, Fulham are looking like they could finish top eight, or even higher and Forest’s go big or go home mentality seems to have at least partly paid off. Only Bournemouth of the three are in real trouble.
This leaves the likes of West Ham, who would have been expecting another season knocking on the door of the top six instead of struggling for points and form (though there may be light at the end of the tunnel), Everton, Leeds, Southampton, Wolves and the aforementioned Leicester. Whatever happens, a club who rightly or wrongly believed they were an established EPL team will find themselves next August beginning life in the Championship.
Other Surprises
In between the race for the top and the battle at the bottom, there are plenty of other stories of overachievement, and rank disappointment. Chelsea have had an awful season, just when they seemed to be in a position to kick on. Unfortunately for their fans and under pressure manager, things don’t seem to be getting any better. On the other side of the coin there are the likes of Fulham, Brentford, even a post-Potter Brighton, all of whom are confounding critics and exceeding expectations.
