Y ou need a PhD in astro-physics to work out what’s
going on in cricket at the moment, so time for some simpler fare. Here are 10 good reasons, and I know no sane person should be thinking about this right now, why the next football season could be the most exciting ever.
1. The chance to watch Deco every week at Chelsea: this brilliant, cultivated Portuguese midfielder is one footballer you won’t be seeing fall out of Chinawhite in the small hours. And he plays with a smile on his face too.
2. Over at Manchester City expect Mark Hughes to build up a genuine big-city rival to Alex Ferguson’s United. Hughes was a rough, tough, robust but always fair player and has brought the same to management. Anyway, Ferguson’s been around for ever: it would be good to see him knocked off his perch.
3. With ‘Big Phil’ Scolari at Chelsea, we don’t need the Special One. Scolari seems beyond fabulous, but another top foreigner, Signor Capello, has got to deliver for England soon. Bring on Croatia: the friendlies are over, Fab.
4. It was just reward for the tireless Paul Ince that he has become Britain’s first black Premiership manager at Blackburn. I hope he does well, but he might be losing David Bentley, by a mile his best player.
5. There are few certainties in life, but one eternal verity is that Newcastle will screw up. After some early good cheer, the terraces will be full of weeping fat blokes in black and white shirts. And that includes owner Mike Ashley. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke.
8. The beautiful teams, Holland and Portugal, played some stunning ‘sexy football’ with a 4-2-3-1 formation at Euro 2008, allowing for a fluid attacking front four. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone started using it here?
9. Down on the south coast Harry Redknapp is building a genuine, almost unique, English team at Portsmouth, with Crouch and Defoe his latest signings. And this year we have a good chasing pack for the first time in years with Portsmouth, Villa, City, Everton and Spurs.
10. Thank heavens Hull have made it to the Prem, but I hope we won’t spend every wak ing moment praying they won’t do a Derby. I fear the worst, although manager Phil Brown is a good egg: he helped Sam Allardyce turn Bolton into a top, if unwatchable, side.
6. Can Arsenal hang on? What a stupid question of course, because as soon as anyone doubts Wenger’s general all-round saintliness, up he pops with a completely new and brilliant team. But losing Hleb, Flamini and Gilberto Silva, by my calculations, leaves you a midfield short. Still, Arsène knows.
7. God bless Villa: they are the first team to sponsor a charity on their shirts, the Acorns Children’s Hospice. They have already raised more than £100,000 from players and staff donations, and team members regularly visit the hospice already. The deal would normally be worth about £2 million, so Villa have given up a seven-figure sum for the good of mankind. It’s not often that football does that.
Ooh, the power of pink. Didn’t Middlesex look fabulous in their winning pink tops in the Twenty20 final? For breast cancer, natch. The leader of the Giro d’Italia wears the ‘Pink Jersey’, and you certainly wouldn’t like the Stade Français pack bearing down on you in their fabulous pink away strip. Fairly interesting pink fact: the colour was first seen to be purposeful when Porsche entered a pink 917 sports car for the 1971 Le Mans 24-hour race. Didn’t win, though. Still, you can’t have everything.
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