Speculation? Yes. Will all prophecies below come to pass? Maybe not. The thing is - every single forecast about every single game in the history of football is pure speculation. Some get it right more often than others. Some never get it right. I don't fair too badly to be honest.And so - be they right by next May, or wrong, my own take on the PL's top trio, and those Championship bound.Top of the tree!1. Manchester United2. Arsenal3. Manchester CityWith 2011/12 finishing City / United / Arsenal the obvious difference come the end of the upcoming season is not so much City giving the title back to United - it is just as much about Arsenal's very impressive line up as we go into 2012/13 finally getting it right, gelling and pushing for the title all the way.Manchester United - not selected just because I am a United fan - will finish top because history really does repeat itself. No team in the English game has ever been able to keep coming back as often or as powerful as do Manchester United, yet, to some extent 2012/13 will be just as much about City throwing away the title as it is about United winning it.City have a formidable array of talent now playing in blue but absolutely zero experience in retention of a title - perhaps with the exception of Carlos Tevez who is a loose cannon at the best of times - and there are some massive egos now having to make-do with bench starts. Implosion due methinks but still enough on he bench to make 3rd.Arsenal meanwhile could even pip United at the end, but their weakest link will prove to be the manager Arsene Wenger. He has delivered so little of late, is getting on in years and patience is wearing thin at the Emirates. This could be their year if Lady Luck smiles down, but for now, I will go with a 1 / 2 / 3 of experience trumping new talent trumping player egos getting the better of a still inexperienced manager.And doomed for relegation!18. Aston Villa19. West Ham United20. SouthamptonIn recent years the relegation battles have been all about whether or not Bolton, Blackburn and Wolves could escape the drop. Almost from Day 1, these three have existed solely to survive the end of season relegation to the Championship - but now, with all three having gone down - deservedly considering the football they play, the 2012/13 season will be one centered on the struggle for survival of two southern teams, and one from the Midlands.Villa have of course been flirting with second tier football for a while and having made no significant changes to their team will this year offer little more than last. A shame considering their history.As far as West Ham and Southampton go, I fear both will be back on the elevator south come the early summer of 2013 - the level of football in the top division proving far too much for what are excruciatingly porous last lines of defence at both clubs.Southampton did of course score a cracking 85 goals in their last campaign but let in more than half that at 46. West Ham were similarly shady at the back scoring 81, conceding 48!
Quote from: some wank siteManchester United - not selected just because I am a United fan
Manchester United - not selected just because I am a United fan
Quote from: some wank siteSpeculation? Yes. Will all prophecies below come to pass? Maybe not. The thing is - every single forecast about every single game in the history of football is pure speculation. Some get it right more often than others. Some never get it right. I don't fair too badly to be honest.And so - be they right by next May, or wrong, my own take on the PL's top trio, and those Championship bound.Top of the tree!1. Manchester United2. Arsenal3. Manchester CityWith 2011/12 finishing City / United / Arsenal the obvious difference come the end of the upcoming season is not so much City giving the title back to United - it is just as much about Arsenal's very impressive line up as we go into 2012/13 finally getting it right, gelling and pushing for the title all the way.Manchester United - not selected just because I am a United fan - will finish top because history really does repeat itself. No team in the English game has ever been able to keep coming back as often or as powerful as do Manchester United, yet, to some extent 2012/13 will be just as much about City throwing away the title as it is about United winning it.City have a formidable array of talent now playing in blue but absolutely zero experience in retention of a title - perhaps with the exception of Carlos Tevez who is a loose cannon at the best of times - and there are some massive egos now having to make-do with bench starts. Implosion due methinks but still enough on he bench to make 3rd.Arsenal meanwhile could even pip United at the end, but their weakest link will prove to be the manager Arsene Wenger. He has delivered so little of late, is getting on in years and patience is wearing thin at the Emirates. This could be their year if Lady Luck smiles down, but for now, I will go with a 1 / 2 / 3 of experience trumping new talent trumping player egos getting the better of a still inexperienced manager.And doomed for relegation!18. Aston Villa19. West Ham United20. SouthamptonIn recent years the relegation battles have been all about whether or not Bolton, Blackburn and Wolves could escape the drop. Almost from Day 1, these three have existed solely to survive the end of season relegation to the Championship - but now, with all three having gone down - deservedly considering the football they play, the 2012/13 season will be one centered on the struggle for survival of two southern teams, and one from the Midlands.Villa have of course been flirting with second tier football for a while and having made no significant changes to their team will this year offer little more than last. A shame considering their history.As far as West Ham and Southampton go, I fear both will be back on the elevator south come the early summer of 2013 - the level of football in the top division proving far too much for what are excruciatingly porous last lines of defence at both clubs.Southampton did of course score a cracking 85 goals in their last campaign but let in more than half that at 46. West Ham were similarly shady at the back scoring 81, conceding 48!
from football 365:Writing about Aston Villa in pre-season inevitably throws up memories of 2010 and speculating in this space over how Martin O'Neill was going to fare, only for him to part company with the club before a ball was kicked. The loss of the Northern Irishman, now at Sunderland, is a blow from which the club have not recovered, compounded by the poor appointments that followed.Nice as it would have been for Gerard Houllier's twilight years to have included a successful return to club management, surprise at the medical problems that forced him from the job was not widespread. If there was sadness over the circumstances of the Frenchman's departure from those capable of distinguishing football from real life, it was disbelief that dominated when Alex McLeish was named his permanent successor with the stench of Birmingham's relegation still overpowering the fumes from the Gravelly Hill Interchange.It is the fact that football is so hard to predict that makes it compelling (and I will have some humble pie to eat thanks to Nick Miller later in the week), but the closest thing to a racing certainty in football was that the Scot would struggle to win over the support and would be under added pressure with each adverse result. He had the backing of Sir Alex Ferguson but the support of the most biased man in football counts for nothing in real life.Goodbye or farewell are too warm in their sentiments for Villa fans; good riddance is at least in the right area though to come close to the mark I would have to use unpublishable language. Disposing of McLeish may have been cathartic but it did not solve the Villa conundrum, and nor has the arrival of Paul Lambert.They are the biggest club in the country's second biggest city and once upon a time they were European champions. Their top-flight roots go back to the Football League's inaugural season when they were the most southerly club and they were soon one of the most successful. But they have never recaptured the spirit of those early decades except in the years culminating in the 1982 European Cup win. Since the Premier League started they have suffered too many eclipses and even with Randy Lerner's takeover they remain in the shadow of the north-west and south-east.Under McLeish they could not even manage to be the region's leading team, finishing nine points and six places below West Brom. Part of that was down to the former Birmingham manager's motivational skills, and the loss of Darren Bent to injury and Stilian Petrov to serious illness added to their troubles (and, in the case of the Bulgarian's leukaemia, put them in perspective).Spending has been sensible rather than lavish, with the £3.2m paid to Feyenoord for the centre-back Ron Vlaar the high point, with another defender, Matthew Lowton from Sheffield United, just behind. Though Brett Holman, the Australia winger, could be a good Bosman acquisition, the most exciting sights for the Holte End could be the youth products headed by Barry Bannan and the still-only-22 Marc Albrighton. But it seems unlikely that Lambert will be able to get too many Second City pulses racing with this squad and if Shay Given repeats the form he showed at Euro 2012 then the Holte will howl.Mid-table is densely packed and, though Villa finished two below the 40-point mark, 50 or so and a top-ten finish are possible. It is not clear, though, that that is the level of success Lerner was seeking when he became involved.The good news for Lambert is that a gentle start to the season offers an opportunity to bed in himself and his new charges, with trips to West Ham and Southampton before the end of September and visits by Everton, Swansea and West Brom. But in the long run this may just be a season where relief at the departure of McLeish remains the overriding emotion and in the end a manager needs to do more than simply not be someone else.
Please donate to help towards the costs of keeping this site going. Thank You.
Author
Topic: Villa predictions for 2012/13 (fans & media) (Read 49241 times)
