TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR
As Champions League debuts go, it is fair to say that Tottenham will have been rather pleased with their first venture into the present competition last season. A stunning home win against Inter Milan, coupled with a win and a draw each against FC Twente and Werder Bremen set up a return to the San Siro to play AC Milan. Their win in the first leg in Italy will surely rank as one of the club’s finest ever results, even if their sensational run was comprehensively ended in the next round by Real Madrid.
This season Spurs fans will have to make do with the Europa League after failing to repeat their fourth place finish in 2009/10. Without Champions League football to offer there were suggestions that star players such as Gareth Bale and Luka Modric would leave the club and the latter has been the subject of intense transfer speculation. At the time of writing he is still a Spurs player though, as is Bale and both will be crucial to Tottenham’s challenge for the top four.
If they are to improve on last season however they must do so, for the time being at least, with the same players who finished fifth last year. Just three players have joined the club so far this summer, experienced goalkeeper Brad Friedel, the presence of whom will increase the pressure on blunder-prone ‘keeper Heurelho Gomes, and youngsters Souleymane Coulibaly and Cristian Ceballos have also signed. The latter two look very promising, particularly Coulibaly who scored nine goals in four matches for the Ivory Coast in the recent under-17 World Cup, however they are both signings for the future and not for now.
Now that Spurs’ curtain-raiser against Everton has been postponed as a result of the riots in Tottenham, they do have an extra week to sign a couple more players before their Premier League season begins. Robbie Keane is unlikely to still be at White Hart Lane come the end of the transfer window so they will need at least one more striker to provide back-up and competition for Peter Crouch, Roman Pavlyuchenko and Jermain Defoe.
Should Modric depart however, Tottenham will struggle to replace him with a player of similar quality. While Bale stole many of the early plaudits, Modric was equally good if not better and by the end of last season was seen as even more valuable to Tottenham than the Welsh international. While there is no shortage of midfielders at White Hart Lane, Modric is largely irreplaceable. Stephen Pienaar’s injury, suffered in their final pre-season match, also leaves them short of another of their better midfielders and Niko Kranjcar will hope that his missed penalty and glaring miss in front of goal in that match are not a sign of things to come.
Tottenham’s star of last season however was not Bale or Modric, but Rafael Van der Vaart. 13 league goals and nine assists saw him heralded as one of the signings of the season. Supporters at White Hart Lane will be desperate for him to repeat such form this year and there is no reason to suggest that he will not better it. The delayed start to Tottenham’s new campaign also allows the Dutchman an extra week to recover from a slight ankle injury that he suffered in pre-season.
At the back Tottenham have a good defensive unit, but one that always looks vulnerable. The signing of Friedel could spell the end of Gomes in goal, who on his day is brilliant but is just too prone to calamitous errors. For the time being it is expected that Gomes will retain the ‘keeper’s spot but the pressure is most certainly on.
In front of the keeper, Ledley King is still a star player but his days are surely numbered with his degenerative knee condition severely limiting his football. Fellow injury-prone defender Jonathan Woodgate has already left, leaving Michael Dawson and Sebastien Bassong or Younes Kaboul to lead the defence. All three are quality defenders but alongside them Vedran Corluka and Benoit Assou-Ekotto are still very inconsistent. The latter has a lot of admirers but when he is poor Spurs suffer, their shock defeat to Wigan last year being a prime example. Kyle Walker may also feature heavily this year after impressing with Aston Villa on loan last year. At the very least he will put pressure on Corluka and will definitely fancy his chances of breaking into the starting line-up.
Despite the lack of summer investment Tottenham are most certainly good enough to finish in the top four. Losing Luka Modric would be a huge blow however, and Spurs must do all they can to keep him.
WEST BROMWICH ALBION
Sacking Roberto Di Matteo in February seemed a little unfair on the popular Italian manager. Despite being 16th in the table and having endured a run of just win in seven matches, Di Matteo was the reason West Brom had been promoted in the first place and their start to the season hadn’t been a total disaster. That was until Roy Hodgson took charge five days later however, and proved West Brom’s potential by masterminding a late surge up the table and securing a final position of 11th.
Hodgson failed at Liverpool last year, but a job like this West Brom one is right up his street and this is a real chance for the Baggies to finally rid themselves of their reputation for ‘yo-yoing’ between the Premier League and the Championship.
Players like captain Chris Brunt came to the fore last season, and in retaining him for the new season the Baggies have kept hold of one of their star players. Peter Odemwingie was also impressive, and few people had expected 15 goals from him when he came to The Hawthorns. This summer Hodgson has added Shane Long to his attacking options too, and after 23 goals in the Championship last season Long will be keen to prove that he can make the step up to the Premier League.
Where West Brom have an obvious weakness however is in defence. Only Blackpool shipped more goals than them last season as the Baggies conceded 71 times in their 38 league matches. Gareth McAuley and Billy Jones have been recruited from the Championship in a bid to amend this but fans at The Hawthorns will no doubt have wanted more investment in their defence than has been delivered.
By signing Ben Foster on loan as a replacement for Scott Carson, who has left for Turkey, they do have one of the best English goalkeepers in the country but he is only human. If West Brom’s defence is breached as frequently as it was last season he will not be able to keep them all out.
As a result West Brom are unlikely to improve on their 11th place just yet even with Hodgson in charge. A finish of 13th or 14th however would still mean a third consecutive season in the top flight for the Baggies, something which has been unprecedented for the ‘boing boing Baggies’ in recent years.
WIGAN ATHLETIC
Roberto Martinez is a likeable manager, even more so after the loyalty he showed to Wigan Athletic in turning down the approaches of Aston Villa. Wigan know that his days as their manager are numbered however, just as their days in the Premier League are.
Survival last season was a fantastic achievement for the Latics as they had looked doomed for much of the year, finding themselves rooted in the bottom three. They conceded ten goals in their first two games, attracted less than 17’000 fans per game on average (about two-thirds of their capacity) and few would have betted against their relegation. Survive they did though thanks to Hugo Rodallega’s goal against Stoke. For them to do so again however seems just as unlikely.
Selling Charles N’Zogbia was necessary to generate some much-needed income at what is one of the significantly poorer clubs in the Premier League. The upshot of the sale however is that Wigan have now lost one of their best players. A lot now rests on Rodallega, their all-time top Premier league goalscorer. He and N’Zogbia shared eighteen goals between them last season out of a terribly low total of 40 in 38 matches.
A leaky defence and a strike-force that do not score goals will lead to only one thing and that is relegation. There has been no investment up front this summer, and in fact there has been very little investment at all. Goalkeeper Ali Al-Habsi has been signed on a permanent deal after impressing on loan last season but apart from him the only new face at Wigan is David Jones, the former Man United youngster who played for Wolves last season. Jones proved that he can play in the Premier League but he is unlikely to be the star that Wigan need.
Roberto Martinez deserves much credit for keeping Wigan in the Premier League last season against all the odds but he will not do so again.
WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS
Wolves impressed on their return to the top flight even if their physical style of football did not. Last season however they struggled and for large parts of the season looked like they were set for a return to the Championship.
Like Wigan, Mick McCarthy’s side struggled for goals while conceding far too many at the other end. Unlike Wigan they have moved to amend that by signing Roger Johnson from Birmingham. He is reported to have cost the club £7 million but is a very under-rated performer and has impressed over the last two seasons at the heart of Birmingham’s defence. By appointing him as captain, McCarthy has made it quite clear that he will be key to Wolves’ season.
Also arriving this summer has been Jamie O’Hara who impressed on loan last season, and also made a good impression at Portsmouth the season before, while Dorus De Vries, formerly of Swansea, has arrived as back-up to the impressive young Welsh goalkeeper Wayne Hennessey.
The signings of O’Hara and Johnson have not left much room in the transfer kitty for a new striker however, so a lot will depend on former record signing Kevin Doyle and last season’s top scorer Steven Fletcher. Alongside Sylvain Ebanks-Blake all three need to up their goals per game ratio if Wolves are to stay in the Premier League for another season after this one.
Also key will be the fitness of Stephen Hunt, whose wonder goal guaranteed Wolves’ safety on the final day of the season. His presence in the midfield is key, particularly as captain Karl Henry is unlikely to complete a whole season given his disciplinary problems.
Wolves proved two years ago that they are good enough to survive in this league, and just about did so again last season. This time around they will face another battle for survival though, and must overcome Blackburn, Norwich and QPR if they are to avoid the final relegation spot.
