The EPL Is Back
For sports fans, the summer is equivalent to a 60 day trek through a desolate wasteland with no water, but plenty of Twitter hot takes. While the NBA off-season helps alleviate this, if you follow soccer, the August 11th date is the return to sports glory.

The collective exhale you will hear in roughly two days is when the first whistle blows in the Arsenal vs. Leicester City match up. I mean, soccer may not be your thing and that’s fine, just as long as you recognize that you’re wrong. The world’s most popular sport and the world’s most competitive league would like a word.
Much like the NBA, most of the soccer business gets done in the summer, in particular because the EPL chooses to cap their transfer deadline very early into the season (before inexplicably re-opening it which makes some managers feel some type of way about the entire situation), which allows us to speculate on the season early after the crazy summer. And while elsewhere we’ve experienced drama proportionate to three seasons of Game of Thrones rolled up into one, the Premiere League appears to have a lot of its business neat and wrapped up leading up to the marquee day.
Let’s look at some changes over the summer, what to expect and where we will end up hopefully in about 9 months.
Where Art Thou Arsenal
Remember asking your mom for a new pair of basketball shoes? Probably the new Jordans or whatever Kobe was wearing at the times? Remember getting And 1s instead because they were cheaper. That’s kind of been the Arsenal strategy since this new time period called “forever.” Sure, in the past few years the Gunners have gained on the rest of the top six a bit (my fingers don’t quite contract in such a fashion to say they have “caught up”), but the residue of the previous strategy still linger.
In the past, Arsene Wenger has been able to use superior scouting to find players that fit his team so well you thought he was building them in a lab and get them in for cheap to develop them into superstars. The scouting has caught up and with teams signing young new Messis out of diapers the Wenger strategy aged extremely poorly. Additionally, the gargantuan influx of cash that comes with foreign ownership has put Premier League spending on steroids. While Arsenal did bring in World Class players recently, they’ve done so fueled by the opposing teams’ needs to sell after a big spend rather than by personal predatory spending.
This year, despite various gaps on defense as well as in the center of the park (unless Aaron Ramsey has become Wolverine in the off-season as insurance against his fragile self) Arsenal has once again focused on the attacking third. Which isn’t bad, given that they’ve been lacking a world class striker in front of goal. Signing Alexandre Lacazette will certainly help take the scoring load of Alexis Sanchez (assuming he’s still around), but it is doubtful to catapult Arsenal into the top 4 given how strong the other sides are getting. Their only saving grace is not having Champion’s League football this year to stretch a thin squad even thinner. Unless Elneny develops into a holding midfielder, Granit Xhaka learns to not chop at opponent’s feet or Coquelin somehow develops a resemblance of touch there is a more important gap they need to plug in the midfield. One they could have address if they signed N’golo Kante or Tiémoué Bakayoko. Instead, Wenger is out here praising other teams that he’s in direct competition with signing players that would improve HIS system.
The 3 Team Arms Race
After spending a full season trying to turn Gael Clichy, Bacary Sagna and Pablo Zabaletta into inverted fullbacks, which is to say trying to drive a Honda Civic like it’s a Lamborghini, Pep Guardiola has given up some of his ambition for abandoning fullbacks as a concept and decided to buy every remaining fullback on the market. While this does address possibly the most glaring hole in City’s attack last year and shows Pep’s willingness to adapt to the EPL style, there are still a few gaps that City need to address. For one, John Stones has drastically underplayed his value and I think I couldn’t drink legally last time Vincent Kompany was healthy. What’s more, the holding midfield position, in particular with full-backs playing more traditional present a huge gap for City.
On the other side of Manchester, Mourinho continues to hold one over Chelsea in his revenge spree. First, stealing the prized Romelu Lukaku (who he once sold) from Chelsea’s grasp then breaking into their vault and taking one of the most important players on last year’s team in Nemanja Matic (who he once before bought). This seems to be the same United team tactically with a few very important upgrades. Lukaku can help with his physical presence in front of goal, something sorely missing when Ibrahimovic was not available. More importantly, Matic frees up Pogba to play higher up the field and be a creative tour de force he was at Juventus without having to track box to box on consecutive positions. Having Matic as a cover solves United’s “we don’t know who to play with Pogba” problem they’ve ran into the entire year. The question still remains whether or not the EPL tactics have now started to pass Mourinho by the same way they did Wenger 8 years ago.
Finally, Chelsea, presumably still mad at United, made a variety of moves of their own, most notably swapping out Diego Costa for Alvaro Morata. While Costa was instrumental to their scoring, the Conte system favors the counter pressure on the wings coming from Pedro and Hazard, making it a good system for Morata to thrive in. More importantly they managed to sign Tiémoué Bakayoko to shore up losing Matic.
Standing Pat
Liverpool and Tottenham seem to be satisfied with where they ended last season, which is to say, just out of reach of the EPL title. For Tottenham, the sheer fact that they managed to top Arsenal for the first time in modern recorded history, is an accomplishment itself. Both Klopp and Pocettino run very rigid systems which require full player buy-in into the culture, which may explain the lack of bigger money signings from either side. While a lot of top teams tend to operate under the “buy them and we’ll figure it out later” principle when it comes to singing big names, both the German and the Argentine tend to make sure the shoes fit before they put them on.
This definitely explains their reluctance to overspend, but with Tottenham losing Walker and Liverpool potentially looking at the departure of Philippe Coutinho (at the time of writing, Barcelona seem to be on their way to overspend 90mil of the money they are about to make from Neymar) you have to ask yourself is being as good as last season good enough in the face of the rest of the league shoring up what they have to do?
Pour one Out for Defoe
Jermain Defoe has had a pretty fantastic career as a striker in the EPL. He had a lot of really good years at Tottenham and since then has taken his goal scoring act on the road. Last year he was the only one capable of accurately ascertaining where the net was in relation to the ball for a failing Sunderland squad. This year he will take his act to Bournemouth to help them stay in the Premiership. He can still score and he may bring much needed threat in front of goal to last year’s more surprising teams.
West Ham Watch
Every year I come out and make a bold claim that West Ham are here to challenge for top 7. Every year I am proven wrong. Last year, I made this statement off the strength and magical performances of one Dmitry Payet. This year, West Ham seem to be less reliant on one transcendent talent and more on a slew of acquisitions.
In Joe Hart and Pablo Zabaleta they acquired two players with a taste for England’s top flight and knowledge of what it feels like to be on a top team. While Zabaleta is on the wrong side of thirty for a full-back, Joe Hart appears to be prime for his revenge tour to keep the England number one job in the face of Pep’s criticisms form last year. They added a quick paced striker in Javier Hernandez and a creative winger, who when engaged can produce moments of magic in Marco Arnautovic. Yes, their defense is still stretched thinner than the logic of a Trump supporter in August 2017, but these changes may just be enough to keep them in the conversation.
The Race to Relegation
As the top gets tighter, so does the bottom, with a variety of teams competing to get sent back to the Championship (in some cases right back). Last year, I comfortably placed Stoke in the top half of the EPL standings, given that they were at one point the rehabilitation center for Europe’s discarded yet talented youth. They swiftly proved me wrong through a combination of injuries and poor managerial choices. This year they’re hemorrhaging players and those who haven’t left have vocally expressed desire to do so. It seems like the Stoke happy run is over and they may just be on the way out.
The rest of the list includes the usual suspects such as Crystal Palace, the three teams that recently got promoted and Swansea City following last year’s miraculous survival.
The Strong Middle
The defining quality of the Premier League is it’s unpredictability and strength of a lot of squads. A meeting between Liverpool and Bournemouth can turn into a 3–3 affair on any give match-day. The strength of the middle in the EPL makes it an exciting league to watch all year round and these results are what makes the final predictions for any championship volatile. Compared to any other league where a meeting between a top 4 team and any other squad begins to look like a basketball score and you do get the most exciting league in the world. Sure, there are still the customary drubbings, but they come in ebbs and flows and not just “when Barcelona plays Grenada.”
This is strengthened by the fact that the middle teams consistently get stronger. Southampton has built a strong youth system which helps them build young players up and keep their place in the top of the table before selling them for astronomical profits. Everton is the latest team to be bought out by outside money and have been spending wisely to not just build a winning team but a competitive culture that views the top 6 as a spot for the taking, not a gentlemanly resignation to the established order. The League is consistently wide open, often until the very last day. This leads to very exciting 38 matchdays that end in elation, heartbreak and sometimes bitter bitter last second disappointment (just ask United fans).

