The soon to be available Pep Guardiola
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Leicestsrt City will finish outside the top 6
Last season was maybe the best story that there has ever been in Premier League history — even better than Blackburn Rovers — but it was a team effort by the Foxes, and though the team is relatively untouched finishing outside of the top six is the most likely scenario for Claudio Ranieri’s men. With the engine room of their midfield (N’golo Kante) gone, and preparation for the new season disrupted by transfer rumors that haven’t strictly ended yet, it’ll be difficult for Leicester City to replicate their heroics of last season.
As good of a story as Leicester was last season if we are thinking rationally, players like Wes Morgan, Jamie Vardy, and Danny Drinkwater had wonderful seasons but they’re hardly world class players.
Couple this with Champions League football disrupting Leicester’s schedule and i’d be very surprised if they can keep up the pace they’ll need to in order to repeat their heroics.
Vardy has a spotty scoring for Leicester City at best since 2012. In the Championship the Cinderella story of the English game scored 5 goals, and then 16 goals the following season. In the Premier League he scored 5 goals again in 2014/15, but 24 goals in 2015/16. Vardy will likely score 10-14 goals this season, but who replaces the 10 goals he’s less likely to score this season. Jamie Vardy is a great story, and he’s now an established Premier League player — but he’s not going to be one of the top strikers in the league out of nowhere, two seasons in a row, at 29 years old.
Chelsea will finish in the top four
Antonio Conte is a game changer for Chelsea. The Italian disciplinarian will bring some much needed decorum and order to a Chelsea dressing room where “player power” was the all-too-well-known undercurrent for a number of years. Conte it a well versed tactician and will utilize Chelsea’s wealth of versatile players in a number of different formations to conform to whatever opposing managers throw at him.
Conte’s philosophy? Play the best player for the job in his position — he doesn’t care who you are, where you came from, or what you mean to the club. If there wasone failing that Jose Mourinho had (ok, he had a few) it could be said that he was almost too trusting in players whom were out of form to recapture it.
Eden Hazard has looked sharp in pre-season and Conte will be charged with keeping him energized and on form. As was apparent at Euro 2016 with Italy, Conte is passionate and outspoken when it comes to his touchline manner — something Chelsea sorely missed at the back end of last season under Guus Hiddink.
Though Jose Mourinho is always going to be somewhat of a legend, his self-destructive mentality was eventually damning to himself and to a team that won the Premier League title in the previous year. Conte will galvanize this team, a team that looked bereft of ideas at the back end of last season, and give them back that championship mentality. He may not have won Euro 2016 with Italy, but did wonderfully when you consider many pegged his team the “worst in Italy’s history.”
Chelsea has started pre-season well, with a number of young exciting players coming through their ranks. Ola Aina should start at right full-back after a wonderful pre-season, Oscar has dazzled, Hazard has been deadly, and N’golo Kante has shown fans in one game exactly what a midfield of Matic and himself could bring to the team.
Under Conte not only could Chelsea finish back in the top four, they could end up winning the league.
A Manchester “one-two” in the Premier League table
Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola. The Messi and Ronaldo of the managerial world collide in the toughest, most exciting league in the world. The icing on the cake? They’re each managing a Manchester side. The two biggest rivals in managerial history, Pep vs Mourinho is going to be the big story line no matter where the other Manchester side resides in the table, but the most obvious thing is that we have a Manchester “one-two” this season in the Premier League.
With Manchester United’s acquisition of Paul Pogba from Juventus for £89 million many have made the Red Devils title favorites but Pep Guardiola still retains the edge over Mourinho when it comes to wins and losses.
Mourinho has managed in 16 games versus Pep and only won three times, losing seven and splitting the honors 9 times. That works out to just 18.8% as a win percentage.
That being said Pep Guardiola has never managed in a league as strong as the Premier League. Though Pep is a world class tactician, he made Jupp Heynckes’ devastatingly scary Bayern Munich team look one-dimensional. It will be interesting to see exactly how he fares in a league where the team sitting in 15th position can beat the team unbeaten in 15 games on any given weekend.
Outside of the fight between Pep and Jose Mourinho, expect the top of the league to be painted red, and sky blue by seasons end.
BOLD PREDICTION:
Scott correctly predicted that Bastian Schweinsteiger would be a flop when he joined Manchester United and he was largely right. Whether it was because of marketing or because Louis Van Gaal actually thought that he could help his Manchester United team is really neither here nor there because Jose Mourinho has come in and promptly told the former Germany captain that he is surplus to requirements and has instructed him to train with the under 21’s team — something FIFPro isn’t too happy about.
This season’s bold prediction is that Zlatan Ibrahimovic is about as much of a failure in coming to the most physically demanding league in the world. Ibrahimovic has talked a good game for a long time, but he’ll be 35 years of age in October and it’s a struggle to believe that he can be as much of an impact — if not more of an impact — than Marcus Rashford who looked very lively at the European Championships.
Yes Zlatan has won titles in every country he’s played in, but that was then and this is now. The self-proclaimed “God of Manchester” is most certainly in the twilight of his career now, and Scott’s prediction is that he cannot hack it at the Premier League level at his age for an entire season. Scott is predicting Zlatan scores less than 15 Premier League goals this season — especially with Wayne Rooney being assured he will be used as a forward by Mourinho, and the immensely talented Anthony Martial waiting in the wings to become a superstar.
