Prediction time, but this season predictions with a difference.
Fellow TEB writer Dan Watts did an excellent job on the site last week setting out all the player moves and giving us his considered view on where each club was considered.
Re-read the article carefully though and you will see he made up at least two of the new Watford international signings.
His predictions are not far off mine in many cases, so I am going to look at the league from a jauntier angle, breaking it into three broad groups.
I need to learn to look up not down when it comes to predictions. After all we finished in the top half last season and 11th the year before.
Looking at the teams in the bottom half, it does feel as if we have more in common with them, in terms of the size of ground, size of support and the sort of players we sign, EXCEPT WE GOT CABAYE.
In celebration of Palace’s last two seasons, I am not just going to look at the relegation battle in my season prediction. I am going to spend a little bit of time on top clubs then more depth on the mid-table situation as well as the bottom.
It feels as if this Premier League season will be similar to the previous two, and probably several seasons before when I was not paying that much attention.
The teams challenging for the title and the Champions League spots will be the usual suspects. There will be a large middle group from which Southampton and Everton have briefly emerged to try to challenge the top group. And then there is the group of teams who will focus only on finishing 17th.
For what it is worth, I think Chelsea may not win the title this year and that Arsenal will pip them. Jose Mourinho likes to use a small pool of players and a couple of injuries, especially to the ageing John Terry, could weaken the core squad.
Arsene Wenger seems to have been on a good run of signing the right players, and has a bigger pool of quality players than anyone else. After that I reckon the two Manchester sides will finish third and fourth, comfortably clear of Liverpool in fifth and Spurs in sixth.
Nothing radical in those predictions I am afraid.
I will look at the relegation battle in more detail next week, but as recent history shows, it is hard to see all three promoted teams surviving, and at least two of the pool of teams including Newcastle United, Sunderland, Aston Villa and Leicester City should survive despite the combination of ownership, managerial chaos that continues to afflict them.
The evidence of the last two seasons and the stability over the summer suggest that Palace should, at worst, fall into a pool of mid-table teams including Southampton, Everton, Stoke City, West Bromwich Albion, Swansea City and West Ham United that should be safe in mid table.
Having completed two seasons where we finished strongly in mid-table, it would be nice to aim higher, even if that means challenging for the apparently dreaded Europa league spots.
It feels wildly optimistic to talk about the Europa League but we are only 2-3 places away from qualifying, and I have to say I love the idea of Palace playing in Europe, even with all the travelling and weird Thursday/Sunday game cycle that means.
So what do we need to do to keep ahead of West Brom, Swansea and West Ham, and challenge the likes of Everton, Southampton, Stoke, and maybe even Tottenham for higher spots?
The relatively quiet transfer activity is a reflection of the fact that we already have a strong squad and we should look first at retention – the McArthur and Dann contracts – and addition of players who can make us better – you heard about CABAYE didn’t you?
We have improving players, and since Pardew’s arrival, flexibility in terms of the tactics we can employ. We should still be disciplined and hard to beat, with the flair and sense of the unexpected that Yannick Bolasie and Wilfried Zaha bring now coupled with an international class midfield playmaker … and Yohan Cabaye!
Goals from one of our new strikers or another epic run of form from Glenn Murray similar to the one he produced in February and March, would really help a push for seventh or eighth.
As part of the bigger picture, it would be great to see clubs in this middle tier pull closer to the top five or six clubs. In fact, I think it is crucial.
The vast financial resources of the top clubs over and above the television money they receive make this unlikely, but Southampton last season showed that it was possible for a lesser club to mount a challenge. The result of Southampton’s excellent season was that the top six clubs once again raided St Mary’s for their best available players. Not that we are ungrateful for our share of the Nathaniel Clyne fee of course.
Perversely, the transfer activity of the top six does offer an opportunity for the clubs below them. Liverpool paid £12 million for Clyne but they could have had him for £2 million three years ago when he already looked pretty good to me.
Liverpool’s largely unsuccessful recruitment policy has been funded by the sale of Suarez last summer and can be extended for another season because of the huge fee paid by Manchester City for Raheem Sterling.
The noise around the protracted transfer focussed on the greed of Sterling and his agent. To me the real story is the ongoing ability of the top clubs to be able to spend their way out of trouble. Manchester City do not have enough young British players to meet the Champions League home grown players rules, so they just grabbed Sterling and Fabian Delph because they could.
If these clubs keep making expensive mistakes with their transfers, and there have been some huge mistakes out there, it does give the opportunity for the well run mid-table clubs to make a genuine challenge.
Palace’s relatively quiet transfer activity, building on the base established in the last 18 months, could prove a virtue if clubs above them are not able to integrate larger numbers of new players.
Next week I will look at the relegation battle.
