Premier League New-Boys

With every new Premier League season comes three new teams eager to try and slug it out with the best clubs England has to offer. This year the Premier League welcomes Queens Park Rangers (QPR), who won the Championship title, Norwich City, who got second place and Swansea City, who won the playoffs.

Both QPR and Norwich have been in the Premier League before but this will be a brand new experience for Swansea who have yet to get to the Premiership since its inception in 1992. In fact, Swansea become the first Welsh team into the Premier League after a dramatic victory over Reading. 

How will these teams fare?

Most of the time the promoted teams start off well. They have nothing to lose and they tend to surprise some of the bigger teams with determined performances that run on adrenaline. However, as the season goes on, at least two of the teams often struggle with Blackpool's recent season being a great example of that. 

A lot of it depends on how the teams act in the transfer window over the summer. Rarely does a promoted team perform well in the Premiership without spending some money improving their squads. With that in mind, QPR should be best placed out of all the new teams to retain their newly acquired Premier League status because they are the richest of the three clubs.

Personally, I would like to see Swansea stay up because I like the football they play. They keep the ball on the ground and they like to pass and move. However, they will struggle to stay up if they don't improve all over the pitch and add some Premiership experience in the vital areas at the back and in the centre of midfield.

Whatever happens, I'm looking forward to seeing these new teams take on the EPL ever-presents and hopefully give them a run for their money.

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The 2010/11 Premier League season is over!

Another season has finished and it's time for a quick round-up of how things finished at the top and bottom of the table. 

As we already knew, Manchester United are Premier League champions once again with Chelsea finishing in second place and Manchester City coming in third. Arsenal, who only a few weeks ago were challenging for the title, fell into fourth place winning only one of their last six Premier League games. Things need to change at the Emirates for Arsenal to recapture the glory of the late 90s and early 00s. Tottenham Hotspur edged out Liverpool to finish fifth and qualify for another year of European football, albeit the Europa League and not the Champion`s League.

The other big story at the end of the season concerns the teams that have been relegated. Falling at the last hurdle this year were Birmingham and Blackpool who join West Ham in preparation for the Championship.

Blackpool had started the season so well and were high flyers in December, looking at possible European qualification. However, as I predicted, those good times did not last long and Blackpool started to plummet down the table. Their gung-ho style of football was never going to work in the long run with the squad they have.

Birmingham fans will be looking back on a bittersweet season that saw them capture the Carling Cup (defeating Arsenal in the process) and get relegated. I think if you ask most Birmingham fans, they would trade the Cup for Premier League status but at least they have something to smile about. I had predicted that Birmingham would struggle to stay up despite their Cup success because the squad was playing like a team who believed it had done its job after winning a major trophy. They simply failed to find the same form in the Premier League as they had in the Carling Cup.

Scott Parker will be on the move

West Ham were relegated a week or so ago and it has been a long time coming for the Hammers. They have been on the verge of relegation since they came back to the Premier League a few years ago. Hammers' captain, Scott Parker, will be highly sought after over the summer so it should be interesting to see who bags him. Arsenal could really do with a player like Parker who can keep running hard for 90 minutes and put in a strong tackle. 

 

Come back in a couple of weeks to find out who has been promoted to the Premiership along with QPR and Norwich and how the new teams stack up. 

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Blackpool Showing Their True Colours.

The boys in orange took the first half of this Premiership season by storm and at one point they were sitting in the top half of the League table looking at possible European qualification. Their attacking style of play took plenty of the Premier League's ever-presents, and pundits, by surprise, allowing The Seasiders to record victories over Liverpool (twice), Tottenham, Sunderland and Stoke. However, these big wins have been too few and far between in the second half of the season. The element of surprise has been lost and the honeymoon period is well and truly over.

The same Blackpool side that were looking to get into Europe are now staring at possible relegation as they sit just one place and one point above the relegation zone with games against Arsenal, Stoke, Tottenham, Bolton and Manchester United to come. A massive six point, must-win game against Wigan Athletic is coming up on the 16^th of this month and you have to say that if they fail to win that, things will look very bleak indeed for Ian Holloway's side.

Why have Blackpool suffered so much recently? I think it's simple. Blackpool play a very attacking but very risky game. To highlight this, Blackpool have scored more goals than any club in the bottom half of the table with 45. However, they have the second worst GD (Goal Difference) in the Premier League with -18. Only bottom placed Wigan are worse. They have also conceded the most goals out of every club, letting in 59 goals in just 31 games. That is nearly 2 per game.

There is a reason why many clubs who get promoted to the Premier League play a conservative style of football in their first year at least. They are looking to win games by one goal or play for draws against the powerhouse teams by packing men behind the ball or flooding the midfield with bodies. In contrast, Blackpool have attacked in every game and, while that is admirable, it has not helped the club in the long run as they look to secure their Premier League status.

Holloway: Too inflexible?

I am loathe to blame managers for the player's performances but in this case, most of the blame has to lie with Ian Holloway. It is his system that the team is playing and it is his lack of flexibility that has cost the team greatly. When things started to go wrong for Blackpool, Holloway should have changed to a more conservative style of football. Instead, he continues to pile men forward, leaving gaps at the back which have been exploited on too many occasions this year.

I worry for Blackpool and I think they are favourites, along with Wolves and Wigan to go down. You have to admit that for the first half of the season The Seasiders were playing well beyond themselves and things were bound to get worse.

What do you think?

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