Another Blue Premiership season

| Friday August 17, 2012 00:00

'Van Persie? I don't think he will come here.' You have to admire Roberto Mancini's knack for quiet provocation.

This is the same manager who announced back in April that the title was United's, before leading his side to the crucial 1-0 home victory over Alex Ferguson's disjointed, faltering Champions.

Equipped with a confident, organized and talented squad, Mancini has proved deft at calming troubled waters at vital moments. Hart, Kompany, Toure and Aguero have given Manchester City a formidable dependability, and Mancini's side may well ease to a second consecutive title with or without RVP; if, as expected, they continue to develop as the league's most ruthlessly consistent side, they will certainly not need to repeat the melodrama of scraping the title of the pitch in the third minute of injury time.

So expect City to be in full control of the title race by late April. This season's drama will be generated in the scramble for Champions League places by a chasing pack of four well-matched and unpredictable clubs, and in the rapid and messy spiralling of a pre-Premiership giant. United fans will be alarmed at the frailties in their team that were so easily exposed in the last few weeks of last season.

The Premiership's dominant force now seems curiously insecure - with respect to Wigan fans, United are not used to being outplayed at home by a relegation struggler, but Roberto Martinez's plucky and mobile side made United look pedestrian and tentative at Old Trafford. Ferguson's teams have built their successes on a foundation of organized swagger; you would never have bet against them taking all three points, home or away, against any team outside the top four.

Now, United seem introspective about their own ability to dispatch weaker teams without hitting second gear, and their fans will not be reassured by the ricocheting form of Ashley Young, a player who seems as fragile and ineffective one game as he is devastating the next.

Shinji Kagawa, recently signed from Borussia Dortmund, is the kind of ball-playing workhorse that Ferguson likes, but United will need to add more pace, accuracy and strength on the wings to support Wayne Rooney's brutish talent. Chelsea may also run into problems unless Roberto Di Matteo can quickly prove he is anything more than an amenable motivator of a tetchy dressing room.

The ageing Stamford Bridge mafia of Terry, Cole and Lampard will need replacing, sooner rather than later, and Di Matteo will not survive another Cole-instigated coup. Eden Hazard is an exciting acquisition who many of Chelsea's rivals were courting, but it will be a wasted investment if Roman Abramovich fails to bring in a convincing successor to the mighty Didier Drogba.

Chelsea have lost more than just a powerful target man with an ability to score from anywhere - Drogba was a indefatigable, lion-hearted talisman when they most needed him, and Di Matteo must attempt to push through a deal for Porto's impressive Hulk.

The Blues' season will depend on filling the Drogba-shaped hole with another player who you won't like when he's angry. Arsenal face a similar predicament in looking for a goalscorer who can deliver a Robben van Persie goal tally, but their fans must be looking with growing alarm at the club's inability to hold onto its best talent.

Lucas Podolski seems built for the Premiership, but he is no RVP, and unless Arsene Wenger has some surprises up his sleeve this could be his last year at the Emirates. Jack Wilshere is already in danger of becoming a lost prodigy, with his susceptibility to injury and penchant for immature and ill-advised commentaries on Twitter.

Wenger himself looks permanently defeated, and his doubled-over touchline agonies are the most painfully entertaining sight in football. If Arsenal do not break a long-term habit of failing to invest in key areas, they may find themselves out of the title race, once again, long before the business end of the season.

The Gunners are sure to be matched for unintentional entertainment value by Tottenham, who have made the pre-season's biggest gamble by putting all their chips at the table of Andre Villas-Boas. Quite what Spurs' chairman Daniel Levy is thinking is anyone's guess.

While Harry Redknapp can't deny he threw away Spurs' 2012-2013 season as he battled an exhausting court case and waited for the FA to offer the dream job he was primed for, you have to question the logic of replacing a manager who delivered the most entertaining football last season with one who has failed in his first attempt at Premiership management - a failure which he cannot blame solely on the unpleasantness of the Chelsea dressing room.

AVB did not man-manage Chelsea with the tact and guile that was needed, and his stubborn insistence on a high defensive line will again have the Premiership's paciest strikers rubbing their hands in expectation of comfortable hat-tricks.

Spurs have signed well in Sigurdsson and Vertonghen, and their pursuit of world-class targets is encouraging, but their fans can probably look forward to some terrifying calamities this season. Levy's loyalty to a long-term strategy will be tested quickly and AVB must pray that his new chairman will have more patience than Abramovich; in the prickly and outspoken Rafael Van Der Vaart, AVB will also face an early and robust challenge to his authority at White Hart Lane.

But the fans who will suffer most this year will be Liverpool's. Big Premiership clubs do not learn from experience, or from the chaos around them - a club the size of Liverpool needs the combination of flair and avuncular pragmatism offered by the likes of a Guus Hiddink. Instead, they have opted, like Spurs, to hand their season's fortunes over to a relatively young man with considerable potential but no history of managing inflated egos at a powerful Premiership club with an insatiable appetite for silverware.

Brendan Rogers' insistence on football puritanism has won him many fans in the media, but this will stand for nothing after his first home defeat to a smash-and-grab Premiership spoiler such as Stoke City (what a horrible advert for the game are Tony Pulis' ball-hoofing thugs!). Rogers is faced with something no manager with a backbone wants to stomach - the need to befriend and pacify strutting peacocks who have long-term contracts at the club and the loyalty and love of the entire fanbase.

Rogers' relationship with an ageing and declining Steven Gerard will be crucial, and if the midfielder continues to flatter to deceive in his golden years, the Welshman will face the unenviable task of dropping the most adored Scouser in Liverpool since John Lennon of the Beatles.

Prediction:Champions: Manchester CityRunners-up: Manchester UnitedThird: ChelseaFourth: Tottenham HotspurFifth: Arsenal(Liverpool to finish 9th)*Please note that the preview was written before Robin Van Persie's proposed move to Manchester United