THIS week I want to ponder the plight of one of the Premier League’s more uncertain institutions. It’s been a bad year on the south coast for football with Southampton having significant problems both on and off the field and Portsmouth facing the possibility of becoming the first club in Premier League history to go out of business. Now Pompey belong to a group of top-flight clubs who, if truth be told, are Championship level clubs who have ended up with Premier League status. Not that this is a reason for the club to have fallen into quite the level of difficulty that they seem to have done. As ever, and regardless of what business you are in, if your outgoings exceed the in-comings, you have a problem. When a club like Portsmouth start paying top-dollar salaries and transfer fees while still playing in the comparatively small Fratton Park, they make themselves a hostage to fortune. It now seems that a ransom must be paid with the current owners looking to offload the club and, as yet, meeting with very little success in terms of attracting a serious owner to the club. So what this means for the club on
TEMPTING BETS AT BOTH ENDS OF THE TOP FLIGHT
THIS season, we have two points of interest in terms of whose sideboard the Premier League trophy will adorn. There is a genuine contest for the title, followed closely, at least as far as column inches are concerned, by a phoney war. First, the imposter who can simply be named Man City. I’ve already looked at the Citizens over the summer and am in agreement with Sir Alex Ferguson that Mark Hughes’ side simply won’t be serious contenders. That punters are backing them at prices as short as 15-1 says nothing about City’s chances of winning, just the blind optimism of those who think that sides in their situation win league titles. They don’t and, while one might just pull it off one day, it isn’t going to be this year. All the money they’ve already spent, and all the money that they will undoubtedly spend over the coming year, won’t be enough to simply buy the trophies that some of their backers seem to think will be coming their way. I think the summit of City’s ambition will be to show that they are making progress in building a side fit for purpose and that won’t be a quick
LEEDS LOOK BEST IN LEAGUE 1 BY A MILE
THIS is the third year we’ve run our unique points forecasts, which use the Outlook Index ratings to predict the final league table, and our first look at the new season reveals some conclusive and not so conclusive pointers. As I have shown over the last couple of years, our forecasts are a great tool for making a profit over the season, mostly by trading against the markets rather than a single ante-post play. We’ll start with the Championship where the forecasts show it’s a competitive affair at both ends of the division. It’s no surprise that Newcastle aren’t getting my vote this time, despite my forecasts currently suggesting second place for the Magpies. A caveat to that is that it’s impossible to know what will happen at St James’ Park over the next few months in terms of the club’s ownership. Obviously, that has a major impact on issues such as who the manager will be and what the team will look like. Alan Shearer says that, as things stand, he’ll be returning to the Match of the Day sofa, but I’d have thought that most Toon fans will be questioning whether they would even want him back, given
KILLIE COULD BE THE VALUE OPTION WITHOUT THE OLD FIRM
IN the words of the odious Simply Red, “money’s too tight to mention” – a statement that can very adequately be applied to the top division of Scottish football. The close season saw the SPL become one of the biggest casualties of the collapse of the television company Setanta, at a time when all of the clubs, but most notably Rangers, are already suffering in the current financial climate. Add a further sharp and swift kick to the nuts in the shape of Carling pulling out of their sponsorship deal with the Old Firm sides and it’s fair to say that these are far from happy times for the SPL clubs, and nowhere more so than at Ibrox and Parkhead. In terms of Scottish football as a whole, where that financial uncertainty leads depends on whether the discussion about the Old Firm attempting to move into the English Premier League moves up a level. I think the volume in that conversation will almost certainly increase as, with a huge reduction in the amount of TV money that the SPL receives this season, the rate at which they are falling financially behind their perceived competitors at Champions League level is set
