A ball has yet to be kicked during the 2017-18 Premier League season – that won’t happen until Friday when Arsenal and Leicester City face off in the campaign’s curtain raiser.
But that hasn’t stopped Sportsnet from making a bunch of bold proclamations.
After a busy summer of transfer movement and such, here is our list of winners and losers ahead of the start of the new Premier League season.
WINNER: ALVARO MORATA
Let’s face it: Alvaro Morata was never going to get a chance to be a regular starter at Real Madrid, and as long as he stayed there he was going to continue to be overshadowed by Cristiano Ronaldo and his cohorts. A move to Chelsea is just what the doctor ordered to get the Spaniard’s career back on track. With Diego Costa set to leave Stamford Bridge, Morata will serve as the focal point of the attack as Chelsea looks to repeat as English champions, and he will be able to rely on quality service from players the calibre of Eden Hazard and Cesc Fabregas. Morata also has a wealth of Champions League experience, which should help him shine for the Blues as they return to competing on European club soccer’s biggest stage this season.
LOSER: FRANK DE BOER
It’s bad enough having to take over Crystal Palace, a club that stumbled its way through most of last season before eventually managing to stay up. But Dutch manager Frank de Boer also has to take over from the retired Sam Allardyce, who gained somewhat of a reputation for helping struggling Premier League teams avoid relegation. De Boer also has a bit of a point to prove after a short and failed spell in charge of Inter Milan last season. No pressure then, Frank. No pressure.
WINNER: TV COMMENTATORS AND PUNDITS
This season, both Serie A and the Bundesliga will be using the video assistant review system, or VAR, which Major League Soccer starting deploying this past weekend. The Premier League, though, has yet to taken the plunge when it comes to using video technology to review contentious decisions by the referee. That’s a Godsend for English television pundits who can continue to bloviate about the use of technology, and warn how it will interrupt the fast pace of the English club game. Implementing VAR would take away a precious windmill for English television commentators to tilt at, and we wouldn’t want to do that, now would we?
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LOSER: TOTTENHAM
The transfer period isn’t over yet, so there’s still time for Tottenham to make a move. But it’s pretty telling that while all of the other big clubs in the Premier League bolstered their respective rosters over the summer that Spurs kept pretty quiet and didn’t make any major additions. Curiously, they sold off defender Kyle Walker to Manchester City for a cool £50 million, but didn’t replace him or reinvest any part of that huge financial windfall on new players that can help them get over the hump and win the league title.
WINNER: THE THREE PROMOTED CLUBS
Don’t write off the three teams that came up from the second-tier English Championship – Brighton Hove & Albion, Huddersfield Town and Newcastle United – just yet. Sure, newly-promoted sides have historically struggled to survive in their first season up in the Premier League, but the good news for the aforementioned trio is that Crystal Palace, Swansea City, Burnley and Watford only narrowly beat the drop last season, and they haven’t really improved over the summer. What’s more, Watford and Crystal Palace have new coaches, so you have to figure there’s going to be an adjustment period for them.
LOSER: AS MONACO
Winning last season’s Ligue 1 title and reaching the Champions League semifinals came at a steep price for AS Monaco, as several of their top players were picked off by English clubs during the summer transfer period. Among the notable departees from the French team: defender Benjamin Mendy (Manchester City), and midfielders Bernardo Silva (Manchester City) and Tiemoue Bakayoko (Chelsea). The scary thing is that the window hasn’t closed yet, which means forward Kylian Mbappé and midfielder Thomas Lemar, who’ve been the focus of transfer speculation all summer, could still make the move to the Premier League. With PSG buoyed by the addition of Neymar and looking to avenge last season’s league title loss, Monaco could be in for a very long, hard Ligue 1 campaign.
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