Normally I would give you a carefully crafted, wonderfully worded, beautiful built preamble before serving up my annual Premier League predictions. But having only had around three hours sleep in the past week I have been left with the mental agility of a concrete rhino and the verbal creativity of a house plant. So, let’s stop beating round the bush and jump right in, in reverse order, of course.
.. – It’s always nice to see the Liverpool feeder team back in the top-flight.
Harsh? Maybe. But if you look back over the years, that’s pretty much what they’ve been. Sadio Mane, Virgil van Dijk, Adam Lallana, Danny Ings, Nathaniel Clyne, Peter Crouch, Dejan Lovren and Rickie Lambert have all made the move up north.
However, I can’t see Liverpool being too interested in the current Saints squad as it hurtles back down to the Championship. – When your star player is a 37-year-old striker, you are always going to struggle in the top-flight. I don’t think this will be a pretty season from Leicester’s perspective, with plenty of Sheffield United-like disasters.
There is also the possibility of a points deduction hanging over them. Unlikely to pull off another surprise title win. – There won’t be a dry eye in the house when Everton play their final game at Goodison Park.
Partly for sentimental reasons, of course, but mostly because they will have just been relegated. A long series of ridiculously bad decisions by the club’s owners have left them on their knees, an.