Tim Lovejoy Column 13/08/09

Tim Lovejoy writes exclusively for ShortList.com at 1pm every Thursday

Welcome back to the football season. For me the gap’s been far too long. I’ve even taken to watching ballet during the summer for some sporting action. I know it’s not technically a sport, but if you’ve ever seen the airtime Carlos Acosta gets you wouldn’t mind him playing up front or centre-half for your team. Apparently he wanted to be a footballer in Cuba, but his dad forced him to be a ballet dancer. What a waste. Or maybe not, if you look at his bank balance.

First of all, I want to talk about the Community Shield. The game’s usually a damp squib, but it turned out to be an enthralling match with good football, goals, passion and – most importantly for people writing columns – it had controversy. I think it’s great that the Evra-Ballack incident happened, because I am sick and tired of players kicking the ball out every time someone goes down. It has to stop. Players should play to the whistle. The problem with players being so courteous at the moment is that certain players – and we all know the culprits – use it to gain an advantage and break up the play. We want to see the ball on the pitch and football being played at a high tempo. How many serious injuries do you actually see? It should be down to the officials to determine whether play should be stopped.

I also notice nobody’s talking about the fact that, while Ballack clearly fouled Evra, he caught him in the chest and Evra went down clutching his face. It’s embarrassing and fans are fed up with it. Players need to take a long, hard look at themselves. If they’re not embarrassed by watching themselves on TV, then their teammates should shame them in training.

Looking ahead to the coming season, there’s one date that really stands out – 29 November. You’ve got Arsenal against Chelsea in good old Blighty and the first of the El Classicos – Barcelona vs Real Madrid, which is possibly the biggest match in Europe at the moment with amazing talent on display. I think it’s sad that we’ve lost Cristiano Ronaldo to Spain and haven’t attracted any big names like Kaká over to the Premier League. I think it might have been a different story if that Norwegian referee Tom Henning Ovrebo had had a good game at Stamford Bridge. Barcelona winning the Champions League has given La Liga the title of best league and attracted those players – though of course money comes into it, too.

The Premier League this season will end up with the same top four, but in a different order. Though, I do think the league is more competitive than it’s ever been. I’m so excited about Man City with their gazillion-pound signings. It’s great to have a team like that about. I’ve often said, why should it just be down to Arsenal, Man United and Liverpool to have all the money just because they have a history of being the big clubs? It’s great that Chelsea and City have joined the party, much like Blackburn did a few years back. Whatever you think of City, we’re all going to be tuned in to watch them play and see how on earth Mark Hughes is going to juggle that squad.

As for my own team, Chelsea, we’ve got an unknown quantity as a manager, in Premier League terms, in Carlo Ancelotti. He’s lucky, though, because he’s inherited a settled team, but as soon as we get a couple of bad results it’ll be blamed on the new diamond system. It could become a monkey on his back throughout the season. Everyone’s talking about it and I think the players and staff will spend the first half of the season justifying it. Mind you, on paper we should be top after seven games. Our start to the season is as easy as we could hope for. We play Hull City,
Sunderland, Fulham, Burnley, Stoke City, Spurs and Wigan. We should be winning all those.

Now, predictions at the start of the season are pointless because there are so many variables that can affect the outcome – but I’ll give you mine anyway…

I think Chelsea will win it because they have a settled team. Man United are obviously going to come second because Alex Ferguson knows what he’s doing. Liverpool are improving, but don’t have enough depth of squad; they’ll be third ahead of Arsenal in fourth, who will be much better this season but are one or two experienced players short of challenging for the title.

Right, I’ll be back again same time next week, hopefully with a terrific weekend of football to look back on.

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