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14 hours ago
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This used to be a land of giants. This used to be a land where big men fought. This used to be a land where Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsène Wenger tussled, then José Mourinho joined the fray. This used to be a land where Jürgen Klopp made Pep Guardiola reconsider, and he changed his style and won anyway.
Not any more. Next season will be the first since the inaugural Premier League in 1992 not to feature any of the five big managerial beasts – not Ferguson, not Wenger, not Mourinho, not Klopp and not Guardiola.
What’s come over our great land? The Premier League is still our home, but where have all the heroes gone? Where’s the man who ruled by fury? Or the man who made virtues of broccoli and sobriety? Where’s the man who made the conference room the pitch? Where’s the gegenpressingmeister, or the cold philosopher of the positional game? Now they take a man who instigated some interesting pressing patterns and they call him a regular hero. Where are the men who are willing to play the game?
You don’t have to be a nostalgist in the vein of Bill Anderson to think that the Premier League looks a little diminished. Régis Le Bris took over at Sunderland two summers ago and already he is the fourth longest-serving manager currently at a Premier League club. While his quiet authority impressed last season, the understated Breton is nobody’s idea of a main character. And it’ll take a while before the meeting of the two longest-servers, Mikel Arteta and Unai Emery, looks like a clash of the titans, even with the twist that Emery was Arteta’s predecessor at Arsenal.
Tottenham appointed Roberto De Zerbi in March and, the promoted sides excepted, he has already been a Premier League manager longer than 11 of his rivals. All long-running dramas go through this process. Major characters move on, new ones arise. At least they are easier to tell apart than in House of the Dragon: they don’t all have the same hair, and they are not all bafflingly interrelated. Still, it will take time for the new breed to become familiar. Quirks have to be learned, strengths and weaknesses understood.
The result is that this season looks as hard to call as any in living memory. Perhaps the Premier League has entered its Arsenal era and Arteta will soon squat like a giant toad across English football. But retaining the league is difficult, particularly given the emotional outpouring that inevitably comes with ending a lengthy drought. Neither Declan Rice nor Bukayo Saka looked especially fresh at the World Cup, while William Saliba damaged his back. It would be no great surprise if Arsenal started the season slowly.
But who is equipped to take advantage? The previous two league title winners are under new management. Enzo Maresca – Guardiola’s replacement at Manchester City – is a curious manager in that his record is rather better than the experience of watching his teams play. Although his reputation was enhanced by Chelsea’s decline after his departure, it shouldn’t be forgotten just how frustrated Leicester and Chelsea fans became at times with the cautious nature of his football. Arne Slot showed at Liverpool that it is, at least in the short term, possible to thrive when following one of the big beasts but it remains an enormous challenge to succeed somebody who has defined the personality of a club.
Andoni Iraola impressed at Rayo Vallecano and Bournemouth, but the truth is that it’s impossible to know how anybody will adapt to the greater scrutiny of a club like Liverpool, no matter how composed they may previously have appeared.
There’s a lingering doubt about his Bournemouth’s propensity to concede late goals. It may be that a deeper bench offers an immediate solution but equally that could indicate a problem with load management – and that is not going to be made any easier by involvement in the Champions League. Iraola has always relied on extremely physical training sessions, but they will have to be tempered, at least to an extent, by the demands of European football, which Iraola has never experienced.
Similar questions can be asked of Michael Carrick at Manchester United. He did enough last season that United effectively had to appoint him, without doing enough to offer overwhelming proof of his abilities. Signings so far seem to have addressed the right areas in the squad, but the big issue is whether he can handle the demands of playing in multiple competitions. United finished third last season without ever playing a team who had played fewer matches than them.
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So demanding is the modern calendar that fatigue may end up being a bigger factor than any manager. If you are a superclub, the key to having a bad season, as United have demonstrated, is to have one so bad that you don’t qualify for any form of European competition.
Which is extremely good news for Chelsea. Not only do they have, in Xabi Alonso, one of Europe’s most promising young managers but he has time to impose his ideas and his side will be fresher than their opponents in almost every game this season.
Emery’s domination of the Europa League has paradoxically given him a reputation of not quite being of the highest tier, but if Aston Villa can find a way of winning games beyond Morgan Rogers thrashing long-range efforts into the top corner, he has a great opportunity to impose himself. De Zerbi, who has the charisma of a leading figure, should also find himself in the Champions League qualification shake-up given Tottenham’s summer signings and their lack of European football.
The big beasts may have gone but that just means the Premier League is entering a new phase. What matters now is the battle to be the next alpha. Arteta is perhaps best placed, but the contenders are legion. The land awaits its next giant.
