The Premier League 2024/25, Part One: Arsenal to Brighton
Here we go, then, with some brief previews for the Premier League this season, tongue firmly planted in cheek.
I’ve always loved writing pre-season previews. They encapsulate the care-free air of the pre-season, before the slow, dawning reality what’s actually going to emerge starts to reveal itself. In your mind’s eye, that left back who last season looked like he’d be better off being left on bricks could have been transformed into Paolo Maldini over the two and half week summer break. Anything is possible, at this time of the year.
Of course, a good number of us—whose seasons started last Saturday or perhaps even the week before—will already have experienced that familiar feeling of the weight of the world being carefully layered back onto our shoulders. It can only take 90 minutes. For now though, let us breathe and let us dream. If we can’t do it now, then when the hell can we?
So over the next four days, five teams a morning. In alphabetical order. Consider this a guide to having conversations in the pub with people who want to talk about The Football. Heck, I’ll even throw in a line to provoke a conversation in the pub. You never know. Might come in useful.
So, let’s do this.
Arsenal
So near, yet so far. It’s become a cliche to talk about the ‘fine margins’ of football–and dear Christ on a bike, Mikel Arteta has done so enough–but last time around they really did come so close. In the course of four days in April 2024, balances were tilted just too far from Arsenal. A home defeat to Aston Villa on the 14th ultimately torpedoed them in their race against the Manchester Automatons. Three days later, they were edged out of the Champions League by Bayern Munich. So it goes.
So, how do you make that final step? They’ve been runners-up these last two years, but how do you go one better? Of course, if it was as easy as something that I, an idiot, could spew out at 9.00 on a Monday morning, none of us would probably even be asking the question in the first place. Perhaps the best that you can do is what Arsenal have done this summer. Strengthen a smidge, lose a little driftwood, and impress upon the players that they do not want to repeat the sinking feeling which came last April and May.
One or two will not be making that return journey. Emile Smith-Rowe never quite happened, and he’s departed for Fulham. Others may follow before the end of the summer transfer window, if for no other reason than to balance the profit and sustainability rules. Ricardo Calafiori is an upgrade for a defence that only conceded 29 goals in the Premier League last season, and Jurrien Timber, who signed for them last summer, made his debut against Nottingham Forest, and lasted 50 minutes before–and I believe this to be the correct medical terminology–twanging his ACL and missing effectively the rest of the season. He finally returned for the last day as a substitute against Everton and essentially starts this season as a de facto new signing.
A summer of relative steadiness gives the impression that this is a team that will get it right the third time around. Yes, it will probably be extremely difficult. Manchester City are the most formidable opponent that any club may have come up against in the history of the game in this country. But the work has been put in, the experience has been gained, and the tweaks have been made. It seems fair enough to ask; if this isn’t to be Arsenal’s year, then when is to be?
Important line for pub conversations: “Well yeah, Mikel Arteta can be a strange bird at times, but then again so could Don Revie and Brian Clough”.
Aston Villa
Eight years ago, Aston Villa were in a bit of a state. Relegated from the Premier League, they finished 13th in the Championship as they teetered under the weight of a sudden (and broadly unexpected) drop in revenue.
It took them three tries to get back, but for all the caterwauling that has occasionally been heard from around Villa Park over the last five years—such is the nature of modern football—that it can be easily forgotten that Villa have improved fairly steadily since their 2019 return, with only the blip of 2021/22 (remember when Steven Gerrard was considered a viable managerial option for a fairly big Premier League club?) interrupting fairly solid progress.
Their last three seasons have seen them finish 14th, 7th and 4th, and last season’s qualification for the Champions League means a lot to this particular club, rekindling faded Polaroids of Rotterdam in 1982 back to life. But there comes a point at which the dreaming has to end and the realities of what will be an extremely testing season start to reveal themselves.
The squeezing of the annual has been a bone of contention since the pandemic wreaked havoc upon all of us, and this reaches new depths this season with the introduction of the needlessly byzantine ‘Swiss model’ in the Champions League, which achieves its intended goal of adding at least another two matches to an already hectic calendar. Get ready for a steady stream of hand-wringing as tendons pop and limbs snap under tired challenges throughout the next ten months.
The challenge is obvious. For all that we talk of the predictability of the Champions League, as result of decades of financial imbalance within the European club game, this is still probably the pinnacle of world club football and will represent a huge challenge for an incoming team with no (recent) experience of it, as Newcastle United found to their cost last time around.
Unai Emery has signed a new contract to 2029 and money has been spent on reinforcements. Amadou Onana, Ian Maatsen, Enzo Barrenechea and Samuel Iling-Junior are good, solid signings, obvious upgrades for the strength in depth that will be needed throughout a testing season. But matching the achievements of last season will be a tall order, so perhaps this is a season for Aston Villa supporters to take their feet off the pedal a little and enjoy the experience of being among Europe’s elite for the first time in more than four decades.
Important line for pub conversations: “Can Unai Emery (who, let us not forget, is a Dracula), transfer his exceptional Europa League record to the Champions League?”
Bournemouth
Bournemouth’s 2024 has shown the twin faces of being a smaller club who make it towards the middle of the Premier League. On the one hand, their year started with plans being announced to move into a new stadium with an increased capacity of 18,500 by the summer of 2027. As typified by new-ish owner Bill Foley, it’s a sensible, incremental level of growth rather than the sort of ginorm-o-dome that some owners would develop, and meanwhile work continues apace on the club’s new training centre, which is due to open later this year.
But on the other, smaller clubs who enjoy some degree of relative success–and it’s worth remembering that finishing 12th was their joint-second highest ever league finish–also attract the attention of bigger fish, and the loss of Dominic Solanke to Spurs will hit hard. He scored 21 of their 54 league goals last season, after all. Many eyes will fall upon Antolne Semenyo, who pushed his way into a regular first team place last season. He only scored eight last season, but he’s obviously talented and has just signed a longer-term contract. Whether this will be enough to plug the hole left by the departure of last year’s star player remains to be seen.
Last season, Bournemouth left an impression of wild inconsistency upon the Premier League. Their 2023/24 season can essentially be broken down into five chunks; bad, good, bad, good, bad. But a lot of this was dictated by the fixture schedule. Gary O’Neill was fired after taking just three points from their first nine league matches, but this included playing Liverpool, Spurs, Chelsea, Brighton and Arsenal. When they dropped just four points from nine matches from the end of October, this included matches against Sheffield United, Nottingham Forest and Manchester United. The Premier League fixture list is not always completely even-handed in its distribution of matches.
Maintaining a suspension of gravity will be the target for Andoni Iraola. Bournemouth overshot expectations last season, and although the constant demands for further improvement will undoubtedly continue, a repeat of last season’s mid-table finish will likely suit everybody down to the ground while Foley gets to work on the planning challenges ahead, if he’s going to get this new ground built. There’s plenty of potential for a bright future for Bournemouth, but this season may be primarily about treading necessary water.
Important line for pub conversations: “If Bournemouth can only be a bit more consistent this seas… NO, NOT LIKE THAT!”
Brentford
Big players can cast long shadows, and the future of Ivan Toney hangs heavy over the start to Brentford’s season. For now, Toney remains a Brentford player. For all the issues that he faced over last season, Toney ended last season on a high in the national team and has become a totemic figure around the club in recent years.
But he’s entering the last year of his contract and can leave on a free transfer next summer, and Brentford, like all other football clubs, always need more of that. Should he stay this season, they won’t get a penny when the offers start rolling in for him in the summer of 2025. So… makes sense to cash in now, doesn’t it?
It’s a little more complicated than that. Igor Thiago had been identified as Toney’s replacement and signed from Club Brugge after having scored 18 in 34 for them in the Jupiler Pro League last season at a reported cost of £30m. But he then damaged his knee cartilage during a friendly with Wimbledon last month and is now expected to be out for the rest of the year.
So what do Brentford do? Do they try to find someone else before the end of this transfer window? The market value of Toney is dropping day by day. They could hold onto him until January, by which time Thiago’s meniscus should have recovered, but any offers that they get for Toney with just six months left on that contract are likely to be paltry. Unless Manchester United are struggling for goals, of course, and let’s not rule that out.
It’s a headache that head coach Thomas Frank could certainly do without, and Brentford flew by the seat of their pants a little last season, always clear enough of the bottom three to not be overly concerned by a threat of relegation, but not really pushing much beyond that either. Match last season under these circumstances, and they’ll have done okay.
There are reasons for cautious optimism. Bryan Mbeumo missed a third of last season with injury, and they missed both his goals and chance creation. He gives them a chance, providing he can steer clear of injury. But the Toney situation will continue to loom large, and it could do so all season. What we can say with a deal of confidence is that with gambling spreadsheets’ Matthew Benham still running the club, there should at least be a plan.
Important line for pub conversations: “You wouldn’t *bet* on Ivan Toney still being there by the end of the season, would you? Eh, lads? AMIRITE? What do you mean, go and sit at another table?”
Brighton & Hove Albion
With seven seasons under their belt, Brighton & Hove Albion are now An Established Premier League Football Club. For those of us who can remember the temporary stands of Withdean or those long schleps up to Gilligham for home mactches, this plain and simple fact remains as surprising as ever.
But with each passing season, expectations will alter a little. The idea of Brighton as a Premier League club being anything like a surprise feels increasingly outdated and not a little patronising. Last season saw a downturn. It was always going to be likely that the strains of a Europa League campaign would apply downward pressure on their resources, and dropping from 6th place to 11th under Roberto De Zerbi last season was an obvious downturn.
When De Zerbi vanished in a puff of pique at the start of the summer, the club pulled the ultimate football hipster move, bringing in Fabian Hürzeler from FC St Pauli, a 31-year old coach with a reputation for loving a press who’d just won the 2. Bundesliga title, a move so inescapably Brighton that smelt a little of candyfloss and weed, just as the town centre does most of the time, these days.
But if nothing else, the arrival of Hürzeler has injected a little spring back into the steps of the club’s supporters. Last season’s Europa League run was a lot of fun, but it was also highly taxing and ended in quite a sound defeat to Roma, while their league season tailed off with only one win in their final ten games; the sound of a balloon slowly deflating, as spring turned to summer.
Club owner Tony Bloom acted swiftly and decisively, and getting that (important) bit of managerial business done has given the new incumbent an entire summer to work on his squad. Because this is Brighton, players have departed. Pascal Gross has returned to Germany and Billy Gilmour seems likely to be a Napoli player by the end of the transfer window.
But again, returns from injury matter, and perhaps no return could matter quite as much as that of Kauru Mitoma, the dynamo at the heart of so much of their best attacking football, who missed the final third of last season with injury. Europe was a drain, and a return to a slightly less hectic schedule while others are playing more European football than ever means that a return to the top half of the table after having finished 11th last time around shouldn’t be beyond them.
Important line for pub conversations: “That De Zerbi was a proper weirdo anyway, wasn’t he? You can’t trust a man who’s worked out his facial hair with a Goddam protractor.”