Oh the ridiculousness of the opening of campaigns. Four games into the new Premier League season and there are already serious pundits saying things like “well, I can’t really see anyone catching up with Chelsea,” and “Well, West Ham are going to struggle to stay up”. I mean, honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear someone giving England a fighting chance at the European Championships in 2012 following two adequate performances against (let’s face it) inadequate opposition.
I sit in front of my TV and scoff at the absurdity of some of the comments… And just now, yes, 15 seconds ago, a DJ on the radio has said: “And this week we’re at White Hart Lane to see if Tottenham can build on their one-all draw with West Bromwich Albion.”
Build on their draw with West Brom?! Well, that’s got to be a position from which you can put in a challenge for a top-four place.
It started with Andy Gray and Sky Sports, I guess – this insatiable need for every kick of every ball in every game to contain within it significant drama and illustrations of sporting excellence. Good God, world, can’t we relax a bit and think more about the fact that the opening of the season is only meaningful in the context of the closing of the season, 34 games and seven months away.
And then, as April trundles into May, will anyone be saying, ‘well, if Spurs hadn’t got that point at The Hawthorns, they would be in real trouble now’? I seriously doubt it.
But (and here comes the really annoying thing about the start of the season) I still get caught up in it all. I found myself thinking this morning that if West Brom continues to accumulate an average of one point per game (at present we stand at four points from four games) we could well be in real trouble come the end of the season, but not irreparably so…
Fast on the heels of that thought came this: If West Brom beats Birmingham on Saturday, we will probably be ok this season… After five games?! Good God, man – get a life. Get a grip!
The fact is, these days, that the Premier League tends to level out over 38 games with the top six pretty much guaranteed (Man U, Man C, Arsenal, Liverpool, Spurs and Villa – with possibly one of the last three struggling to maintain its position) and the bottom six much the same (West Brom, Blackpool, Wigan, Wolves, West Ham and Newcastle).
True, that second list is less certain and that’s what gives West Brom fans this irrepressible hope – the bottom six (as long as it’s not the bottom three) would mean progression. But this stage of the season means nothing. Look at Burnley last season. Beat a host of top teams in the early part of the season, but then lost their manager and (seemingly) their ability to play. The season before, Hull was almost unstoppable in the early stages, only to scrape a survival by the skin under their fingernails.
But this is where I worry about West Brom (and England, come to that). While these other (often smaller) teams pull off stunning shocks and earn at least the respect of the observing world, West Brom and England stick to form. West Brom bounces up and down between the top two tiers not so much like a yo-yo as a perpetually powered rubber ball in a ventilation shaft and England cruise through qualifying (losing a couple of friendlies to class teams) and are humiliated in the quarter finals of the next tournament (or the last 16 if we have a real saviour at the helm).
You will, of course, have noticed that there are eight teams in the top flight I haven’t mentioned, your Fulhams, Sunderlands and Boltons et al. For these teams there is no fight for championships and cups and there is no scrap to maintain Premier League status.
Some would call it dull mid-table subsistence. I would call it heaven.
