Premier League 2022/23 Season Preview
The Build Up:
The Premier League is nearly back! After a mega close season last year, where Champions League, Europa League and Premier League Survival spots were all up for grabs, whilst Manchester City once again held off Liverpool to win another Premier League Trophy. This year though, there are a lot of different stories. Can City retain again, can Liverpool finally win the Premier League in front of their own fans, can Chelsea bounce back with new owners to do what many fans expected last season and challenge for the trophy, can Spurs, Arsenal or Manchester United make a challenge for the top spots, can the newly promoted teams stay in the league and could a surprise team shock the world and make unforgettable headlines.
The Title Fight:
Manchester City come into the season as one of, if not the favourites to win the Premier League title and grab there 5th title in the past 6 seasons. The one thing that people have talked about as a weakness for the Cityzens is the fact that for the past couple of years they haven’t had a “proper” striker who can score 20+ goals a season. However, for Manchester City and their fans, they will be hoping that this is no longer an “issue”, as they have brought in one of the brightest young stars in world football in Erling Haaland for a fee of £51.1m from Borussia Dortmund. The 21 year old is being hyped as someone who can be as good, if not better than Sergio Aguero. If he is anywhere near Aguero’s quality, that’s very worrying for the rest of the league. City have lost players, losing Gabriel Jesus to potential rivals Arsenal, Raheem Sterling to Chelsea and club captain Fernandinho who has left to go back to playing in Brazil. However, City have brought in England and former Leeds defensive midfielder Kalvin Phillips for a fee of £50 Million. Philips is a solid player who can be a massive help for City when they need him, it will be interesting to see how much he will play though considering he probably isn’t going to come in and replace the reliable Rodri (who just signed a new contract to 2027). They have also brought in young 22 year old Argentinian Julian Alvarez, who was signed in January but stayed at his club River Plate to play in the Copa Libertadores. Alvarez can play both striker and Winger so he could be a very useful tool for City to use. Goalkeeper Stefan Ortega is the last player City have brought in so far.
Liverpool come into this season having won both the FA Cup and Carabao Cup as well as finishing runners up in both the Champions League and the Premier League. Liverpool are a team that can easily win the league, they are also a team that could easily get 90+ points and not win the league. They will be praying that the second part doesn’t happen again. Mo Salah comes into the season once again as the Golden Boot holder and also the top assister and will be looking to keep them both this year and Diogo Jota and Luis Diaz will also be looking to be near the top of the rankings. However, for the first time in six years, Anfield will not be home to Sadio Mane, who has left for a fee of £35 million to go to Bayern Munich. However, they do have a brand new striker in the form or Darwin Nunez for a club record fee of £85m. The young Uruguay forward is only 22 and Liverpool have had some pretty good South American Strikers in the past. Can Nunez perform on those guys levels, we will have to wait and see.
They have also brought in young Fabio Carvalho from Championship Champions Fulham. It seems that both of the top 2 teams have lost attacking players but will hope that there new Star Strikers are actually stars as this will play a massive role in who leaves May next year as the Premier League Champions.
Chelsea finished last season in 3rd place, 19 points off the top of the league. Chelsea had lots of struggles last year, losing the likes of Ben Chilwell and Reece James due to injuries. Also, a much bigger thing off the pitch occurred as due to the ongoing problems in Ukraine, Roman Abramovich decided to sell the club. They have since been taken over by Todd Boehly and will be looking to have a very successful first season with the club. Chelsea have brought in Raheem Sterling for £47.5 Million from title rivals Manchester City and they will be hoping that Raheem will be an important part of them challenging for silverware this year and that he will be a much more influential signing than Romelu Lukaku, who has gone back out on loan to Inter Milan after a tough return season at the Blues. Chelsea have had massive changes in the Centre back department as both Andreas Christensen and Antonio Rudiger have gone to Barcelona and Real Madrid respectively for a total fee of nothing. That is majorly costly in both the finances and there overall defence but they have brought in Kalidou Koulibaly from Napoli. Koulibaly is a super, super talent who is so hard to beat in one on one situations and will help Chelsea fill a whole that they lost at the start of the summer. If Koulibaly and Thiago Silva are Chelsea’s starting centre backs, there average age for the two CB’s are 34 years of age but despite that, they are such good defenders that they are arguably the strongest Centre Back pairing in the whole league. It will be tough for Chelsea to win the league this season but there squad is talented and if they get luck when it comes to injuries compared to there main rivals, they will have a chance.
The last team that I feel could compete for the Premier League title this season is Tottenham Hotspur. They need to be consistent if they are to challenge but I believe that they can. Spurs have Antonio Conte and he is not only one of the best managers in the world, but he is a manager that wins leagues and trophies with pretty much every team he has managed. During the summer transfer window, Spurs have spent £95m bringing in four potential
key players. Ivan Perisic has been brought in on a free transfer from Inter Milan to reunite with manager Antonio Conte, Yves Bissouma has come in for £35 million from Brighton and is a talented midfielder. Richarlison has cost £60m to come to Spurs to be one of there many attacking players and maybe most importantly, Tottenham have managed to bring in Clement Lenglet on loan from FC Barcelona. Lenglet is a super talented defender who could play a massive role in helping Spurs have a very successful and positive season alongside Cristian Romero. They also have Kulusevski and Bentancur in there first full season and both Current Golden Boot holder Heung Min Son and star striker Harry Kane will be looking for the top Goal scorer award and will also be hoping that they can guide there team to compete for Premier League glory but certainly to comfortably qualify for Champions League football next season.
The European Contenders:
Arsenal come into this season being in a much stronger position then previous years. Finishing 5th last season was a good achievement and even though they were in the top 4 for a while, there squad is so young that they can only get better. They also have European Football this season, something they didn’t have last year. The Gunners come into this year having just signed well known striker Gabriel Jesus for a fee of £45million. Jesus is a player who can always play well when he really needs to and adding him to there already young and promising attack will only help them. They have lost Alexandre Lacazette who has gone on a free transfer to Lyon but Bukayo Saka, Emile Smith Rowe, Gabriel Martinelli, Martin Odegaard and Eddie Nketiah can definetly fill the goals and assists that Lacazette achieved. Arsenal have also brought in young 22 year old Fabio Vieira from FC Porto. The future looks bright for Arsenal FC.
Manchester United come into this season after having there worst points total in Premier League history. It was a pretty horrific season for United but at least they qualified in the Europa League, which at times they looked like they didn’t even want to do. This year, United fans will hope that this is the start of a positive new era for the club as the bring in Erik Ten Hag from Ajax. The Dutch coach is a very good manager so he shouldn’t be the one to be blamed if this season is anything like it was last year for the Red Devils. They have also gotten rid of a lot of players too, the likes of Paul Pogba, who never reached the same levels at United as he did at Juventus and with France. Juan Mata, Jesse Lingard, Edinson Cavani, Nemanja Matic and others have all been let go by the club. They have brought in Denmark’s Christian Eriksen, who whilst at Brentford last year, showed he is still one of the best midfielders on his day. United have also signed young full back Tyrell Malacia from Feyenoord and he looks like a player that will really fit well into Ten Hag vision. Bruno Fernandes is still at United, hoping that he can be back to his best and Cristiano Ronaldo, who is currently looking to leave United, can still score a good 20 to 30 goals a year which is crucial for United’s push for European and maybe even Champions League football hopes.
West Ham United, Leicester City, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Brighton and Hove Albion and potentially Newcastle United are all teams that will fancy there chances of qualifying for the Europa Conference League and some of them may even believe that they can finish in the top six and secure Europa League football for next season. West Ham are the team that last season finished 7th so playing UECL football could hinder them slightly but they have also been the best team out of those 5 in the last few seasons. Leicester were pretty poor for there standards last season but they still came 8th and they were only 6 points of 6th so if they find consistency, they will be a hard team to stop. Another team who needs to find consistency is Wolves, but not the consistency of being inconsistent which they were for most of the season. Wolves were at one point, competing to potentially get in the Champions League but certainly the Europa League but due to them having such a poor end to the season, they ended up finishing 10th. Brighton had a terrific year, finishing in a brilliant 9th place, but the Seagulls will be hoping that they only get stronger and can really challenge for European places, which could definetly happen if they sort out there ify home form. Finally there’s Newcastle, whose new owners seem to have completely reenergised the football club. Eddie Howe is a super manager who is an asset to any team that he manages and adding Nick Pope, Matt Targett and Sven Botman to boost the defence can only help. In the end, all of these teams are good and there is an argument for all five of these teams finishing in the Top 7 and even an argument for some of them to finish in the Top 6 which sets up a fascinating upper mid table battle. If West Ham play how they’ve been playing over the past couple of years, if Leicester get back to how they were playing during the behind closed doors era, if Raul Jimenez gets back to his best for Wolves, if Brighton play as well at home as they play away and if Newcastle’s new players gel with there old players, any of these teams could finish in Europe.
The Survival Battle:
Fulham, Bournemouth and Fulham are the three teams that were promoted from the Championship last season and all three teams will be hoping that they can stay in the league for another season. For Fulham, they have been promoted for the third time in five years, the other two years they have been relegated from the Premier League. It’s critical for Fulham that they stay up this year as other wise they are looking like another Norwich, too good for the Championship but not good enough for the Premier League. Mitrovic scored 43 goals in the Championship last season and will need at least 15 goals this season to give Fulham a fighting chance. They have lost Fabio Carvalho to Liverpool though which definetly isn’t going to help them.
AFC Bournemouth are back in the Premier League after a two season absence. Bournemouth were a team that were pretty comfortable when it came to staying in England’s Top league and if they didn’t suffer as many injuries as they did, they probably would never have been relegated in the first place. It will be tough for Bournemouth to stay up this season but they could easily do it and they will hope that the fans can boost there performance.
Nottingham Forest are back in the Premier League after a 23 year absence. The craziest thing about that is the fact that it’s not longer, as early in the league last season, they were looking like they were going to be relegated but they brought in Steve Cooper and he made them into a promoted side. Young Wales star Brennan Johnson played a massive role in there success and Forest will be hoping that he can play a massive role again this year. He will have a new man to play the ball to though as Forest have brought in Taiwo Awoniyi from Union Berlin for a club record fee of £17.5m. They have also brought major new players for the defensive positions with Moussa Niakhate coming in to the Central Defence, Neco Williams has left Liverpool to come play at full back and Forest have managed to loan in real talented goalkeeper Dean Henderson, who has sort of been stuck at Manchester United for a couple of years so this is a positive step for both the player and the club. If Forest can play as well as they did in the second half of the Championship season, they could be the best equipped to stay in the league out of the three newly promoted teams.
Everton and Leeds both nearly suffered complete catastrophe. For Everton, they are one of the six teams to have played every Premier League game so it could have been new waters for them whilst for Leeds, they had an amazing first season back in the league and were hoping for a potential European spot but in the end it took a late Raphinha goal to secure safety. This has ended up being the last thing that Raphinha does for Leeds as he has gone to play for Barcelona. Leeds have also lost there vitally important defensive midfielder Kalvin Phillips who has been in the Leeds family for over 10 years as he joins current champions Manchester City. Between these two players, Leeds have managed to bring in 105 million pounds which when you take into account that they spent £17 million bringing the two players in plus the important roles that they have played for the club, meaning that this is a really good bit of business from Leeds, if they bring in the right replacements to fill the holes left by the two. When it comes to bringing people in, Leeds have clearly realised that they need new players and this is shown with them bringing in 5 players that could easily play right from the start. Attacking Midfielder Brenden Aaronson and Right back Rasmus Kristensen both come in from Austrian Champions Red Bull Salzburg. They also have two new defensive midfielders, with Marc Roca coming from Bayern Munich and the very talented American Tyler Adams comes in from RB Leipzig for a fee of £20m. Luis Sinisterra also walks into the door as a Raphinha like replacement, the Columbian is mainly a Winger. They have also looked to the future with two 18 year old signings in Darko Gyabi and Sonny Perkins. Jesse Marsch is a very good manager so the Leeds faithful will be hoping that they can be higher up then they were last year, they certainly will hope that they won’t be in another relegation scrap. Now onto Everton. Everton have Frank Lampard in charge, who has already shown in his short time of management, that he has what it takes to do well in this role. In terms of transfers to improve the squad, it has really happened. The only player they have brought in is centre back James Tarkowski from last seasons relegation rivals Burnley. In terms of losing players, the only one who has left from the starting eleven is Richarlison, who leaves to go to Spurs for a fee of £60 million after spending five years with the Toffees. Everton fans were not happy in the slightest with last seasons display so they will need to really sort themselves out and rally as a team if they are to avoid another relegation scrap.
Maybe in a battle, potentially in the middle of nowhere:
This last category is reserved for the teams that weren’t really in a fight for anything last season and might be like that again however, they could also either get dragged into the relegation battle or they could drag themselves up and fight for the Top 10 spots and if they have an incredible season, maybe fight for European places.
Crystal Palace finished 12th in last seasons Premier League which was seen by many as a good season, particually considering a lot of people had them to get relegated, some even thought they would finish completely bottom. Palace have Patrick Viera in charge, a manager that is only going to get better as he gets more and more experienced in the role. Palace haven’t really got rid off anyone either, they have brought in players though as Goalkeeper Sam Johnstone comes in on a free transfer from West Brom, a solid goalkeeper which will make things interesting as Palace now have three really capable goalkeepers. Palace have also spent £21m on Mali midfielder Cheick Doucoure which should definitely help the eagles. I can’t see Palace being anywhere near the relegation scrap because there squad is too good for it. I actually wonder that if Palace can start the season well and build some confidence, if they can finish in the Top 10 by the end of the season. Eze, Olise, Mateta, Guehi are just a few of the really good young players that they have and having Wilfred Zaha on your team is always going to be a positive. Losing Connor Gallagher is the only concern I would have over Palace’s chances this season, as he was a crucial part of the team last year. Palace could definitely, once again, cause some upsets this season when it comes to both results and people's predictions.
Southampton finished on 40 points last season, the so called number of points you need to stay up. If we are being honest, Soton have been really nowhere in the league for the past five seasons, with eleventh place being there highest finish. In terms of transfer activity, the Saints have brought in Irish Goalkeeper Gavin Bazunu for a fee of £15 million. Bazunu comes from Manchester City after spending the last couple of seasons playing on loan in League One. They have also brought in Romeo Lavia, also from Manchester City for £12m. The 18 year old, Belgium defensive Midfielder has a bright future so is a good signing for the Saints. Southampton have also acquired the services of both defender Armel Bella-Kotchap and midfielder Joe Aribo. Southampton have some good young talent which could set them nicely up for the future but the question is what about now. If some of these players aren’t quite ready for Premier League football yet, then the Saints are in trouble of extending there stay. They do obviously have there club captain James Ward Prowse, who is not only one of the best set piece takers in Premier League history, but also one of the best central midfielders in the Premier League today. He is crucial to Southampton’s seasons from both a talent and a leadership point of view. JWP is the reason I put Southampton in this section of the season preview but if he gets injured or isn’t at his best, I very much see Southampton being in serious trouble of getting relegated.
Aston Villa finished 10 points ahead of the relegation zone last season, 6 points of the top 10 and 11 points off Europe which highlights the fact that it was a nothing season for Villa last year. It was sort of a transitional season for them too as they sold there star man Jack Grealish and Dean Smith was sacked during the campaign, resulting in Villa bringing in Rangers manager Steven Gerrard, who did an ok job for them. Aston Villa have so far done good business in the transfer market as Gerrard has made sure that they permanently sign former Liverpool teammate Phillipe Coutinho from FC Barcelona. Coutinho however, isn’t the only quality player that Villa have signed from La Liga as Diego Carlos has come from Sevilla for a fee of £26 million. Carlos is a really talented defender so will be a massive boost for the Villains. Ludwig Augustinsson has also came in from Sevilla but on a season long loan, Ludwig is a left back so Villa could have a mainly Sevillian defence this season. Boubacar Kamara, who has been with Marseille since he was 5, has come to Aston Villa after his contract expires. The 22 year old is a really good talent who is mainly a defensive midfielder but can also play midfielder or even centre back if Villa want that. In terms of the players who have left Villa Park this summer, Trezeguet and Matt Targett are the two that stand out, as the Egyptian winger has left to go play in the Turkish League whilst English full back Targett has moved to Newcastle to be another one of there many signings. Villa are perhaps the most confusing team this season as they have lots of good players which should make them competitive but I can’t see them being good enough to finish in the top 10. They shouldn’t get relegated either so it could be another lower midtable season for the Midlands club.
Brentford are the last team to be reviewed which is sort of fitting as most had them to finish bottom last season and that obviously didn’t happen as the London club had a season to remember in there first year back in the Prem. The stat that for me, shows how well Brentford did last season is that Norwich and Fulham's combined total of points was 45, one less than Brentford on there own (Norwich and Fulham were the two teams that got promoted with Brentford in 2021). Despite this, Brentford need to strengthen to help them stay up and/or improve from last year. They have done this with the signing of young Scottish full back Aaron Hickey from Serie A side Bologna. They have also broke there club record transfer fee as they have brought in 21 year old winger Keane Lewis-Potter for a fee of around £20m. Potter was a super talent for Hull City in the Championship so it will be interesting to see if he has what it takes to play Premier League level football. Ivan Toney is still The Bees main man up front and he showed last season that he has what it takes to be a Premier League striker. Brentford may not have the best squad in the league but they certainly are one of the better teams in the league. Thomas Frank has made his team play so well together that they can get results and can be a Bournemouth and Burnley like team who stay in the league. Their fans will be hoping that they are more like those teams and not like Huddersfield or Sheffield United, two teams that shocked everyone and stayed up but then had a terrible second season but I don’t expect this to happen to Brentford Football Club, expect them to get better this year.
My Premier League 2022/23 Table Prediction:
1. Liverpool
2. Manchester City
3. Tottenham Hotspur
4. Arsenal
5. Chelsea
6. Newcastle United
7. Leicester City
8. Manchester United
9. West Ham United
10. Wolverhampton Wanderers
11. Crystal Palace
12. Brighton and Hove Albion
13. Aston Villa
14. Leeds
15. Brentford
16. Nottingham Forest
17. AFC Bournemouth
18. Everton
19. Southampton
20. Fulham
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