Premier League Giants Unprepared for New Season?

The Premier League season kicks off on August 11, and everything seems a little untidy.

Given the dawn of any new campaign is invariably burdened with the type of gravitas usually only afforded to moon landings and world wars, it hardly seems presumptuous to assume the only thing left to do at this late stage would be the touching-up of pitch markings and ensuring substitutes' benches are at optimum temperature for disgruntled multimillionaire buttocks.

Blind faith in football is rarely rewarded. Though as a collective, the Premier League has spent the summer playing a giant game of Brewster's Millions. With Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola morphing more and more into Richard Pryor with each passing full-back, there's a pervading sense the leading contenders will start in earnest like a Christmas table sans crackers. Something will be missing for all of them.

Even withstanding the fact value in the marketplace has been warped out of all proportion by a seeming Premier League premium tax, it is a strange state of affairs that so many of the so-called top six, which with the emergence of Everton as a (semi) serious player has had to expand its waistline to accommodate a new member, look as though they will start the new campaign barely stronger than how they finished the last one.

The game is awash with more broadcast revenue than it strictly knows what to do with, and it has cast it in the type of glow that had many squinting during the California Gold Rush. Everyone is dashing round with a pan despite not being quite sure how to find what they are looking for. For most, if it is gold and sparkly, it will usually suffice.

Excitement at new-found wealth in a less heady climate might have been tempered by the knowledge that, just like with the gold, one day, it will run out. Instead, like bankers on a night out on bonus day, there seems to be a bit of one-upmanship at play. Even considering paying £50 million for Gylfi Sigurdsson is the Premier League equivalent of a city boy taking licentious delight in ordering a bottle of wine that costs more than a house. Is it the grape that dances across the palate or the price?

Football and economics have never made for the most congenial bedfellows, so it's little surprise talk of hyperinflation hasn't put many clubs off spending TV cash with all the fervour of a greyhound chasing a lure. In other industries it would almost certainly have led to a stagnated market, at the very least a standoff. English football seems to have embraced it. There's a sense paying these spectacularly high transfer fees has become almost a badge of honour, like it was for Serie A in the 1990s.

In the words of the great Kurt Vonnegut: "Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance."

With that in mind, for so many major issues still to be resolved at top clubs seems nothing less than careless.

While Antonio Conte wrangles with Chelsea's mysterious transfer committee over bringing in four more players, according to John Percy of the Daily Telegraph, Manchester United's chief magpie Jose Mourinho can't pass a microphone without reminding executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward he has delivered only half of his four targets. Dave Whelan talks about his broken leg less.

Liverpool and Arsenal have had similar windows in that they have both broken their transfer records in landing Mohamed Salah and Alexandre Lacazette, respectively. Gunners boss Arsene Wenger is the type of man who if he won the National Lottery on a Friday, would be back at work on Monday morning regardless, even if he hated his job. You can imagine his view on the state of the market. Nonetheless, expect him to bring in at least one more player.

Reds manager Jurgen Klopp would be content enough if he could land either of his primary targets, delirious if his board delivered both.

Southampton would probably rather sell to Portsmouth after blaming Liverpool for unsettling Virgil van Dijk to the point he has effectively gone on strike, per David Hytner of the Guardian. RB Leipzig remain steadfast in their stance on Naby Keita too, despite eye-watering bids having been lodged—the Guardian's Andy Hunter reported on July 19 that the German club had rejected a £66 million offer for the midfielder.

At least there will be no shortage of energy drinks available should that one go to the wire. Jim White, you can use that one. And probably will.

For all the talk of additions, though, keeping Philippe Coutinho and Alexis Sanchez will be more important to those clubs' respective campaigns than any further signings. Given Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist had her head turned less than those two, it's quite the ask. No club wants to start the campaign with an unhappy player, even less so if it's one of serious rank and file. They carry with them a fog. 

Across the league, no two clubs have had differing windows quite like Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur. An outlay of around £210 million for six players, including a £130 million spend on full-backs alone, could be just a starter for 10 for City. Spurs haven't spent a penny and seem in no rush to change the fact.

City have registered interest in AS Monaco wonderkid Kylian Mbappe, according to the Telegraph's James Ducker, despite Real Madrid having reportedly agreed a world-record £161 million fee that is starting to make Paul Pogba, at £89 million, look quite the snip. More realistic is a reunion between Guardiola and Sanchez.

If he fancies starting the season with the world's most expensive goalkeeper, Ederson Moraes, playing behind a back four comprising four of the five dearest defenders in history, a bid for Van Dijk may be in the offing. According to Oscar Badallo of Marca, Real Sociedad's Inigo Martinez is another option if Guardiola doesn't rate his chances of getting a full season out of Vincent Kompany.

It seems he has already decided on Nicolas Otamendi and Eliaquim Mangala. The pair may be two of the 10 most expensive defenders ever, but alas they are to defending what Boris Johnson is to foreign diplomacy.

In private quarters, even those signing the cheques would probably concede to having paid over the odds for Kyle Walker and Benjamin Mendy. Paying a premium to get business done early isn't cheap but can often provide the marginal gains that make the difference over a long season. Though City might not have finished their recruitment, what they have done is give the six players brought in already every opportunity to adjust to life at a new club in a new city and, in all but one case, a new country before the big kick-off.

Mourinho's sneering to reporters about the £45 million fee City paid for Walker has the feel of posturing, with faux outrage at clubs paying "crazy" figures for "normal" players giving off the distinct whiff of old money cocking a snook at new money. Wearing a fur coat and no knickers never bothered him when he was spending Roman Abramovich's cash at Chelsea as though it had a sell-by date.

If Woodward would sanction the extra £10 million or so that would probably land him Eric Dier or Nemanja Matic, the Portuguese would be the proverbial pig in excrement. It's the same with Ivan Perisic. Ducker reported the difference between Inter Milan's valuation and United's is £9 million. Given he's almost certainly not worth the £40 million United are willing to pay, what's another £9 million between friends? God, it's addictive spending other people's money. No wonder football managers love it.

Most United supporters would happily pass on the Croatian if it meant more playing time for Anthony Martial. They will be less forgiving if they start the new campaign relying on the 36-year-old Michael Carrick to dictate the tempo of games from deep. Bayern Munich midfielder Renato Sanches would be ideal, with John Percy of the Daily Telegraph saying Chelsea are also keen on the Portugal international. 

The addition of Romelu Lukaku will give them a more dynamic element than Zlatan Ibrahimovic up top, even if replacing his 28-goal contribution is hardly a gimme for the Belgian. Victor Lindelof arrives from Benfica highly rated, but given United had the second-stingiest defence in the league last season, conceding just 29 goals, the Swede's presence is unlikely to unduly affect their campaign one way or another. It's at the other end where United have problems, with the 54 goals they plundered fewer than Bournemouth.

After 10 games last season, United were eighth and eight points off the top. Mourinho will be acutely aware there is no margin for a false start again this time around. One of the last unchallenged truisms in football is the idea slow starts to a season are much more palatable than slow climaxes, as though double points are awarded in April and May than they are in August and September.

The best way to avoid unproductive bedding-in periods is to make sure marquee signings aren't jetting halfway across the world on deadline day to complete deals that could have been done in July.

The only consolation Mourinho will glean from Guardiola's march on him in terms of recruitment is the fact City's spend to date is already a record for a single club in any one transfer window.

The idea an innovative coach like Guardiola represents a purer ideal than a perceived chequebook manager like Mourinho is starting to wear thinner than a Weight Watchers pancake. The City boss' acolytes argue it is the market dictating his behaviour rather than any shift in philosophy. After all, four of the six hugely expensive players he has brought in so far are 23 or under.

We've all got to do what we've all got to do to eat. In the '70s, one of the greatest directors of them all, Orson Welles, was filming commercials for frozen peas.

Which brings us neatly on to Tottenham. It is a measure of this epochal shift toward the fetishisation of spending that Spurs have been cast as positively quaint, a penny farthing trying to keep pace with bikes specifically engineered to cope with mountainous terrain.

While his managerial counterparts quarrel over which one of them is the hardest done to—there must be something in the water at Chelsea because Conte is sounding an awful lot like Mourinho at the minute—Spurs manager Mauricio Pochettino exudes inner peace. He could be a Buddhist monk were it not for that temper of his.

In not signing a solitary player to date, it's almost as though he is goading his fellow coaches, "Lads, ever thought about coaching what you've got?" After selling Walker to Manchester City, rather than trying to sign someone like, to pluck a name out of the air, Danilo, as his replacement, he promoted from within the more than capable Kieran Trippier, a City academy graduate. 

It is rare pretty much to the point of making Pochettino unique that a Premier League boss is willing to embrace the following Paul Newman adage: "I have steak at home, so why should I go out for hamburger?"

It will be interesting to see whether Pochettino carries on in the same line of thought with regard to whether to bid for Ross Barkley or continue to blood Harry Winks. There's probably not £40 million difference between the pair of them.

The balancing act between continuity and ensuring ennui doesn't set in at a football club is one of such fine margins that fear of the latter invariably impinges on the former. To an extent, debt accrued by Tottenham's move from White Hart Lane into a new stadium, along with chairman Daniel Levy's unwavering belief that football is not a game to be played in a big top, has if not determined, then kept Pochettino's holistic approach in check.

He certainly seems attuned to the Steve Jobs mantra: "If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time." 

The case has even been made for Spurs having had the best transfer window so far. Such a suggestion has just a hint of piousness about it, and it's one usually made by the type of person who takes great pride in not owning a television. Or as one City supporter put it rather aptly via Twitter: "When Sergio Aguero slammed that 93rd-min title winner in, all I could think of was 'I hope one day we can balance the books like Spurs do.'"

Still, after a second-placed finish, if Spurs lose only Walker while staying true to a wage structure that is starting to look positively Dickensian in comparison to rivals' (Levy would make a wonderful Scrooge), they will surely start the new campaign as the most exciting young side in Europe. The nefarious dismantling job that has been done on Monaco will no doubt have provided food for thought with regard to next summer.

The idea the wage structure won't prove a glass ceiling is a nice one; it's also fanciful in the extreme.

Though Levy's shrewdness over contracts means he should be able to keep the nucleus of Pochettino's team together, recruitment is only going to get more difficult. Convincing Spurs' existing band of brothers the club is on the cusp of something special, historic even, is one thing. Convincing a player who has not been in on it from the start to buy into the same vision, on half the wages they could get elsewhere, will be nigh on impossible.

Spurs are good enough that good-enough players are no longer good enough. There's nothing inherently wrong with the likes of Vincent Janssen and Moussa Sissoko, it's just not one of them is even close to being at the level to break into Spurs' gilded XI and stay there.

Conte's comments about having wanted Walker before City ensnared him, while confessing his admiration for Harry Kane is above all others will have pricked up ears in Spurs' boardroom, possibly their dressing room too. While he has joined Mourinho in chorusing Tottenham's ruddy health, his rhetoric had an undercurrent of rancour to it.

"My question is this: what are Tottenham's expectations?" Conte told reporters recently. "If they don't win the title, it's not a tragedy. If they don't arrive in the Champions League, it's not a tragedy."

Over the course of his soliloquy, he stressed failure was not a tragedy for Spurs six times. The lady doth protest too much, methinks. If Pochettino shares a glass of wine with Conte this season, he wants to make sure he surreptitiously swaps glasses with the Italian before taking a sip. He definitely doesn't want to accept a cigar off him.

It's been a strange old summer for Conte. On signing a new deal, the Italian confessed to Percy last season's title-winning exertions left him exhausted, which when coupled with doubts over whether Chelsea's board shared his long-term vision for the club, led him to consider his future in England, according to Gianluca Di Marzio. Now he's staying, it looks like this season will be no less eventful than the last one.

There's certainly no chance of stasis at Chelsea. Jettisoning 22-goal top scorer Diego Costa via text message was a demonstration of his ruthlessness, while seemingly deeming Matic surplus to requirements is quite the call too. Rare is it a championship-winning side is broken up by a manager's volition.

Though it cuts against the grain of the pervading obsession with newness, it's worth pointing out Costa and Matic are both pretty bloody good. Between them, they started 124 out of 152 matches in Chelsea's most recent two title-winning campaigns that sandwiched Mourinho's annus horribilis in 2015/16.

Gambling Alvaro Morata is a better long-term solution than Costa and likewise that Tiemoue Bakayoko is an upgrade on Matic is the type of surgery that would have you checking everything is in order before going under the knife.

Conte says he wants at least three more players to help cope with the added demand of returning to the UEFA Champions League, according to Percy. Juventus left-back Alex Sandro is said to be a leading target, with Antonio Candreva, Fernando Llorente and Van Dijk also frequently linked. The question supporters will be asking, as might their manager, is does a club of Chelsea's stature have to wait until the last minute to prise a 32-year-old striker, in the case of Llorente, away from Swansea City?

It's probably worth stating here how the panic over a lack of signings among Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal, Tottenham and Liverpool supporters in particular will almost certainly be eased by the collective amnesia that will envelope each and every one of us by the time Arsenal and Leicester City's players are in the tunnel for the Premier League's opener on August 11.

The first shrill of the referee's whistle will purge any lingering memories of the close season to the part of the mind that acts like loft space, storing junk.

Summers in odd years, without top-level international tournaments to sate gargantuan habits, become like methadone. Everyone is a little twitchy. A tour of the U.S. is all well and good, but as a substitute for the real thing, it lacks both the searing highs and stupefying lows—it's invariably a period of grey abstinence. However, seeing Ronald McDonald lead out Manchester United and Real Madrid's players for a friendly was probably not a dissimilar experience to those encountered by many on hallucinogenics.

The new season cannot start soon enough. We are all ready, even if some of the big boys are not.