Man Utd A Good Bet To Retain Premiership Title

By Sam Darby on 28/07/2011 11:09

The start of the Premiership is getting very close and this season could be even more competitive than last season but it still looks as though Premiership favourites Man Utd are the most likely winners of the Premiership and that would make it 20 league titles for Man Utd.

It would take a huge leap of faith to back any side to win the league who finished outside of the top four last season, even if the league was more compressed last season than it normallly is. That is bad news for Spurs and especially Liverpool, who have spent plenty of money this year but still look set to fall short. Liverpool have bought some very reliable players but are the likes of Jordan Henderson, Charlie Adam and Stuart Downing good enough to play for a team who should be winning the league? Probably not. They do have a very good strike force of Andy Carroll and Luis Suarez and they should be able to finish in the top four and make a return to the Champions League. As for Spurs, at the time of writing they have not yet signed the top class striker they need but they have retained their best players and they will struggle to challenge ffor the top four unless they sign a top striker.

Out of the teams who finished in the top four it looks to be Arsenal who are least likely to put up a realistic challenge. If they keep hold of Nasri and Fabregas they will look as though they can challenge at some point in the season but they have repeatedly flattered to deceive in recent years and simply don't have the consistency or even the quality maybe to win the Premiership. One team that does have the quality is Man City but it remains to be seen if their new look strikeforce is going to be as effective as the one man show that was Carlos Tevez last season. They also have the distraction of the Champions League and we saw what that did to Spurs last season, even with a bigger squad it will still cost City some points and they should be very happy if they get second place this season but they may even have to make do with third once again.

That leaves Chelsea and Man Utd as the most likely Premiership winners, no real surprise considering they are the two favourites but they have proven year after year that they are the best two teams and both should be better than last season, where Chelsea had an awful spell of dropping points and Man Utd struggled to pick up wins away from home. At the time of writing Chelsea are yet to sign anyone but we can expect a signing or two in midfield, they are going to struggle to find anyone better than the injured Michael Essien and the aging Frank Lampard though so how much improvement they can make is open to question in terms of quality but they should be more consistent this season. Man Utd have signed Ashley Young, Phil Jones and David De Gea this summer which freshens things up a bit, they won't be particularly better than last season with those players but they have found a great partnership in the form of Javier Hernandez and Wayne Rooney and that can help them win their 20th league title this season at very fair odds.

Recommendation: BACK MAN UTD TO WIN THE PREMIERSHIP