Had enough time to relax?
Well, no time for that because the Premier League is back and ready for action. Just over a week after Kylian Mbappe’s superhero act and the crowning of Lionel Messi, the world’s best – or best marketed – league returns to our screens. And there is a lot to catch up on.
But fear not! Your English football correspondent is here to guide you through the key talking points and questions to be answered as the festive football period kicks off an extraordinarily busy second half of the season.
Let’s talk a look at some of the important questions to be answered in the coming months as Premier League football resumes…
How will the World Cup affect squad freshness and results?
The Premier League was by far the most well represented league in Qatar. More than 130 of the 832 players called up to represent their countries ply their trade in England’s top tier (La Liga was second with 83 representatives) and a significant number of players at top Premier League clubs made it to the latter stages of the World Cup.
This begs the question: what impact will fatigue and freshness have on the Premier League title race and matters further down the table?
Take Manchester City for example. Sixteen of their players went to the World Cup, playing a league-high 4,572 minutes. Julian Alvarez was the only City player to make the final but several of their stars made it deep into the competition, including Bernardo Silva, John Stones, Kyle Walker, Nathan Ake, Phil Foden and Manuel Akanji, among others.
City have an excellent sports science department that has been closely monitoring the players, tracking sleep, rest, nutrition and more to keep their players in peak condition. But will all these extra minutes add up? Or will a fit and fresh Erling Haaland help counterbalance all that?
Can Arsenal go the distance?
Next season (2023/24) will mark 20 years since Arsenal last got their hands on the Premier League title. A generation of Arsenal fans are hungry, starved of success and still looking back to sepia-tinted photos of Thierry Henry and Patrick Vieira to recall when the Gunners last conquered English football.
Though they have gone close once or twice since, this season Arsenal finally have a team their fans feel they can count on. A five point gap at the top of the league offers hope.
Arsenal have been mightily impressive in the opening 14 rounds of this season. They look tactically organised, strong in transitions, braver, hungry and exciting going forward. With stars like Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Jesus (now injured), a new look defence manned superbly by William Saliba and Ben White among others, and a rejuvenated Granit Xhaka in midfield at the peak of his powers, can Arsenal go all the way?
Will the break help Liverpool rediscover their form?
Liverpool made a surprisingly poor start to this season, losing four and winning just six of their opening 14 games. Jurgen Klopp was even forced to apologise for their performances after a rare defeat at Anfield to Leeds in October.
With hiccups on the pitch and turmoil off it, as the club’s owners consider a potential sale or reduction in stake, can Liverpool get back to winning ways and start to chase top four again?
The mid-season break could well play into Klopp’s hands, allowing some of their more exhausted players the break they may have needed after years of playing his aggressive, high-intensity style.
Keep an eye also on Newcastle, who may well be one of the freshest teams in the Premier League. The Magpies only sent five players to the World Cup for a total of 394 minutes, the second lowest number of minutes played of any team in the league.
How will Manchester United cope without Cristiano Ronaldo?
Cast your minds back a month or so ago, pre-World Cup, and the overbearing storyline dominating the back pages in England concerned Cristiano Ronaldo and his Princess Diana-style tell-all interview with Piers Morgan.
A lot has happened since then. Ronaldo’s contract was terminated by ‘mutual consent’, Ronaldo was subsequently dropped by his country Portugal and his tournament ended in tears, literally.
How will Manchester United cope in the post-Ronaldo second half of the season? Will this now-removed distraction allow other players the limelight, or add pressure to a squad looking light up front?
Erik Ten Hag has called on the club to add a new forward in January, and that will surely need to be a big focus if United are to have any hopes of a top four finish.
Can Haaland break the goalscoring record?
After a month off from the Erling Haaland hype train, the Norwegian, fully fresh and rested, gets the chance to remind everyone what they were missing in Qatar.
The Manchester City star has a whopping 18 goals in 13 Premier League goals. If he keeps this form up, he could well soon be in the conversation to start breaking records, including Mohamed Salah’s 2018 Premier League 38-game season record tally of 32 goals.
Only Andy Cole and Alan Shearer have scored more in the Premier League era, with 34 goals each in 1993/94 and 1994/95, but those were in 42-game seasons.
Can Haaland keep his form going? Will he hit 25 goals? 30? 40? 50??
However many he hits, Manchester City need him on top form if they are to catch Arsenal and retain their title.
Can Brighton keep their players?
Brighton and Hove Albion were one of the low-key success stories at the World Cup, believe it or not.
Only five players in the club’s entire history had ever gone to a World Cup whilst playing for Brighton, a record that was smashed in 2022 as eight Brighton players were called up to represent their country in Qatar.
Moises Caicedo, Pervis Estupinan, Jeremy Sarmiento, Tariq Lamptey, Leandro Trossard, Kaoru Mitoma, Robert Sanchez and World Cup winner Alexis Mac Allister all received the call this season, an incredible achievement for a football club very much on the up.
But how will these exertions, the peak of many of these players’ careers so far, affect this large bulk of Brighton’s squad as they get back to the meat and drink of league football?
Brighton boss Roberto De Zerbi has already raised concerns. “Our players are not used to playing in this competition,” he commented. “The players who stayed in the World Cup, for them it is not easy to restart with 100% focus. They played in Qatar in 25 degrees and after 10 days back in the UK in five degrees, the Carabao Cup and World Cup are totally different competitions. To restart in the right way is not easy, not natural.”
How will key players like Caicedo, and especially Mac Allister who has been given two weeks off to party and enjoy what will be the most memorable achievement of his career, reset and refocus?
Currently sat in 7th place, this could determine Brighton’s season.
Which of the new managers will adapt quickest?
Three new managers joined the Premier League before the mid-season break – all relatively unproven in English football at the elite level and with big jobs ahead of them.
Julen Lopetegui (Wolves), Unai Emery (Aston Villa) and Nathan Jones (Southampton) took over from Bruno Lage, Steven Gerrard and Ralph Hasenhuttl respectively, while Bournemouth have also rolled the dice by giving caretaker manager Gary O’Neil the permanent job as Cherries boss.
Of the four, only Emery has any previous experience of Premier League management, in an ultimately doomed stint at Arsenal better known for the unnecessary and disrespectful mocking of his English accent than anything else.
While Lopetegui and Jones have experienced management in different roles previously, can they quickly adapt to the pressure cooker Premier League and help turn their club’s fortunes around? Can O’Neil, whose record so far reads 11 games in charge of Bournemouth and 13 points, keep the momentum going and keep his team up? And can Emery, a seasoned manager with multiple major honours on his CV, prove some of the doubters in England wrong?