PSG and Bayern Munich remain the strongest teams in France and Germany by far and should clinch the Ligue 1 and the Bundesliga respectively. But my crystal ball fails me in Italy where I’m still battling with my head which keeps telling me Juventus would retain their crown despite their shocking start to the campaign which has seen them chalk zero point from opening two matches!

 

Juve remain the strongest team in Italy which makes me doubt the challenge others such as AS Roma, SS Lazio, the Milan duo (AC and Inter) and Napoli could mount. Yes, the Old Lady has made a most inauspicious start to their title defence. But with incumbent title-winning coach Massimo Allegri still in charge and given their impressive recruitment and preseason, I still think Juve will recover in time and mount a successful title defence.

I guess I probably have not shocked you thus far. If I haven’t, good. But that’s no guarantee that I won’t before this piece ends, most certainly not. Well, maybe, I should start right from here. I think the team to succeed Barcelona as UCL champions will come from the above-mentioned quintet of Bayern, Juve, Man City, PSG and Real Madrid in alphabetical order!
So why did I pick the above quintet for domestic championship success? Happy reading…

ENGLAND

ARSENAL

AFTER two consecutive FA Cup successes, the Gunners and their faithful’s expectation is to make the step up to win the BPL for the first time since 2004. Arsenal had the best pre-season in my view and made a good signing in Petr Cech. But their undoing will be lack of good firepower and solid depth in defensive midfield.

Only Arsene Wenger can tell why he refused to improve those two departments. And that is a decision that I believe may come back to haunt him this season just the way his penny-pinching on Louis Suarez transfer haunted him two seasons ago.

With the benefit of hindsight, landing Suarez could have brought the league crown to the Emirates that season as Wenger tacitly attested when he said he had no sympathy for Liverpool during Raheem Sterling’s saga since “they didn’t sell me Suarez.”

To be honest, their poor start to the season has been a surprise, especially after such brilliant preseason when they blew some very good teams away. And if Wenger wasn’t the boss at the Emirates I would have predicted that they would not make the Top 4.

But while I’m almost certain they would not win the league, I think they would still finish in the UCL spot, just where they finish is what I don’t know.

CHELSEA

ANOTHER team I’m certain would not win the league. The defending champions have made an inauspicious start to their title defence despite being most pundits favourites (your truly remains one of the very few exceptions).

I had tipped Chelsea to win the title in the last two seasons. But after the way they stumbled over the line to the crown last season, I knew they would not be able to mount a credible title defence this term. Their poor preseason merely served to reinforce my belief.

Chelsea have myriad of problems most of which I have highlighted on this column this season and the earlier Jose Mourinho stopped deflecting blames the better it would be for the Blues. Two defeats including one at home and a paltry four points from as many matches don’t sound like a Mourinho’s team. Yet, the Portuguese tactician remains bullish about his team’s successful title defence! His reason? “This is the BPL! Had it been in another league I would have given up. But not in the Premier League.”

Sorry Jose, yes, this is the BPL, the most competitive league in the world. But even at that you don’t concede eight points gap to very capable and hungry leaders and expect to make it up in the long run. Mathematically, it’s doable, but realistically I think Mou and the gang would be fighting for a Top 4 finish.

And, yes, I’d shock you more here because while I expect them to improve, I think they will finish just outside the Top 4 in May, in fifth place to be precise! Yes, for the first time in Mou’s impressive career, he would not finish anywhere near the podium.

But before you start throwing me cudgels and arrows, the last time I correctly predicted that a BPL defending champions would finish outside the Top 4 was just two seasons ago when Manchester United failed miserably to defend their crown under the ill-fated stewardship of David Moyes.

True, Mou is not Moyes. In fact, I respect the former a lot for his achievements if not for his acidic mouth and irritably combustible nature. But for the reasons I had given in recent editions, I see Mou’s Chelsea finishing in a very strong FIFTH position!

LIVERPOOL

IN just four weeks we have seen two deeply contrasting shades of Liverpool – one that was stoic, functional, unspectacular but could be title contenders (in their first three matches) and another which was a painful throwback to that pitiful team of last season (in their abject 3-0 home loss to West Ham). So the dilemma for a pundit is which Reds are we going to see this season?

Liverpool have strengthened reasonably well in spite of Harry Redknapp’stongue-in-cheek claim that this is the worst Reds he has witnessed of all time. I believe this season’s Reds have better balance about them than the team that spawned and endured the underwhelming campaign of last season. And maybe, Mr Redknapp didn’t see Roy Hodgson’s Liverpool of a couple of seasons ago?
Back to the present, Brendan Rodgers knows he is in a last-chance-bus after the owners massively backed him with funds to strengthen the team when many of us had expected him to get the boot. Whatever he told the FENWAY Group, now is the time to walk the talk.

 

If Liverpool play with the grit and grim determination they displayed in their first three matches of the campaign they will surely make the Top 4. But if they revert back to such parlous display as they did against West Ham, they would finish in mid-table obscurity, no two ways about it.

So where do I think they would finish? I expect them to step up and finish in the Top 4, especially as the imminent return of Daniel Sturridge could spur them into another memorable campaign, although where they finish in this elite group will depend on the performances of their close rivals.

For all my complaints about Rodgers, the young manager remains one of the very few adventurous bosses in the game and he will be happy to unleash the combo of Sturridge and Christian Benteke on opponents. If they are both fit and firing, Liverpool might be the only club among the elites who play two strikers in their matches. And this, I believe, could give them a surprise edge.
If Sturridge and Big Ben click together, the Reds could even surprise themselves this season, trust me.

MANCHESTER CITY

CHAMPIONS elect who have made a dream start. I had warned of two concerns I have for Manuel Pellegrini’s side. But happily for the Citizens one of those concerns has proved unfounded, albeit on the evidence of the first four weeks of the season.

City badly faltered last season when they failed miserably to defend their crown. Yes, they finished a comfortable second. But when you have the strongest squad in a league for five seasons in a row, anything other than the league crown in that period is gross underachievement, period.

That doesn’t look likely to happen this season, not after their brilliant start to the campaign which sees them five points clear of usual title rivals after only four weeks.
City spent the most money (about £152m) in the summer window and their strongest XI which stands at a staggering £282.45 million is easily the costliest in England and one of the four most expensive in Europe.Hence I expect them to rule England and challenge in the continent.

 

And talking about my fears for their title credentials, the first one was their over-dependence on Kun Sergio Aguero for goals. Whenever he’s fit for the better part of the campaign, Aguero has been City’s top scorer. And knowing his unpalatable history with injuries, I had feared for the Citizens.

However, after four games of the campaign during which they plundered 10 goals without any conceded with Aguero netting only one of the impressive haul (that’s 10 %), I came to the conclusion that this current crop of Citizens should be fine even without their Argentine talisman. Now that is an unpleasant ominous sign to all would-be title challengers.

Another concern I harbor for the Citizens is age. Many of their key players such as YayaToure, captain Vincent Kompany, David Silva, Jesus Navas and Samir Nasri are at ages when they may not play up to 30 league matches a season. They have to bow to exhaustion (physical and mental), injuries and even loss of form at some point of the season.

This means that as potent as they are, the Citizens will also suffer some blip at some stage of the campaign. How long the blip lasts and how much effect it has on them will determine their success this season. But with the impressive and expensive recruitments of youngsters Raheem Sterling and Kevin De Bruyne, I don’t expect them to suffer a prolong blip.

 

For starters, Pellegrini’s boys have started well and I expect them to finish strongly too. Any seasoned campaigner will tell you that a very strong finish is usually more crucial to team’s success in a campaign than a strong start, desirable as it is. This is why I tip City for the league crown. Their challengers could be Manchester United and or Liverpool!

MANCHESTER UNITED

LOUIS van Gaal has incurred the wrath of many informed United faithful who are miffed at the imbalance of the team despite spending over £230 million in two seasons. United remain mortally weak in central defence, overloaded in midfield and very short in attacking depth.

Contrary to his assertion towards the end of last transfer window, LVG panickly dived into the market and splashed 36 million quid on an unproven 19-year-old striker Anthony Martial! The juries are out on this latest gambit especially after similar attempts failed abysmally last season when fortunes were splashed on Angel Di Maria and Radamel Falcao.

 

I predicted United would not make Top 4 last season. But in truth they should have won the league, given the fortunes splashed by LVG on new recruits and the manner of their early exits from the domestic cups which left them to have uninterrupted focus on the league.

That the Red Devils managed to finish fourth is poor underachievement, masked only be eventual UCL qualification. I don’t know how a team so deficient in two key departments can win the league. But I think LVG should be able to manage another Top 4 finish, failure which even I will promptly advocate for his sack.

OTHERS

I see Tottenham Hotspur and Everton justle for sixth and seventh positions while I expect the fanciful names Leicester City, Crystal Palace and Swansea City who current occupy the lofty UCL spots to eventually obey the law of gravity and battle for mid-table crumbs eventually.

It’s usual for some of these small teams to do initial gra-gra at the beginning of the season only to bow to weak squad strength and return to mid-table obscurity when the usual landlords return. We shouldn’t forget so quickly the exploits of Southampton, West Ham and Swansea last season.

But I will expect some of these plucky minnows to ruffle some feathers in the domestic cups this term, especially Swansea whose top striker Bafetimbi Gomis is my player of August while Palace boss Alan Pardew win my managers’ gong.

I expect Bayern to be joined by Borussia Dortmund, Bayer Leverkusen and Wolfsburg  in the UCL in Germany in that order while Barca, Sevilla and Atletico Madrid would join Real among Spanish UCL qualifiers quartet. PSG will have Lyon for company while Roma will most definitely join Juve in Italy’s Top 3. The final spot will be a straight battle between Inter and Lazio.

So that’s my take on how this season will pan out in Europe guys. You can send me yours for us to compare notes in May.