Unfancied clubs are sensing some of the elite are now vulnerable, a feeling backed up by early results
The 21st of August is a little early for anyone to be demanding homage. Florent Malouda, all the same, was quizzical rather than arrogant on Saturday when complaining that there are no hymns of praise for Chelsea even when they have opened the defence of the title by scoring half-a-dozen goals without reply in each of the two fixtures to date.
The winger’s bafflement may well be genuine. You can understand Malouda’s frustration over the hosannas reserved for Arsenal, a club without a trophy since 2005, let alone the Double achieved by Chelsea last season. The Stamford Bridge club even set a Premier League record with their 103 goals. Nonetheless, Chelsea would probably be bewildered if they ever became the nation’s darlings.
There is no imminent danger on that front. Should fans of the opposition ever fall silent it is because they cannot decide who to boo first. It does not take much effort to come up with seemingly high-minded objections to Chelsea despite the fact that the proprietor, Roman Abramovich, with the days of transfer market excess behind him, now looks as if the greatest ambition he harbours is to balance the books one day.
Manchester City have the sort of financial backing that makes the present Stamford Bridge operation look like a humble workers’ co-operative, but results will have to improve before they can savour the satisfaction of knowing they are feared and loathed. Dread, indeed, is scarce throughout the Premier League. If other clubs sense that the elite are now vulnerable then the early results tend to vindicate them.
Chelsea alone have emerged from their first two games with full points. At this juncture a year ago, Arsenal, Tottenham and Manchester City had kept pace with them. Carlo Ancelotti’s team would go on to rack up half-a-dozen consecutive victories. City and Tottenham, for that matter, each started with four wins in a row. The environment this year is more challenging. Arsenal are perhaps the one English club in the Champions League that is expected to get better and the scope for progress was great in any case.
It feels as if there is a convergence of standards in the Premier League. Fulham’s 2-2 draw with Manchester United on Sunday was, statistically speaking, a backward step since Sir Alex Ferguson’s players had been beaten on their previous two trips to Craven Cottage. That, all the same, was not how it looked.
United did take the lead and would have held a late and unassailable 3-1 advantage if Nani’s penalty had not been saved by David Stockdale, but Ferguson had the honesty to state that a draw was the least Fulham deserved. He will be better equipped when Wayne Rooney, who was suffering from ailing form in the goalmouth before illness kept him out of the match, is his true self again.
Fulham had no fear and there was conviction in the way Mark Hughes’s men launched themselves at United after the interval. It would be crass to claim that the conservatism departed Craven Cottage when Roy Hodgson left to become Liverpool manager. If there is more self-belief in the ranks it must originate in the sort of nights he presided over, such as the pounding of Juventus, on the path to the Europa League final.
The striker Bobby Zamora is one of the men who seems galvanised by that experience. For his part, Brede Hangeland, scorer of an own goal and Fulham’s equaliser on Sunday, envisages an eventful life for a club with reason to be forceful nowadays. “In the past against United and other good teams,” the defender said, “even at home we’ve conceded ground and let them play. Now we try and press higher and take the game to them.”
There is a degree of levelling down in the Premier League that should encourage boldness. While some clubs, such as Arsenal, have squads that ought be on the rise, there are few that look intimidating. Even Chelsea have to negotiate a long programme with key contributors, such as Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba, who are not all that far from being termed veterans.
By their own expectations, the English representatives had a quiet time of it in the last Champions League campaign, whose final was contested by Internazionale and Bayern Munich. The foremost clubs in this country are very far from disintegration, but there is no cause to consider them unassailable. If the Premier League cannot claim to be the pre-eminent domestic competition in the world any longer, it will serve the public handsomely if it fills our weekends with suspense and unpredictability.
ChelseaArsenalKevin McCarraguardian.co.uk
