August 13, 2024

Lars’ PL Preview Part II: Midtable Madness

Reading time13 min

With another PL season just days away, football expert Lars Sivertsen takes a closer look at the teams he expects to be battling it out at the middle of the table.

A life in the midtable doldrums of the PL will always be a case of asking yourself if your glass is half full or half empty. As a fan, are you frustrated by how the gap between yourself and the teams chasing a CL spot seems too wide to bridge, and that you may be stuck somewhere around 10th for what seems like a footballing eternity? Or, on the other hand, are you happy to be in the PL, and going into a new season without much fear of relegation?

Check Lars’ thoughts on the relegation battle here.
Check Lars’ thoughts on the CL candidates here.

13th place: Brentford

  • Odds on making the top 4: 50.00
  • Odds on making the top 6: 35.00
  • Odds on being relegated: 5.50

Reasons for optimism:

Comfortable PL survival should certainly be seen as a considerable success for Brentford. We may be getting used to seeing them in this division, but the club and their fans will remember all too well that they were in the third tier of English football not that long ago – and even in the fourth tier not too long before that.

Brentford’s rise was all about sensible and measured decision-making, and we’re continuing to see more of that. In spite of the club finishing a little bit closer to relegation trouble than they would have liked last season, there has been no sense of panic or worry from the club. Owner Matthew Benham is, famously, a man who understands numbers, and he will no doubt be soothed by the fact that Brentford actually had the 8th best xG-difference in the league last season. The club prepared themselves for the possible departure of Ivan Toney by bringing in the Brazilian Igor Thiago from Club Brugge, and recently added 21 year old attacking midfielder Fabio Carvalho from Liverpool.

Aside from those moves we will see a Brentford team that is much the same as last season, which should mean another season well outside the relegation spots for the Bees.

Reasons for concern:

Igor Thiago picking up an injury and needing surgery in pre-season was a blow, leaving Brentford potentially short up front if they decide to cash in on Ivan Toney before the window closes. Mark Flekken had a difficult first season in England as the excellent David Raya’s replacement. The combination of Ivan Toney missing much of last season with a ban and Flekken struggling in goal is a big part of why Brentford consistently underperformed their xG, and with Toney possibly leaving and his replacement out for months they may have similar issues again. Manager Thomas Frank being poached by a bigger club remains a risk.

Verdict:

Well-run off the pitch and competently managed on it, Brentford should stay well clear of the relegation scrap this season. It would be a surprise to see them sneak into the top half of the table, but for a club of their size every season spent in the top division is a triumph.

12th place: Bournemouth

  • Odds on making the top 4: 25.00
  • Odds on making the top 6: 15.00
  • Odds on being relegated: 9.00

Reasons for optimism:

Made the unpopular decision to sack Gary O’Neill last season and replace him with Spanish manager Andoni Iraola, and during the first months of the season that decision looked like it had set them on a path to relegation. But Bournemouth’s American owners held firm, refrained from firing Iraola after his disastrous start to the season, and were rewarded with a huge late autumn surge which saw Bournemouth win seven games from nine. As the players started getting used to Iraola’s tactics, the club started playing attractive, front-foot football and racking up more than enough wins to stay in the division.

Their form left much egg on their critics’ faces, including my own – as I had foolishly predicted them to go down last season. Oh well.

Bournemouth haven’t been the most active in the summer market, but that could change before the transfer deadline. The tall 19 year old defender Dean Huijsen has arrived from Juventus after showing signs of promise on loan at Roma last season, while last season’s loan-signings Luis Sinisterra and Enes Unal have made their moves permanent. Given that Bournemouth were the 9th best team in the league from late October and onwards, the owners will have had reasons to feel that the squad didn’t need a huge amount of investment this summer.

Reasons for concern:

That is, until the departure of Dominic Solanke to Tottenham. The striker scored 19 goals last season and was a real focal point for the Bournemouth attack, and it remains to be seen if Enes Unal can do a similar job. More likely, Bournemouth will be in the market for a striker before the transfer window closes, but replacing Solanke is no easy task. There was hope that American midfielder Tyler Adams could be like a new signing this season, but then he had to have back surgery this summer, making him unavailable yet again. If Bournemouth continue to play like they did last season, losing Andoni Iraola will start to become a real risk – though perhaps the risk of losing the head coach is just an inevitable byproduct of success for the teams further down the league.

Verdict:

The loss of Solanke seems huge. He has led the line for them almost every game for four seasons, and without knowing how Bournemouth intend to replace him it’s difficult to make a confident assessment of their prospects this season. They finished 12th in the end last term and shouldn’t start the season with three points from nine games this time around. But they will almost certainly be weaker without Solanke, so I’d suggest another season just inside the bottom half of the table seems a likely outcome.

They’ve done incredibly well to get promoted two times in a row, but this is a different level, and as I see it they will be relying on opponents having problems off the pitch or otherwise disastrous seasons to stay up.

11th place: Brighton

Reasons for optimism:

Like Brentford, Brighton is an impressively run club whose rise through the divisions was hallmarked by a combination of innovation, shrewdness and common sense. For Brighton the “best practice” tag has become something of a double-edged sword, as they keep having personnel poached off them by wealthier clubs. But as with Brentford, the competence starts right at the very top, with the owner Tony Bloom being a professional gambler-turned-billionaire who understands numbers and probability. Throughout his time as owner, Bloom has shown an incredible ability to keep the Brighton show on the road in spite of regularly losing prized assets. There is no particular reason to think he won’t continue to do so now, in spite of manager Roberto de Zerbi’s departure. Brighton’s summer signings are always interesting, and this summer they’ve splashed out on the young Gambian winger Yankuba Minteh as well as the Dutch midfielder Mats Wieffer. Minteh, signed from Newcastle, spent last season on loan at Feyenoord where he scored 10 goals and had five assists from 17 starts (and 10 appearances off the bench). He appears to be a talent worth keeping an eye on, and together with the tricky Kaoru Mitoma he will no doubt torment many a PL fullback this season. Much was made of Brighton’s exciting attacking play under De Zerbi, but they also have an impressive defensive unit in goalkeeper Bart Verbruggen and defenders Lewis Dunk, Adam Webster and Jean Paul van Hecke. Even though De Zerbi is admired for his coaching work, the relationship between him and the club had clearly soured towards the end of last season and his departure may in fact prove to have a galvanising effect.

Reasons for concern:

Because they’ve successfully replaced key personnel so often the last few years, you almost start to just assume that Brighton will always get these things right. But no matter how impressive a club owner is, all appointments come with risk, and you have to say that the 31-year-old head new coach Fabian Hürzeler comes with some risk. He did remarkable work getting St Pauli promoted to the Bundesliga, but he is still a 31-year-old who has only been a head coach in professional football for a season and a half. No one should be surprised if he proves to be a brilliant appointment, Brighton do tend to get these things right, but there is still a significant element of risk there. At the same time, two experienced players have left the club this summer in the form of Pascal Gross and Adam Lallana, taking quite a lot of experience and know-how with them out the door. Their major summer signings in addition to Wieffer (24) and Minteh (20) are Ibrahim Osman (19) from FC Nordsjælland and Malick Yalcouye (18) from IFK Göteborg, and while their faith in youth is laudable you do wonder if the team could have done with a more experienced addition on two.

The striker-position has historically been a tricky one for Brighton, and that could be the case again unless young Evan Ferguson steps up this season.

Verdict:

Brighton’s total confidence in their methodology, of prioritizing ideas over reputation in their coaches and putting their faith in younger players from smaller leagues, continues to make them one of the most fascinating clubs in the league. With youth often comes inconsistency, so I’m not totally convinced they will improve on last season’s 11th place. But, on the other hand, if a few of their young stars have breakout seasons they could well be an upwardly mobile team.

10th place: Crystal Palace

  • Odds on making the top 4: 25.00
  • Odds on making the top 6: 12.00
  • Odds on being relegated: 9.00

Reasons for optimism:

Crystal Palace were really rather fabulous towards the end of last season, winning six out of their last seven league games before the summer break. Convincing Oliver Glasner, who qualified for the CL with Wolfsburg and won the EL with Frankfurt, to take the Palace job is increasingly looking like something of a coup. Going into the transfer window there was concern that the team would be ripped apart, but so far Michael Olise has been the only major departure. Daichi Kamada, who was part of Glasner’s EL-winning Frankfurt team, should be a fine addition to the squad. Ismailia Sarr, who showed a lot of promise with Watford before his career stalled, could also prove to be a smart signing – as could the young defender Chadi Riad, signed from Barcelona. Having previously played rather conservative football under Roy Hodgson, the Palace squad proved very well suited indeed to Glasner’s much more adventurous approach.

Reasons for concern:

The transfer window is still open, and there may still be departures.

Newcastle are pushing hard to sign Marc Guehi, while Eberechi Eze also has a number of suitors. Either of these would be very difficult to replace, even if Palace would fetch a hefty sum from the sale. One of Glasner’s success stories last season was the sudden form of Jean-Philippe Mateta, but the Frenchman was overperforming his xG-numbers by quite a bit. It wouldn’t be entirely unexpected if he regressed a bit, and with Olise leaving that could leave Palace a bit short on goals.

Verdict:

Ask me again when the window closes? This is of course true for all teams, but with Palace the risk of losing key players seems particularly acute. The likelihood of an important player or two leaving, either in August or in January, is a big part of why I doubt Palace will finish much higher than 10th. But a solid, mid-table finish with far more interesting football being played than under Roy Hodgson wouldn’t be a bad season for Palace.

9th place: West Ham

  • Odds on making the top 4: 15.00
  • Odds on making the top 6: 6.00
  • Odds on being relegated: 20.00

Reasons for optimism:

Last season was an odd one for West Ham. They finished in the top half of the table and got to the quarter-finals of the EL (losing to Xabi Alonso’s magnificent Leverkusen team), which on paper looks like a pretty successful season for West Ham. Yet at the same time, only the three relegated teams conceded more goals than West Ham, and the team won just four out of the last 19 games of the PL season. Add the fact that the team was frequently turgid to watch, and parting of the ways between the club and manager David Moyes was both necessary and inevitable. Moyes undoubtedly did a good job at West Ham, but the team had reached a ceiling under his management and in my opinion you have to view the change in management as a positive here.

West Ham have some very good, technical players, and forcing them to play Moyes’ defensive and direct style of football seemed a waste of talent. Moyes’ replacement Julen Lopetegui is no stranger to defensive football himself, but hopefully we will see an increased emphasis on what the team does when it actually has the ball. With players like Mohammed Kudus and Lucas Paqueta at the team’s disposal, West Ham fans have every reason to expect to see some better football under their new boss. The club have been active in the transfer market, bringing in Max Kilman, Crysencio Summerville, Niclas Füllkrug, and Jean-Clair Todibo, as well as 18 year old Brazilian talent Luis Guilherme. The Argentina midfielder Guido Rodriguez has also arrived on a free transfer, leaving West Ham looking stronger in every part of the team going into the new season. It will be particularly intriguing to see if Füllkrug can ease some of West Ham’s over-reliance on the now 34-year-old Michail Antonio up front.

Reasons for concern:

If the split with Moyes was necessary, Lopetegui is perhaps not the most exciting manager West Ham could have turned to. The wonderfully gifted Paqueta still has a potential ban for breaching betting regulations hanging over him, and losing him would leave West Ham very short on creativity in midfield. If Füllkrug doesn’t succeed up front there could perhaps be a shortage of reliable goalscorers – though Jarrod Bowen has performed admirably as stand-in forward in the past.

Verdict:

I quite like the look of this West Ham squad now. I was hoping for a more exciting successor to Moyes than Lopetegui, but the Spanish manager has solid credentials. I’m expecting West Ham to be slightly better to watch than last season and to sneak into the top half of the table.

The odds might have changed since the writing and publication of this post.

Last updated: 13.08.24