Season of the manager

There used be a time, not so long ago, that 3pm on the first Saturday of the football season meant you could hear whistles blowing all over the country to start football matches off.

Now, in this Sky-led Premiership environment the referee’s puff can be heard at all sorts of times. This year it was at the Stadium of light in Sunderland that our journey got under way and by 7pm tonight seven games will have come my way.
Under Roy Keane the Black Cats have been regenerated into a team worthy of respect and are a club with a future which is completely unlike the situation when his Republic of Ireland nemesis Mick McCarthy was in charge.
He is now at Wolves and in some ways it is appropriate that an average player is managing an average team in the Championship and a world-class player is plying his management skills in the most expensive league in the world. Saturday saw Martin Jol’s Tottenham visit the north east and it was a good examination of the London side who have hopes of breaking into the top four.
The game was decided by a high profile signing but not the one you might expect. Both managers left their new signings on the bench, Michael Chopra for Sunderland and more bizarrely Darren Bent for Spurs and both were brought on in the second half when the game was in stalemate.
It was Roy Keanes’ Cardiff acquisition though who made the crucial impact scoring a last gasp winner and resigning Jol to a week of press speculation about his future and on one hand it seems a little unfair after only one game but when you leave your most high profile summer signing out then he deserves it.
A few hours later the main bulk of games were getting under way around the country and the most intriguing saw Sven-Goran Eriksson’s Manchester City visit Upton Park to take on the luckiest side in the Premiership, West Ham United.
There cannot be many fans outside the London club who don’t think they should be in the Championship after the Tevez affair and should they struggle and go down at the end of the season there will not be a lot of sympathy I suspect.
Given the awful performance on Saturday this is not a distant prospect and given the opposition were the mediocre City this could be a long season.
Erikisson, meanwhile, must be delighted but it is highly unlikely that this honeymoon period will last long.
The Swedes admission that he had not seen any of his summer signings live seems unbelievable.
What has he been doing for the past eighteen months except picking up an obscene amount of money from the English FA.
When employing him any chairman might have expected that a whole wealth of player knowledge might have arrived with him but life is never straight forward with Erikisson and if his signings manage to gel together on a consistent basis then he is either a genius or a very lucky man indeed.
It is the latter that is probably true and will be borne out as the quality of the opposition improves.
Elsewhere around the country, Sam Allardyce’s Newcastle started with a good performance at Bolton and but it was Blackburns 2-1 win coming from behind at Middlesbrough that was the more impressive.
Mark Hughes has put together a solid looking team and it will be no surprise if they sustain this form for a longer period than most of the other sides in the ‘also ran’ division of the Premiership.
As the whistles were blowing around the country the football bandwagon moved to Aston Villa and the visit of big spending Liverpool.
It was not the high profile Torres who grabbed the headlines though as Steven Gerard, Liverpool’s saviour on numerous occasions, stepped up and scored an outstanding free kick to grab three points in a 2-1 victory.
This start is exactly what Benitez needed as it has been the slow starts in previous years that have proved so costly.
So, seven hours and seven games later the Premiership is underway but it has not really started as Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal are yet to play.
Such is Sky’s desire to start the season off with a bang it is 24 hours until we can watch the main contenders strut their stuff and to be honest it cannot come quickly enough.
While it is interesting to see the lesser lights have their moment of glory most of the quality, Liverpool apart, will be on view on Sunday and only then will the season have started properly.
Another three games one after the other beckons and only then will I get my life back, well until Tuesday anyway.

By Patrick Cummings
patrick.cummings@blueyonder.co.uk