Despite not watching football in England's top flight for over a year, I was feeling extremely confident I could put a team together. I had listened to a few football podcasts and had looked at a result or two and anyway, how much had football changed since Villa had been gracing the top flight with their curious brand of football only matched by AOH's final season at Star City? I selected my team as seen below:
My team was flawless. I had the Chelsea goalkeeper - their first game of the season was against 'can't-win-away-from-home-but-very-good-home-record' Burnley; I knew Arsene's new deal had installed a new-found defensive solidity; I had been told by Guardian's podcast (or was it the new one?) that Kevin de Bruyne was going to have a big year and I knew that with Alli and Kane I had a fairly solid run of points coming my way. The others weren't bad either - Knockaert and Ritchie were excellent Championship players last season so I knew they'd play most matches this season with some success.
Feeling overcome with football genius, I roared with happiness and quickly picked up the phone to gloat to Tom:
Feeling fairly satisfied that I would be miles ahead of my friends who would surely not have picked their teams with such foresight that I had shown, I recently looked at the table:
Oh.
All is not lost. How could I predict that Arsenal would be woeful, Spurs have got some Barry Fry-esque hoodoo and Sue Collins would turn into some combination of Alex Ferguson and Brian Clough?
The international break is upon us. Time to take stock and certainly not panic. The transfer window isn't even over and there is still the large majority of the season to go. Do. Not. Panic.
....I've played my wildcard and changed the whole damn team.
