New season, new hope?

So there I was, thinking I'd lost most of my interest for football, then I decided (like I do every season) to predict the Premier League table.  Now I find myself actually excited...  I have a feeling this will be rediculously close.  

Title Race

I started by thinking that Liverpool will actually stand a really good chance now they have a decent manager, plus Cole will be an excellent signing, if they could just add one more decent midfielder and possibly another defender they will be a real force, as such I was genuinly considering them... which is why I've put them 5th.  Lets face it, you can't rule out United, and Chelski have this knack of not dropping points.  Arsenal are the best footballing side in the league and if they add a goal keeper could be frightening now they have a decent forward and another defender.  Plus, the amount of money €ity have spent means they have the best squad even though they don't have the best team.

European Places

Those five teams wont be the only ones battling it out for the top 4 either.  I think O'Neil is a big loss for Villa, he's constantly had them over performing.  If they can't replace Milner (assuming he does leave) then I see them falling behind last year.  Spurs will have too much to focus on with the Champions League, I haven't really seen them bring in anyone who'd make the difference to turn them from a decent side to a team regularly pushing for Champions League football.  The team however who I feel have had the best summer transfer period is Everton.  Granted they haven't bought anyone of note (bar a league 1 striker who was even struggling there at the end of the season), however they haven't lost anyone.  They had the third best record in the second half of last year after, behind only United and Chelski.  I fancy they could really pressure those bigger teams for 4th place this year.

Relegation Battle

This was almost impossible.  I looked at it and saw 19 teams I expect to stay up.  Though last year when making an assessment before the start of the Championship season I said that 21 teams could feasibly go up, one of those I didn't include was Blackpool, so I'm not even sure they'll go down.  Can see this going right to the wire.  So here goes, my league table:

1.  Manchester Utd

2. Arsenal

3. Chelsea

4. Manchester €ity

5. Liverpool

6. Everton

7. Tottenham Hotspur

8. Aston Villa

9. Stoke City

10. Birmingham City

11. Sunderland

12. Fulham

13. Bolton

14. Blackburn

15. Wolverhampton Wanderers

16. Newcastle United

17. West Ham United

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18. West Brom

19. Wigan

20. Blackpool

I did surprisingly well last year actually, I had Chelsea winning the league, Liverpool dropping from the top 4 and Birmingham safely mid table, so lets see how this years goes!