Fresh Baked Takes - Week 5

I missed last week (sorry!), but this week I thought that ahead of the football season(s) starting again, I would put in here, my predictions for winners, qualifiers (for Europe and for playoffs), and the unfortunate souls who will suffer the indignity of relegation. Feel free to @ me about why I'm wrong.

Premier League

Winners: Manchester City - As much as I'd love to put someone here to rock the boat, I don't see any of the other teams having sufficient strength in depth to maintain a challenge for the title, whilst also aiming for European and domestic cup competitions.

Points deduction required for Lallana's awful trim.

Champions League: Arsenal, Liverpool, Tottenham - Two of the three teams have already strengthened in the summer window, whilst Tottenham were already the second best team in the league. For me, Liverpool, Tottenham, Arsenal will be the order.

Europa League: Chelsea, Manchester United - They're the two remaining 'big 6' clubs, and I don't see anyone breaking that group up this season, although there are a number of teams who have made shrewd transfers this summer (looking at you, Mr. Pellegrini.)

Relegation: Cardiff, Southampton, Huddersfield - Two of the three promoted teams have invested heavily in their squads, whilst Cardiff seem to have stagnated almost entirely, and although Neil Warnock has a semi-proven track record of keeping teams safe, the quality of the Premier League only continues to stretch away from those teams who are promoted each season. As for Southampton and Huddersfield, neither club has made any eye-watering transfers, and both struggled towards the back end of last season. As a side note, Mark Hughes will be the first manager sacked this season. Book it.


Championship

Automatic Promotion: Stoke City and Aston Villa - No one team stands out to me at the moment as being miles ahead of the pack, but these two have done a good job of keeping hold of their best players as of writing (Butland/Allen for Stoke, Grealish for Villa), and I can see players of their quality making the difference in a very tight Championship this season.

Image may look foreign to fans of Karanka's sides.

Playoffs: Middlesbrough, Derby, West Brom, Bristol City - The first three teams were relatively easy to select, but truth be told, you could swap Bristol City out for just about any other team in the league, it really is that close. The only reason Nottingham Forest aren't in there is that having followed them for five years, my senses have been deadened to any type of investment, and I now expect the very worse. Of those four, Pulisball gets Middlesbrough back into the Premier League, despite his teams being completely devoid of any fun whatsoever.

Might as well predict Forest's finish as well. They'll finish 8th, missing out on a playoff place on the last day of the season, making a nice change from escaping relegation on the last day.

Relegation: Rotherham, Reading, Bolton - As with the playoff race in the Championship, it was hard to determine which two teams would go down with Rotherham, who have surely become the Championship/League One definition of a yo-yo team. Bolton have been teetering on the precipice for years now, as have Birmingham City, who survive in my eyes on account of the fact that Reading is a boring club in a boring town who play boring football.

From here on, I will only be predicting teams who are promoted and related, because quite frankly I couldn't give two hoots about any of the teams in League One or Two outside of the mighty Pies.

League One

Promotion: Sunderland, Shrewsbury, Portsmouth - If Sunderland don't get promoted from league One at the first time of asking then they should honestly just cease to exist as a football club, and all their fans should be required to get a tattoo saying Newcastle United are, and always have been, superior on their foreheads. Shrewsbury and Portsmouth were both quite good last year, I think. Hence, they will also be quite good again this year, I think.

Relegation: Accrington Stanley, Coventry, Wycombe Wanderers - I might as well have thrown darts at a dartboard for this one, I think I'm in way too deep on my League One knowledge, but Accrington Stanley and Coventry both got promoted last season, and Wycombe Wanderers are still living off the fact that they have Adebayo Akinfenwa in their squad: a man who is known universally more for his enormous figure and ridiculous antics than his ability with a football, which infuriates me no end. Nobody who is idolised by 14-year old FIFA hype beasts should be able to ply his trade in League One. I'm sure he's a lovely fella, though.
Oh shit, four go down. Um, also Gillingham. Probably.

League Two

I don't like seeing Jorge Grant in a shirt that isn't from Nottingham.

Promotion: Notts County, Exeter, Lincoln, MK Dons - I don't like putting MK Dons in there, because they franchised Wimbledon like some sort of centrally-controlled American sports team, and I don't think you should rip people's teams away from them for profit, but maybe I'm just old fashioned. Or maybe I'm right, let me know. Also going up with the franchise are Exeter, Lincoln, and the mighty Notts County, who are going to win the league with a record number of points, and Kevin Nolan will be granted the freedom of the city of Nottingham, and Andy Hoe will give the entire squad free entry to Ocean for the rest of their living days, on both Wednesday and Friday nights.

Relegation: Newport County, Crewe - Two teams who have hung on to league status for far longer than is reasonably acceptable finally face their fate. Newport didn't come up that long ago, but they've been embarrassingly bad ever since they came up and are taking up a spot that anyone in the National League could fill with ease (except Bromley, I still hate Bromley. Fuck Bromley.) As for Crewe, I just want to watch the weekly MathsJack meltdown on Facebook as he finally realises that he supports one of the two worst teams in the Football League.

Europa League winners. Book it.

European Leagues

Ligue 1
Winner: PSG, obviously

La Liga
Winner: Real Madrid... or Barcelona. Barcelona. Let's go with Barcelona.

Serie A
Winner: Juventus, not because of Ronaldo, but because they are infinitely more talented than any of the other teams in the league. I think they'll lose a maximum of 3 games.

Bundesliga
Winner: Bayern, aka Hoffenheim II. Süle, Rudy, Wagner etc help Bayern win the league, as Nagelsmann's last season becomes an unmitigated disaster and Hoffe finish 7th, fail to qualify for Europe through the league, but win the Europa League and therefore make their way into the 2019/20 Champions League thanks to pure fluke.

Fresh Baked Takes - Week 4

Kylian Mbappé has been the Best Young Player and it's not even close

Future Ballon D'Or Winner Kylian Mbappé

Kylian Mbappé is already the most expensive teenager in football history, and after a season waltzing to the title in France with PSG, he's showing his worth on a worldwide scale. I don't say this lightly, but the French national football team need to build around him for the foreseeable future. He's the most important player in that side. Not Griezmann, not Pogba, not even Kanté, although he's probably second. Mbappé's blistering pace has struck fear into defences all tournament, coupled with the passing range of Paul Pogba has been one of the more terrifying prospects to gameplan against. Mbappé running in behind defences, even when he doesn't receive the ball, opens up space for the more intricate play between the likes of Giroud, Pogba, and Griezmann to take place in front of the opposition, with the flying teenager always looking to get in behind or isolate his man in a one-on-one situation, where he is absolutely deadly. France need to make sure that this youngster doesn't lose his love of running at defenders at pace. And as much as he might prefer to play through the middle, his place on the wing in this system for France has been a stroke of genius from Deschamps, and it is where he should stay until such a time that the national team can accommodate his skillset through the middle.

The Home Run Derby is going to be BORING as hell

Who is this man?

Here's the names of the eight players competing in the Home Run Derby at this year's All-Star Event in Washington DC; Jesus Aguilar, Bryce Harper, Max Muncy, Alex Bregman, Kyle Schwarber, Javier Baez, Freddie Freeman, Rhys Hoskins. 4 of the competitors have fewer than 20 home runs through the first half of the season, with Hoskins not even in the top 50 in the league with just 14. 5 of the seeds have fewer than 50 career home runs, which is no real measure of ability as Aaron Judge hit 44 in last year's competition, but the only real recognised slugger in the field is Bryce Harper. There's no sign of league leader JD Martinez, or famed sluggers Giancarlo Stanton (22HR this year), Mike Trout and Judge (25), and Nolan Arenado (23). The best matchup in the first round is #2 Bryce Harper vs #7 Freddie Freeman, which doesn't come close to last year's #1 v #8 of Stanton v Sanchez. I'd even go so far as to say that only Bryce Harper would even have made it into last year's contest on name alone. I mean, I'm obviously going to watch the Derby, because I love watching dingers fly in all directions, but I don't think it's going to be nearly as jaw-dropping as last year.

The England team has 2 World Class Players

It's Coming Home (2022 edition) - Raz ft. Harry Kane

Harry Kane and Raheem Sterling. That's it. No arguments please. Sterling has been roundly criticised by the media and fans for his performances at the World Cup, often ranking among the lowest rated England players on the BBC Player Rater (which is a dumb metric because generally people watching the games want tangible results [tackles, goals, assists]). Sterling does more than that. Sure, he was incredible for Man City this season with 18 goals and 11 assists in 29 starts, but in the system employed by Gareth Southgate, Sterling has been so much more than goals and assists. The best way to explain it can be found here, and verbalises everything I'm trying to say. Sterling is England's best player, and the fact that he hasn't scored for the national team since October 2015 shouldn't be a point of criticism for a player whose cerebral abilities very nearly match his physical ones. The next world class player hurts for me to admit, but Harry Kane's all-round play for club and country has pushed him into the top tier of striking talent in the world alongside the likes of Lewandowski and Agüero (Ronaldo is a different level, he doesn't count here). Kane's ability to do anything asked of him makes him the ultimate Swiss Army Knife striker. If you need him to hold the ball up, he'll boss centre backs physically. If you need him to pull away and create space inside for midfielders, he'll pull off a perfectly weighted one-two to help out. I genuinely just had a vision of Kane playing for Manchester City with Silva, De Bruyne, Sterling, and Sané and as a fan of not Man City it was not pleasant. That would be scary shit. But above all, Kane's ability to find the back of the net in any way possible is his biggest asset. If there was one player in the Premier League that you had to back to score a penalty to save your life, mine would be Kane, and that's saying something when Mark Noble is the captain of my club.

Fresh Baked Takes - Week 3

What should Germany do?

Well I think we can all agree that nobody envisioned the Germans, the reigning world champions, going out of the World Cup as early as the group stage. Hell, I predicted them to repeat as champs with Timo Werner winning the golden boot. Obviously that never happened. Joachim Löw has already confirmed he will not be stepping down as head coach, and as such he must learn from his mistakes, most notable of which was the emission of Leroy Sané from the final 23-man squad. Germany lacked a cutting edge which Sané would lend in abundance with his pace and dribbling skills, not to mention learning from Pep Guardiola for a couple of years, which has done both he and Raheem Sterling the world of good. As well as including their best players in the squad, which kind of seems like an obvious move to me, Germany needs to improve significantly in a few areas of the squad, most notably central midfield and full-back. Whilst Toni Kroos is comfortably one of the best central midfielders in the world, Germany lack an N'Golo Kanté-type player who hustles around in front of the back four, harassing opposing attackers and freeing up space for the more attack minded players in front of him. Moving Joshua Kimmich into central midfield seems like the obvious choice, but with so many top international teams employing the skills of wingers like Neymar and Eden Hazard, the full-backs really need to be able to compete at the top level, and as good as Germany are, they don't have that quality in those positions. Whilst the rebuild looks on the surface to be simple enough, Löw will also apparently have to work to heal a rift in the squad that derailed their World Cup defence, with player factions led by Kroos and the flashy Jérôme Boateng clashing in the lead up to the tournament. However, Germany are too good to be held down for long, and will no doubt be back in contention come 2020.

Run the damn score up!

Another week, another unwritten baseball rule that makes no sense to me. The average salary in MLB is $4m. Four million dollars to be paid to play baseball. Throw, catch, hit, run. That's it, essentially. And if you make it to the very highest level, you'll be paid an average of four million dollars. Of course, some are paid more and some are paid less, but if you underperform on a certain day, you should expect to be punished. Baseball players have long been known as slightly petulant, retaliatory, and really really bad losers (case in point Hunter Strickland and Sergio Romo both being dickheads in the past couple of weeks, and their teams weren't even losing/losing badly). Here's my thought: If you are paid these amounts of money to play baseball, you should be able to suck it up and strap on a pair when you have an off day and get tattooed all over the park by the opposition, rather than what seems to be the MLB default of crying foul when down by more than 6 runs and drilling any player who dares try to score against you. Last night the Washington Nationals went 9 runs down in the second inning, and instead of rolling over and having their bellies rubbed, they cracked on, and came back to win 14-12. Do more of that, baseball. Make the game interesting all the way through, rather than checking out midway through the fifth. Nobody wants to see that.

Return of the (French)man?

If the rumours are true, and they're coming from a pretty reliable source (@ExWHUEmployee on Twitter), Manuel Pellegrini has been in talks to bring Dimitri Payet back to West Ham (I almost wrote Upton Park there, how sad.) The deal is apparently worth more than what we sold him for 18 months ago, and he's now 31 years of age, but would bringing him back be worth the hassle that inevitably comes with Payet in claret and blue? You cannot deny the man's talent. He is the most talented and exciting attacking player I have ever seen in a West Ham shirt, and would undoubtedly fill the hole in the team left by Manuel Lanzini's horror knee injury. But the relationship with some of the fans would need patching. The majority of the younger generation that I have seen on Twitter would take him back in a heartbeat, and the same goes for a lot of friends I talk to, but I fear that the older generation would get on his back from the very first day and immediately expect the same results that he delivered in his first spell. All I would say is that the circumstances surrounding his departure from the club were somewhat cloudy, and apparently the players are keen on having him back in the squad,  so if we can get the transfer over the line, why not? It will only take three or four classy performances that we saw in 2015/16 to turn the tide and get the crowd singing his name again. Bring it on, I say.