EPL Preview - Teams

Who will win it then?

United.

This season for one will be quite difficult and will be a 70-80 point season. There is a list of 6-8 teams that cans surprise the top 4 on their day, and I expect that to happen quite frequently this season and the team amongst the top 2 that skips around this minefield successfully will win, hoping United’s and Fergie’s experience to save us.

Something that the London press have made it a point to ignore to build up Chelsea is the transfer of ‘rock-solid’ Makelele out of Chesea! Deco is not the answer, the one person who can step into that role is Essien and Mikel would be a good back up but it would take both of them put together to make up for one Makelele. United will miss Ronaldo’s goals and there is a big question mark on whether he can match last season, least improve on it. This long break and all these pressure will fire him up for sure, that’s what the last 2 seasons have taught us about the boy.

Will it be a 2-horse race?

It will be, but I expect the other ‘competitors’ to push them very close this season. Liverpool and Arse are not favourites for the Champion League slots, the Torres-Keane-Gerrard Combination is being built up, as good as it sounds, the backup again is lacking. Provided they qualify for the CL proper, they need more for their Alonsos and Benayouns. Same for Arsenal, the defence is very suspect, when your best defender is William Gallas, that’s says everything does it not? So it’s a 2 horse race yes, but a very tight one.
Relegation

Any 3 from Boro, Fulham, Hull and Stoke will do down.

Boro – All depends on Alves and his goals, Wheater should improve with an extra year under his belt but again, Arca and Downing alone cant save a team and are inconsistent and injury prone.

Fulham – Some clever purchases and a very experienced manager means that I could very wrong with this, but again when you buy players like Zamora and Pantsil who cant get into a struggling team like West Ham, it does not show a lot of promise

Hull & Stoke – Unknown and for me don’t have any names that inspires any confidence. Trusting the same players who took them into the premiership is heartening but not clever!

UEFA cup slots

Arse, Pool, Portsmouth, Everton (provided the impending transfers do come), Villa and of course Spurs.

Amongst the list above, the team that gets out of the cups including the UEFA cup the earliest will nick the UEFA Cup slot. Due to the fixture list because of the no of teams in Europe this year, we can expect another season of cup upsets in the FA Cup and the League Cup.

Does your name define you?

Vanity has reached new heights with people starting to give 'stylish' names to their children, moving away from tradition where you could identify the area and culture of a person, given the name. Conversely, this only shows that people are in a way ashamed or their roots and want their children to be someone they wanted to be but ‘could not’ be. I come across few Tamil children with Tamil names, with a good majority scouring the Internet for ‘fancy’ names and complex meanings.

My name was judged upon recently and the mere mention of my name had instilled doubts on whether I could speak English. To be frank, yes, my spoken English was never any good until I had been to Singapore but that was the case across my school for everyone who had not read anything more than Hardy boys and Nancy Drew along with Archies and Tin-tin. There was a time I had to seek my friend’s help to talk to a counsellor just because I was not confident about my verbal skills. But then, the situation is a lot better now and that’s not because I had changed my name is it? I had my circumstances and my good friend Rajiv to thank for that.

What irks me is that this is not the late 80’s and early 90’s where the people from the South aped the people from the North and people from the North wanted to be ‘Americans’ with all their first names becoming Christian names, this is the era where ‘on-site’ opportunities has enabled everyone to roam the world and by now people should realized the people that we pray to actually spend half the time and money in getting darker and spending their holidays in ‘exotic’ India and the other Asian countries. Seriously, to an outsider (Non-Indian) what difference does the name ‘Shanmuga’ and ‘Deepak’ make? Zilch! Both are names that they can’t relate to anyway. So its just us who has a problem and its time we grew up and not generalize. A ‘Subbulakshmi’ can wear a short skirt and can have an American accent, she does not have to change her name, and all she has to do is join a call centre!

If you think that who you are is a disadvantage, prove yourself and set it right, do something great and your name, whatever it is, will relate to greatness and will be ‘cool’. Remember it’s the underdog that the world roots for, not the favourites