The pattern is always the same time after time. An international football tournament, the World Cup or the Euro (and maybe to a lesser extent the Olympics,) takes place and positively captures my imagination. For the entire length of the tourney, I'm rapt with attention on my couch. When it ends, I tell myself that that we keep it going and follow the action on the club level. It happens maybe one Sunday morning.
On many levels, the Premier League and I appear to be a dynamite match. To put it lightly, I am an NBA obsessive. I spend morning, noon and night pouring over an aggregated Twitter feed of basketball musings and rumors. It's not just the on-the-court aspects of basketball that I love, but also everything that surrounds it. The players. The uniforms. Coaching drama. Upset fans. The whole lot, I'm here for it. I noticed fairly early on that with the more hoops that I watched, the deeper that I got and the more I started to notice. The players are right there in front of you, no helmets or hats or pads. After enough time, you start to get a sense of their personalties (on-the court at least, I'm not trying to speak for anyone.) Correct me if I'm wrong, but everything in this paragraph could be applied to following the Premier League. The only thing holding me back is my lack of affiliation, I reckon. In the past, when I would timidly try to watch, without a real, rooted interest, the whole operation just steamrolled right over me. However, that ends today. The buck stops here, as some like to say. I'm diving in.
Since this is my first, honest foray into the Premier League, I'm acknowledging this head-on and am wondering in as a neutral. The only teams that I know for sure that I will not be supporting are: Millwall, Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool.
Beyond that, I consider myself pretty open and have been conducting a fair amount of research. Admittedly, a lot of my research thus far has centered around who has the most notorious fans and why and who has the best looking uniforms (sorry, kits.) So far, I reckon that there are few early favorites but I still maintain that I will watch for weeks before I truly, know my club.
Years ago, I used to play FIFA with my brother and always ran with Aston Villa as they have fantastic kits (claret and blue, * chef's kiss *) However, first choice for video game competition doesn't exactly sound like the best basis for picking your football club. What if someone asks me? It's entirely possible that I end up a Villa fan at the end of the day, but I want to do the leg work first. The Crystal Palace home kit might be my favorite of everything I've seen heading into the season, I am enchanted by those slanted lines.
The other kits that caught my eye also carry a lot of history with them, and concerns two long-time rivals. Both Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur have exceptionally clean kits. Arsenal has also gone with some exceptional kits in years past too (bruised banana, baby.)
In terms of competing on the field (sorry, pitch,) Leicester City carries with it a certain amount of appeal. Squarely outside the so-called Top Four except when Arsenal and Spurs are competitive and then it's Big Six, Leicester City has crashed the party before and haven't gone away in recent years. Also, just today, they announced they had acquired my third favorite player from this past Euro, defender and, also giant, Jannik Vestergaard (unfortunately my favorite player from this past Euro, Paul Pogba is on Manchester United and my second favorite player from this past Euro, Raheem Sterling suits up for Manchester City.) Again, it's entirely possible that I end up here but still I need to do my due diligence.
There's part of me that suspects I may get caught up in Chelsea's march for the title. There's near unanimous consensus that Chelsea, City, Manchester United and Liverpool will finish in the top four of the standings with Chelsea and City duking it out. It's a possibility so I'm not dismissing it.
Anyway, Brentwood meets Arsenal tomorrow. This blog was (probably) never a blog worth blogging about and now it's a blog about football
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