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A Predictable Start To The 2012/13 Premier League Season

So 2 games in and my bottom 3 of Reading, Southampton and Norwich have 2 points and 6 goals scored while shipping 16. Surely relegation form.

However QPR, Aston Villa, Liverpool and Spurs join them in the bottom 6, leaving only one of my predictions in the drop zone.

Yes it’s early days, and nobody gets relegated by Christmas but Liverpool have had to match their worst start in 100 years to get down there and Spurs will put their Modric saga behind them as Levy accepts the £33m offer to take him to Spain, thereby ending Jose Mourinho’s pursuit of Moussa Dembele and leaving the way open for Man United to ditch Nani (and the fee from Fiorentina for Dimitar Berbatov) for this powerful, dribbling attacking midfielder.

Only Anderson will remain in the ‘must offload’ category and Sir Alex Ferguson might feel cover for Michael Carrick in the DM role is thin enough to keep the Mohican headed Brazilian.

At £3m for Berbatov, the estimated fee for Dembele will be Nani (not that he’ll want to go there!) plus £5m and Fulham can be happy that they gain a player who will set certain games alight but who ultimately couldn’t replace Ronaldo by quite a margin.

Clint Dempsey will move to Liverpool, and Spurs could buy Anderson, it’s 50:50 in my book.

Hence the Modric deal will start transfer frenzy this week.

Manchester City remain in need of a centre-back, as Kolo Toure, Vincent Kompany and Joleon Lescott are not enough to survive a 60 game season. Liverpool look like the club who will sell to City as Daniel Agger leaves and Martin Kelly, Jamie Carragher, Martin Skrtel and Sebastien Coates cover the defence and Dempsey adds to their attacking numbers.

At the end of this week all squads will be settled and the new players will have noticeably improved United and Chelsea but not Arsenal, Spurs, Liverpool or City.

This United and Chelsea squad should have enough to keep the league alive thru May, to get to the knock out stages of the Champions League and to win a Cup.

City remain the benchmark though, and their squad is more together after their league win, and because of the blending over time of the quality they bought in the last 2 years. David Silva and Samir Nasri, plus Sergio Aguero and Carlos Tevez are enough to beat anyone.

At the bottom, 2 games in and I’m even more convinced I am right.

Southampton couldn’t even fill their seats against Wigan, and that’s a worry as their points tally reads like Finland’s Eurovision score. Nil points.

Reading are just poor, and will get regularly thrashed, and Norwich offer nothing that can give them survival optimism.

I predicted the lowest bottom 3 points total in Premier League history and I stand by that.

As Arsenal, Liverpool and Spurs are also low on points, they are playing catch up again, and the top 3 might just be out of sight by Christmas.

Our league is starting to look like La Liga, in that only 2 or maybe 3 teams can win it.

Summer shopping hasn’t changed the scene, as the pattern has started to develop already.

By Steve Burrows CBE @ifollowsteve

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