State of Unreadiness

As Sky never tires of reminding me the Charity Shield is this Sunday. The traditional curtain opener of the English season means that a new season is upon us. In fact, it will actually begin this Friday with the Coca Cola Championship match pitting newly-relegated Boro against Sheffield United.

Most teams are coming to the end of their pre-season matches and putting the final preparations before starting the 9 month long campaigns and yet it all feels very shoddy.

I'm not saying that every team needs to have spent money or big in the transfer window, there doesn't seem to be much attempt at squad improvement. Usually, by now there would be a sense of optimism in most teams but most seem to be unchanged and quite a few are weakened. It's definately been a quiet window.

Even the so-called Big 4 are not exempt with Arsenal, Liverpool and champions Manchester United losing key components and Chelsea's a year older and creakier. In a way, I think the avoidance of Real Madrid style spending is a good thing and makes the league more unpredictable. Yes, buying players is not a given- Chelsea added Shevchenko and Ballack to their teams in the summer of 2006 and were tipped to get their third title in a row, and yet haven't won it since.

However, this doesn't mean that the Premiership teams should get away with a lack of ambition in the transfer market. Portsmouth for instance don't even know whether they are coming or going. Aston Villa looked to be bucking the trend with their reported chase of Habib Beye, but that seems to have cooled. Given that Villa often played Reo-Coker out of position at right-back, and Luke Young, a right-back at left back. The presence of the rather underrated Beye would have been useful. They've signed Fabian Delph, which gives them more bodies in midfield.

Everton are another team whose signings haven't shown that they intend to push on and this is the problem mostly. Signings are being made at most clubs, but they seem to be more squad players or like for like replacements for departed players.

Incidentally, the teams who have been most busy- the likes of Sunderland (latterly), Birmingham City and Wolves and of course the richest club in the world, Manchester City, are to me, basically trying to improve their rather poor squads to make them competitive rather than being able to upset the apple cart. Spurs are another side that really should be trying to push on, but again they seem to be prioritising the wrong positions in their team although with a rumoured 10 million bid for Blackburn's Chris Samba, they maybe looking to plug holes in their defense. Given that they've got the likes of Keane, Pavlyuchenko and Defoe and latterly Bent (who has basically been replaced by Crouch) links to the likes of Huntelaar and Negredo have been somewhat baffling.

This summer of uncertainty has made the anticipation for the new season even more spine-tingling. the status quo will not change massively. Chelsea will not suddenly finish fifth, and contrary to what most people are saying, City are only making themselves competitive rather than big-4 or title challengers. Despite this, there are still many unnanswered questions and hopefully a few unknown gems who will entertain us, and become the new heroes and/or villains.