Sports Mole’s Championship season previews

After Manchester City had defeated Roma in pre-season, the Chilean was asked for a message to the club’s support, with that question itself coming out of so much doubt about the manager’s future.

“We are sure we are going to bring it back”.

Speaking of the Champions League, expect Arsenal to target success in it’s continental matches this season.

That has all changed in recent years, with City lifting the FA Cup, the League Cup and two Premier League titles over the past five seasons.

“Liverpool have flirted with the “bread-and-butter” challenge of winning the Premier League title, which has to be the basis of any belief that you can go and compete with the Barcas and the Reals, but they are still looking for a breakthrough at this level”, he says.

You can get enhanced odds of 8/1 on Chelsea to win the title – or 20/1 on Man Utd or Arsenal.

But we all saw United struggle to gel with the glut of new faces toward the start of last season and if history repeats itself, Spurs might be able to make a game of it and perhaps even steal a vital away win.

The remaining three teams in the draw all represent potential nightmare scenarios for United with CSKA Moscow bringing the obvious element of significant travel as well as the Russian giants being well underway in their own domestic campaign which began in mid-July, whilst Lazio and Monaco have such vast quality in their respective squads.

All of that makes me fear for Swansea, who are a decent side but could get turned over in the Stamford Bridge sunshine.

Public refusal to sign a new contract worth £100,000 per week with Liverpool earned Sterling widespread criticism, but did not deter City from making the 20-year-old the most expensive English player in history.

We have already written in greater depth here why this could be Pellegrini’s last season in charge at the Etihad. In 2013, in my opinion, he was the best central defender in the world.

Ties will be played on 18/19 and 25/26 August, with the ten winners joining the 22 clubs who automatically qualified for the group stage. However, the Spaniard feels that with the additions of new players the club will have a better opportunity to compete with the very best. They have also been consistently linked with Wolfsburg’s Kevin De Bruyne.

The Champions League remains the itch that the midfielder has yet to scratch, with City’s tale of woe in the competition compounded by successive pairings with Barcelona in the round of 16 over the past two seasons.

Next week, I’ll give you a breakdown of how everything works.

“I would see it as a failure [if I don’t win the Champions League at City]”. The principality club has since lost a number of first-team players with Geoffrey Kondogbia, Yannick Carrasco and Lucas Ocampos having all left the club on a permanent basis. By the end of October, they will have faced five of last season’s top seven, plus had a Merseyside derby. “That is the way that the competition is, though”.