jack95

In! I'll take Reading for week one.

Pantilimon, K. Toure, Kompany, Kolarov, Zabaleta, Lopes, Johnson, Razak, Y. Toure, Tevez, Aguero. (Now you have two starting line-ups! )

Wasn't he appointed Crawley manager just a month or so ago? I hope so. Got to love anything that annoys Crawley a bit.

I've been pondering how to justify including Chris Powell. We haven't exactly had our fair share of footballing legends passing through.

I'm managing Botafogo in Brazil at the moment, and I have a striker called Sebastian Abreu who might be worth a look. He's been a very consistent goalscorer for me. At 35 he won't exactly be leading the line for years to come, but as a short term back up, valued at just 450k, he's worth a gamble. His physical stats are impressive considering his age, and his mental and technical stats are great. If you go for him, let me know how he gets on!

Sorry for the lateness of this. I've been umming and aahing as to whether my musical taste is diverse enough to justify pulling a list together, but I was listening to Johnny Cash today and decided I had to express my adoration of him in list form. 1. Johnny Cash 2. Morrissey (From the Smiths, not Men Behaving Badly, but that was probably obvious) 3. Louie Armstrong 4. Jimi Hendrix 5. Laura Marling 6. Aretha Franklin 7. Steve Earle 8. Kimya Dawson 9. Leonard Cohen 10. Joe Strummer

Some of this will depend on transfers and further managerial activity, but right now my gut feeling is... 1. Man City 2. Chelsea 3. Man Utd 4. Arsenal 5. Liverpool 6. Newcastle 7. Tottenham 8. Aston Villa 9. Fulham 10. Everton 11. Sunderland 12. Stoke City 13. QPR 14. Reading 15. Norwich 16. Wigan 17. Southampton 18. West Brom 19. Swansea 20. West Ham I'm a lot more confident in my predictions for the top ten than I am for the bottom. Man City have more than enough in their squad to make it two in a row, and Liverpool will get off to a hot start with much media hullabaloo about Brendan Rodgers' total football that will just about carry them through the season into the top five. I like Newcastle and Alan Pardew, despite his disappointing reign as Charlton manager and they look to be making purposeful moves in the transfer market, so another top six for them. Tottenham will see one big star leave, the club will lose momentum and be destabilised as Harry Redknapp is linked to every managerial job in the world amid continuous rumours of his dissatisfaction at White Hart Lane. At the bottom, I've got little clue, so I'm relying on Steve Clarke struggling at West Brom, Swansea suffering, as Hbob said, a combination of second season syndrome and Brendan Rodgers withdrawal symptoms, and West Ham because I immensely dislike Big Sam and desperately want them to go down with zero points and Allardyce will be so humiliated he'll go and manage in some tiny Eastern European country and never return again. Reading and Southampton have super-talented managers and hungry players, so should just about survive.

I just realised the Norway manager is former Wimbledon manager Egil Olsen! I love that man. I wish he had been appointed England manager, wellington boots and all.

stevensonj95@googlemail.com

I would do this prediction league, most definitely.

Whatever happened to Roy Evans? He did a tremendous job recovering the mess Souness left, you'd have thought he would have got another chance with a Premier League team, but he seemed to just slowly fade away.

Pablo Counago has been injured for five to six months. And literally not one of my other players can score a goal aside from the very occasional fluky deflected effort. And I can't persuade Ade Akinbiyi to join. And now we're sliding back towards the relegation zone...

Chelsea to win because I want Roberto DiMatteo to get the job on a permanent basis and begin reassembling the Chelsea squad from around 1997-2002 in some form.

I always thought they should do a sort of round robin tournament when 6th plays 5th over two legs, winner plays 4th over two legs, and the winner plays 3rd in the final at Wembley. You get the same amount of games and same amount of drama, but you still get a reward for finishing in a higher league position.

Championship is this weekend, League One and League Two next weekend.

Looking at his stats I think he'd struggle once you get to the upper reaches of League 2, but at a non-league level he's Jamil Adam levels of unstoppable. He's just scored four in a single half for me, including two from outside the area!

Mick's a good manager, but if he took over at Villa he'd be the wrong person at the wrong time. He'd be perfect for, say, Hull. Villa need a manager in the Lambert/Martinez style.

It struck me today that I have absolutely no clue who is going to get relegated next season. I'd expect the title to remain in Manchester one way or another, but at the other end of the table, Reading and Southampton are both more than capable of holding their own, QPR have the finances and the manager to push into mid-table next season, Norwich and Swansea will be fine if they can keep a hold of their managers, Wigan always stay up somehow... if West Ham win the play-off final I think they might be for the drop, but then Big Sam's suited to a dogfight like that. Ian Holloway will probably learn from his mistakes of 2010-2011 if he's able to get a second bite at the cherry... it's going to be ridiculously tight.

I've been able to persuade Counago to come down to the Blue Square North with Nuneaton. He's not a cheap investment in terms of wages, but eight goals in eight games has dragged us away from the relegation battle I inherited, so I'd say he's definitely worth it at a non-league level at least.

According to BBC Sport, Wolves will appoint Stale Solbakken as their new manager within the next few days.

Bilbao. As an Englishman, I cannot abide by any club managed by Diego Simeone! Plus Bilbao obviously play some great football. I'm really looking forward to this final, hopefully it will be an entertaining game and neither team will be too cautious.

Hull have sacked manager Nicky Barmby after the comments he made to the media pertaining to the club's finances.

I was more trying to say that I currently don't like Aston Villa because I don't like the style the current manager employs, nor do I particularly care for the current manager. I'm not claiming McLeish and Villa are intrinsically linked to each other. If McLeish gets sacked and Villa hire, say, Gus Poyet (unlikely, but it's just an example,) I'd be all like 'oh yeah, I'm a big fan of Poyet's Villa, because Gus Poyet is wonderful.

Is this referring to me? I'd assume so because the 'j' in jack isn't capitalised, but I'm neither a Swansea or Villa fan and have literally no idea how I gave off that impression. I mean, I quite like Swansea because of Brendan Rodgers' sexy football, but I can't imagine having said anything nice about McLeish's Villa. I support Charlton Athletic, and that will be relevant to this thread in a year and a bit!