Premiership Preview--9. Bolton

9. Bolton narrowly held off Reading, Portsmouth, Blackburn, and Aston Villa last season to claim 7th place and the automatic UEFA Cup spot that comes with it. It was their fourth consecutive top 8 finish under manager Sam Allardyce, but there's a new era at the Reebok Stadium. Allardyce resigned on April 29 and signed on to manage Newcastle just over two weeks later. His assistant manager, Sammy Lee, took over for the last two games of the season and after a debut loss to West Ham escaped with a 2-2 tie against Aston Villa, enough for the club to finish in 7th. This will be Sammy Lee's first full season as a manager of any club, Premiership or otherwise. Fortunately for him, Sam Allardyce didn't leave the cupboard bare and management went out and signed several good players this summer.

Bolton have done the best they can to improve their club in this transfer window. Their only major loss was center back Tal Ben Haim's departure for Chelsea, but Jlloyd Samuel should be able to fill that void adequately. Midfielders Danny Guthrie, Gavin McCann, Mikel Alonso, and Christian Wilhelmsson are all much younger than the ancient players Bolton used in that capacity last year (Ivan Campo, Stelios Giannakopoulos, Gary Speed), and Bolton will be the better for using some of those new younger players for the pace and energy they bring to the table. Bolton's real problem, and one they tried to address by bringing in Heidar Helguson from Fulham, is a lack of explosiveness from their strikers. It's almost a one man show with Nicholas Anelka, but he may yet be on the way out before the summer ends. El-Hadji Diouf isn't the player Liverpool and Bolton thought he would be after his coming out performance for Senegal in the 2002 World Cup, and Ricardo Vaz Te is still unproven at the age of 20. If Anelka leaves, Bolton will be in desperate need for goals with no real options to turn to.

Bolton starts the Premiership season with 8 winnable games in a row, with the toughest test being a trip to Fratton Park to play Portsmouth. October is considerably tougher with Chelsea and Aston Villa coming to the Reebok sandwiched around an away game at Arsenal. All three of their games in February are against UEFA Cup spot contenders in Reading (away), Portsmouth (home), and Blackburn (away). A home game with Liverpool comes the week after the match at Ewood Park, followed by a trip to Manchester to take on the defending champions. 3 of the last 4 games of the season are away, including games at Tottenham and Chelsea.

Bottom Line: While this is a club that has better players than the team that finished 7th last season, their manager is not nearly on the same level as Sam Allardyce. Sammy Lee's inexperience will be the main cause for Bolton's lower finish this season, and a streak of four straight top 8 finishes will come to an end.

No More Ties!

When I read a book or watch a movie or TV show, the one thing I absolutely can't stand is an unresolved ending (Yes, HBO and the Sopranos, I'm talking about you!). I want some sense of finality and closure, some certainty of knowing what happened in the end. Zack and Kelly getting married in Las Vegas was the appropriate ending to a series that I basically grew up watching in Saved by the Bell. In truth though, I wouldn't have even cared if they didn't get married just as long as there was some other concrete conclusion. I don't want to be left asking "what if"?

I'm an avid fan of the NHL and of ice hockey in general. After the lockout year of 2004-2005, Commissioner Gary Bettman and the Board of Govenors needed to do something drastic to bring fans back to the sport. Aside from the various rule changes to showcase the individual player's skills, they implemented something that, in my opinion, is the best thing hockey has done in modern history. Having a shootout after overtime ensures that every game has a winner, ensures that the fans who come to the arena every night will walk away knowing that one team skated off with the 2 points that comes with a win in the NHL. No more boring overtime games which usually ended in ties because both teams played like they were afraid to lose instead of playing to win, and so what ensued was 5 minutes of the sloppiest, ugliest hockey imaginable. Shootouts bring every single fan in the arena to stand up, and those who have watched the NHL over the last two seasons know what I mean when I say that the energy level and excitement in the building when the shootout takes place is unlike anything else seen in sports.

I did some research on the 2006-2007 Premiership season, and what I found was startling. 98 games out of 380 resulted in draws, or 26% of the entire total of league games played last year. Just by going from that stat, a fan who comes to an individual game has a 1 in 4 chance of seeing a tie! That's outrageous! Aston Villa had 17 draws last season out of 38 games, nearly 50%! Ticket prices are rising rapidly for these games and the new stadiums that are being built are funded largely by consumer money. Fans don't want to see these sleep-inducing 0-0 or 1-1 ties. They want to get their money's worth when they come to a game because God knows how much money they're spending to attend. It gets to the point where you listen to radio call-in shows or talk shows and the hosts actually predict ties for games instead of a winner. I don't want to see a tie! That's no way to end a game, because neither team is happy with the result and more importantly, the fans are left unsatisfied. Every effort should be made to decrease the percentage of draws because they're not what brings excitement and passion to a game that is all about those things, especially in England. Here, then, are two proposals I came up with to move away from ties and come out of games with a winner:

• 1. Play 15 minutes of 8 v 8 (7 field players and 1 goalie per team) if the game is tied after 90 minutes of regulation. Golden goal, winner gets 3 points, loser gets 1. If a consensus is reached that the losing team shouldn’t be rewarded, the loser could get 0 points, but in my opinion, the loser should get 1 for taking the game into extra time and because 8 v 8 isn’t traditional soccer. If the game is still tied, go to penalty kicks (see my proposal for PK’s below).

• 2. Go straight to penalty kicks if the game is tied after 90 minutes. 5 rounds, winner gets 2 points, loser gets 1. The loser has to get a point because penalty kicks are a crapshoot, and the winner can’t get the full 3 points for the same reason.

If a system was in place to reward the winner of a game that goes longer than 90 minutes, I guarantee you'd see more exciting soccer because both teams would be after the extra points. No more situations where teams play it safe to just get 1 point out of a game because both teams would surely go for the full points if they were guaranteed that 1 point for extending the game past 90 minutes. Hypothetically, let's say that out of Aston Villa's 17 draws last season, they would've won 8 of those games in the proposed 8 v 8 extra time. That's 16 points more and maybe a UEFA Cup spot, provided the teams above them didn't get as many points from their extra time games. Obviously, these proposals would cause a point inflation in the table and it'd be realistic for the champion to have over 100 points. But it's all relative; people would just get used to seeing higher point totals for teams.

I'm very interested in hearing your feedback about this, so leave some comments or e-mail me about what you think. I'm open to any other suggestions to decide games and to your arguments for keeping ties.

Premiership Preview--10. Blackburn Rovers

10. Blackburn's 2006-2007 campaign was the perfect reflection of mediocrity: They finished with 15 wins, 16 losses, and 7 ties, scoring 52 goals while conceding 54 in the process. That was good enough for 10th place and an Intertoto Cup spot as the two teams ahead of them (Reading and Portsmouth) opted to not take part and thus Blackburn's application was granted. Blackburn have taken full advantage of that so far as they've progressed to the UEFA Cup second qualifying round along with the 10 other teams from across Europe who advanced out of the Intertoto Cup.

Manager Mark Hughes has only brought in three players this summer, but each of those moves was fairly questionable. Goalkeeper Gunnar Nielsen is a promising talent at 20 years of age, but he becomes the 5th goalkeeper on a roster of 32 as he transferred in from BK Frem Copenhagen. Brad Friedel doesn't have many years left as he's already 36, but he'll be the starter for the forseeable future. The emergence of striker Matt Derbyshire was a revelation last year, and with 9 goals in 30 appearances (all competitions; 14 starts and 16 substitute appearances), Blackburn looked to have three solid strikers in Jason Roberts, Benni McCarthy, and Derbyshire. As already stated, the team scored 52 goals in the Premiership last year, which was tied for 6th most in the league, and so one wouldn't think the striking corps needed much in the way of reinforcements this summer. Not so, said Mark Hughes, and he went out and got two more. Maceo Rigters is just 23 years old and played for the Dutch U-21 team in the European U-21 Football Championship this summer. Rigters scored 6 goals in 9 appearances for his country at that level and moved to Blackburn from NAC Breda, where he scored only 5 goals in 61 league games. The biggest move occurred just this week when Roque Santa Cruz came to Lancashire after playing for German giant Bayern Munich since 1999. He's still only 25 years of age but has an abundance of experience on the international level with Paraguay (14 goals in 49 appearances for his country since 1999) and in the Champions League with Bayern Munich. Blackburn are now overloaded at the striker position as they've got five legitimate options who will want to play. Mark Hughes is in the unenviable position of keeping each of these players happy, and I think Blackburn would've been better suited to go out and spend the money they invested on Santa Cruz and Rigters on a defender or two, though former DC United star Ryan Nelsen will be returning this season from injury.

A second consecutive top 10 finish for Blackburn won't be out of the cards with their schedule. November and April are the only two months that bring multiple games against the "Big Four" as Blackburn will play Liverpool and Manchester United in each of those months. April is by far the most difficult month with a road game at Portsmouth and a home match against Tottenham as well as the games with Liverpool and Manchester United, but the last two games of the season in May (at home against Derby County, away to Birmingham) should mean 6 points to end the year.

Bottom Line: Scoring goals certainly shouldn't be a problem for Blackburn this season, but it wasn't a problem last season either. Mark Hughes should've went out and spent money elsewhere, but the return of Ryan Nelsen is as good as a new signing. There is a good mix of established veteran players (Tugay, Robbie Savage, Friedel, André Ooijer, etc.) and talented young players (David Bentley, Derbyshire, Rigters, and Christopher Samba) on this team. Higher than 10th won't be out of the question, but any lower would be a disappointment.