Premiership Preview--13. Sunderland

Backed by the loudest supporters in the Premier League last season, measured at average peak volume at 129.2 decibels, almost as loud as a jet, Sunderland will look to improve on last season's respectable 15th-place finish. The Black Cats were the only newly-promoted team to survive in the Premiership, an accomplishment in itself, but manager Roy Keane has made it clear through his summer signings that he wants more from his club.

Keane, the youngest manager in England's top division, has added six players so far, four of whom figure to play right away in some capacity or another, including the trio acquired from Tottenham. Pascal Chimbonda will be the first-choice right back and bring stability to a position in which Keane started six different players last season, four at least eight times. Steed Malbranque can play virtually anywhere in midfield, but will likely feature on the left flank for Sunderland as Ross Wallace was loaned out to Preston North End. Teemu Tainio is another versatile player, capable of playing both full back positions or on either wing, and could be used as quality cover in case of injury. El-Hadji Diouf was signed from Bolton and will play either as Kenwyne Jones' partner up front or on the right wing opposite Malbranque.

Sunderland lost no one of importance; Andy Cole was the biggest name to leave the Stadium of Light, but he started only three games up front and was no higher than fourth on the depth chart at that position. Greg Halford started eight games at right back last season, but was deemed expendable when Chimbonda signed on.

Adding Malbranque, Tainio, and Diouf reinforced Sunderland's strongest asset -- their midfield. Aside from those three, who were just discussed, Carlos Edwards and Kieran Richardson are speedy, capable wide players when healthy, Grant Leadbitter can play any midfield position and is Sunderland through and through, Dwight Yorke brings much-needed leadership and experience to the otherwise-young roster from his central role, Dickson Etuhu is the club's holding player above the back four, and the captain, Dean Whitehead, will play anywhere he's asked to play but is naturally a center midfielder.

Projected Starting Lineup (4-4-2):
GK: Craig Gordon

RB: Chimbonda
CB: Nyron Nosworthy
CB: Danny Higginbotham
LB: Danny Collins

*RMF: Edwards
DMF: Etuhu
CMF: Whitehead (captain)
LMF: Malbranque

*ST: Diouf
ST: Michael Chopra

*This is pending the results of Kenwyne Jones' knee operation. When Jones is healthy, he'll start with Chopra and push Diouf to right wing in place of Edwards.

As we saw last year, this formation isn't rigid and Keane really swaps players in and out of the starting lineup based on their form, especially in the midfield. The four I listed there will change regularly, probably more so than any team I've previewed so far, because the club is deepest in that area. Yorke will play his share of games, especially against the league's better teams, Richardson will get his chances, as will Leadbitter. Keane also employs a 4-5-1 from time to time, in which instance Jones is the lone striker.

Sunderland has their hands full to start the season with three consecutive games against European participants -- home to Liverpool (Champions League), at Tottenham (UEFA Cup), and home against Manchester City (UEFA Cup). After that, they'll see Wigan, host Middlesbrough in the first Tees-Wear Derby of the season, travel to Aston Villa, and welcome Arsenal to the Stadium of Light. Those are seven difficult matches, to say the least, so anything more than seven points would have to be considered a bonus.

Late November and early December brings a stretch of four winnable games in five: Bolton, West Brom, @Hull City, and Blackburn. Those games are interrupted only by Roy Keane's second return to Old Trafford as a manager, which should be entertaining.

January could be a pivotal month for the Black Cats. They'll play two local derbies -- @Middlesbrough to start the month, @Newcastle to end it in the Tyne-Wear fixture -- and host Aston Villa and Fulham in between. All bets are off in those rivalry games, but they really need to win of those and it'd be nice from a Sunderland point of view to win those two matches at home.

They close out the year with home games against Everton and Chelsea, sandwiched around trips to Bolton and Portsmouth. The run-in is another tough month for Keane's scrappy bunch, though they should be safe in the table by then.

Bottom Line: Keane showed me a lot last season, his first as a Premiership manager, and he's only going to get better as the years progress. The club has spent money and added some nice pieces to the roster, which is now significantly deeper than it had been. A lot hinges on the health of Jones; he's their main scoring threat and if he's out for any considerable length of time, they may be in trouble. Playing in front of that boisterous crowd is a huge advantage -- 9 home wins was 8th-most in the league last year -- but they have to improve on the road. With the experience Keane has brought in, I think they will.

We'll move closer to the top half of the table tomorrow as the countdown continues with places 12 and 11.

Manager of the Year--Semifinalists

First off, I want to let everyone know that I'm going to make a bit of a change in this Premiership "Manager of the Year" award procedure.

Instead of naming my personal winner on Friday as previously planned, I'm going to wait and do it on the 21st. Two more rounds of games will have been played by that point, and hopefully there will be some more clarity as to where teams will finish up in the table. Right now, things are fairly jumbled up and although they may stay that way, I think we'll still have a better, more concrete idea in two weeks' time.

However, I was still able to cut down the original list of five "quarterfinalists", Wenger, Moyes, Ramos, O'Neill, and Keane, to three. One of them was a pretty obvious choice to drop, and the other went down to the wire with one of the three who I kept in the running. It was like splitting hairs, but I went with my gut.

On Monday, the qualifications for each manager were laid out for everyone to see and there's no point in repeating them for the three who are still in the running. Instead, I'll tell you why I dropped the two gentlemen that I did.

So, without further ado, the "semifinalists". Drumroll please...

David Moyes (Everton)
Roy Keane (Sunderland)
Martin O'Neill (Aston Villa)

As for Monsieur Wenger and Señor Ramos, don't get me wrong, they're both very good managers and have done good things with their respective clubs this season.

However, as manager of a "Big Four" side, Wenger has to be held to a higher standard than bosses of the other 16 teams. Arsenal's elimination from the Champions League yesterday by Liverpool essentially put the final nail in the coffin of another trophyless season for the Gunners. To many fans, that's unacceptable. When you basically have a 1-in-4 chance of winning English competitions (and there are three of them), you need to get the job done in at least one. Yes, this year, Spurs won the Carling Cup and either Cardiff City or Portsmouth will win the FA Cup, but this is not a typical season.

I think Wenger has a fantastic squad of up-and-coming players and the team will contend for big things in the future, but he made a fatal mistake, in my opinion, in not bringing much in the way of reinforcement to the Emirates either last summer or in the January transfer window. Wenger overestimated the ability of his players to slog through a long season; it's something that they really haven't done before. Arsenal FC has a ton of money to spend and Wenger basically has a blank check to go out and get whoever he wants, but he opted to stand pat with the team that he had and it's coming back to bite him.

Injuries have plagued Arsenal this season, and I understand that, but every team has injuries. The Gunners just don't have enough depth to recover from them and that has to be attributed to the person who brings players in, Wenger.

For Juande Ramos, let's not forget that Spurs finished 5th last season and were picked by many to break into the top four this year. Spurs were in shambles early in the season under Martin Jol and while Ramos has more than turned that around and won a Carling Cup, he also has an incredible amount of talent on his roster.

I do give him a lot of credit for outcoaching Avram Grant in the Carling Cup final, but one of his goalscorers in that game, Dimitar Berbatov, is good enough to feature for Chelsea and the other, center back Jonathan Woodgate, has played for a world power in Real Madrid, albeit briefly.

Ramos also hasn't been able to fix the defensive issues that hampered this team under Jol, and if you can't defend in professional soccer, you won't get far. It's just that simple. Ramos has been at Spurs long enough now where one would think the defense would be tougher to break down and the system of play would be geared more towards helping out the back line, but that hasn't been the case.

As I said, check back on the 21st to see my choice for Manager of the Year.

Manager of the Year

Out of the 20 managers currently in charge of Premiership teams, I’ve narrowed the list down to five for my personal “Manager of the Year” award for the 2007-2008 season. I’ll trim it down further to three on Wednesday, and announce the winner here on Friday. Your comments and feedback are definitely welcome; if you’re a fan of a particular team and/or manager, let me know why you think your guy should win. If I didn’t include someone who you wanted to see amongst the “quarterfinalists”, take me to task for it and tell me why I made a mistake.

The five candidates are in no particular order; I haven’t yet determined my “semifinalists” and winner:

1. Roy Keane (Sunderland): After taking charge early in the season last year at Sunderland and proceding to win the Coca-Cola Championship, Keane has led the Black Cats to almost certain safety in England’s top flight this campaign. Many people believed that Sunderland, as is the case with most Championship teams that come up to the Premiership these days, would go straight back down, but that doesn’t appear like it will happen. His team has defied expectations and this is a man who, despite a well-earned reputation as a fiery player during his day, has been calm, level-headed, and optimistic all year, even when things weren’t going well.

When you look at his roster, there is only one player, striker Kenwyne Jones, who could possibly earn significant playing time at a bigger club, but Keane has molded this patchwork group together and he’s got his team in 13th place right now. An impressive road victory at Aston Villa is probably the signature win of the season, but triumphs in North East derbies against Newcastle and Middlesbrough in a couple weeks’ time would be huge for Keane and Sunderland.

2. Juande Ramos (Tottenham): Ramos inherited a team that was in the relegation zone and was really suffering both from fitness issues and player apathy. He’s turned that around and then some, beating London rivals Chelsea to win the Carling Cup, which represented Spurs’ first trophy in nine years, and reaching the Round of 16 in the UEFA Cup before being eliminated on penalties by PSV Eindhoven.

Spurs have also gradually climbed up the league table into 11th place, and are only five points behind West Ham. With the start that this team had, a top-10 finish looked nearly impossible but Ramos has created a new era and mentality at Tottenham. His players have said that Ramos’ strict focus on fitness and diet, two things not really valued in English culture, has really had a huge impact, and aside from that one blip after the winning the Carling Cup final in which some of his players were caught drunk in public by the media, it’s a team with a completely different outlook than the one they had under Martin Jol, who had taken them as far as he could.

Yes, the talent has been there in the form of guys like Berbatov, Keane, Lennon, Jenas, and others, but it takes a special manager to harness that talent and turn it into success on the field, especially since he has a roster full of players that have been extremely moody and inconsistent in the past.

3. Martin O’Neill (Aston Villa): O’Neill has done incredible things with the England U-21’s…excuse me, Aston Villa, and has a team that will further develop and contend for a Champions League spot in the future. With that said, they’re in 7th place at present and have already exceeded last season’s win total (11) by three so far this year with five games still to play, and are definitely going to improve on last year’s 11th place finish.

What’s remarkable about O’Neill is that he’s been successful with the Birmingham-based club without spending a whole lot of money (although he has apparently been given a sizable war chest to spend this summer), and has one of the smallest (in number, not size) first team rosters in the Premiership. Only 16 field players have started a league game for the Villains this season and of those 16, nine have started 20 or more matches in the Premiership and 12 have started over ten or more games.

With all that said, I think the most telling thing about O’Neill and how much he means to his team can be shown when one of his players scores a goal. O’Neill jumps for joy nearly 26 feet off the ground and is the first to run to the touchline to hug, high-five, and celebrate with his players. He praises them in public and will support them to the end, but is also the first to criticize them a little bit when necessary and push for the extra gear that he knows these young players have.

4. David Moyes (Everton): The Scotsman and his team operate in the shadow of city rivals Liverpool, but Moyes has done a fantastic job with the Toffees this season and they could make another appearance in the UEFA Cup next year if the standings end up the way they currently are. They reached the Round of 16 this season before bowing out to Fiorentina in penalties, and got to the semifinals of the Carling Cup before losing to Chelsea.

Moyes has guided his team through injury problems (Leighton Baines, Tim Cahill, Mikel Arteta, etc.), and extended absences due to the African Cup of Nations (Joseph Yobo, Yakubu, and Steven Pienaar). This is another squad with some very serviceable, useful players, but no one that would really feature for any bigger teams in Europe, and Moyes has done very well to get the best out of them. The club’s eight road wins are tied for the third-most in the league.

Upcoming games against Chelsea, Arsenal, and Aston Villa will be huge for Everton and their quest to remain in 5th place, but you can count on Moyes having his team prepared and ready to play.

5. Arsène Wenger (Arsenal): Although it looks like Arsenal will fall short in both the Premiership title hunt and Champions League, one can’t discount what Wenger has been able to get out of a largely inexperienced team. There are some older, veteran players on the roster, but not all of them play significant minutes and it’s no secret that the Gunners’ fate hinges on their young guns.

Wenger has been criticized by many, myself included, for coddling his team in the media and never calling anyone on his roster out, but he knows exactly what he’s doing and the puppet strings are in the right hands with the Frenchman. This is a team that had legitimate aspirations for a double earlier in the season, and yes, perhaps it was a bit of a flash in the pan, but Wenger has kept his team more than competitive all season. They haven’t lost yet at the Emirates and have only been beaten twice in the league this year, which shows a lot of discipline and hard work, and that can be attributed directly to the players’ respect and desire to play for Wenger.

As I said, this list will be cut to three on Wednesday. Did I miss someone? I don’t think so, but if you think I did, let me know; I want to hear you.