Do you remember being 11 or so and starting your summer holidays? The endless days of sunshine and no school to come: freedom for so many hours you’d have a chance to be bored by it.
I’ve no idea if it actually was sunny for that summer of my life but I know that’s what I see when I reach for the memory.
The week before the Premier League is like that. It doesn’t matter that only seven clubs have ever won the title: there is nothing that says it couldn’t be you. Leicester did it!
But also, logic is irrelevant, it’s about the feeling of possibility. The bright shiny feeling of hope. New players, new kits and – perhaps most importantly – no real games.
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Without the levelling power of reality, you can just dream!
This is how the new signings will fit together (perfectly) to play the kind of free-flowing, gripping football that delivers excitement every single time.
Watching pre-season is like fun dead rubbers at the World Cup: you’re having a good time and you believe what you see will predict the exact outcome you want in the coming months, but they don’t tell you anything at all. Did you know Tottenham beat Arsenal in pre-season last summer?
Speaking of Arsenal, they got a big pre-season win in the Community Shield. A nice day out but it means nothing. Eight Community/Charity Shield winners (of 34) have gone on to win the Premier League. Given what you must do to earn your place in the game, that’s not a great hit rate. So don’t worry post-Pep City.
The reason I mention this is because Arsenal look in a ferociously good position to win back-to-back titles: they may have a big miss in the injured William Saliba, however they’ve strengthened wisely to the point where they have two great players for every position. But it doesn’t matter to the rest of us! Until tomorrow at 8pm, when I imagine it will matter quite a lot to Coventry.
The Sky Blues can choose to look at recent promoted teams’ records in hanging around in the league and take courage from last season.
Sunderland not only survived but competed and now play in Europe! Best ignore the previous two campaigns, where all sides who came up went straight back down. For now, they’re still in celebration mode, Frank Lampard is contracted to 2029 and they’re resplendent in the most gorgeous home kit in the league.
I think the reason pre-season games charm me so much is because they provide what best-selling author David Epstein calls a ‘kind learning environment’. Such settings are the best way to learn because they are clear. Jeopardy is limited, patterns repeat and feedback is proportionate and immediate.
These training environments are ideal for improvement. By contrast, the scrutiny and twisting fortunes of a Premier League matchweek, replete with bad takes, bad refereeing calls and the disproportionate significance of every 90 minutes is a ‘wicked learning environment’. These are harder to take clear lessons from, are frustrating and often provide only the illusion of improvement.
I can’t wait to have competitive games to care about again, without the devastation of knockout football (which I love but can only cope with in very short bursts).
As soon as it all gets going again we know we’ll likely find ourselves at saturation point sharpish, given the relentlessness of the schedule.
But for now it’s all theoretical. You can puzzle your way to the best starting line-up, assuming indestructible players who never get injured, in a world where it never rains and your club’s owners are perfect. Because school’s out and the ice creams are on mum.