Gameweek 1 - The English League

With the new season upon us and the champions, Chelsea, having a record 220 million pound payroll. Who will fight and scrap for those precious points? Who will be the surprise teams? Will the newly promoted be able to escape the drop? Will Graham Poll give more than 3 yellow cards to a single player?
The questions will be answered starting in the morning, with THE CHANNEL (TC) showing: Magpies v Wigan, Bolton v THFC, and Reading v Boro (tape delay). Side note, The Ref will be calling Fox Soccer Channel by the name of The Channel or TC for short, thus no reference will be made to the Fox Network from this point on by The Ref, thank you. So Paul Jewell will take on the no-longer-interim Roeder. We have a look at a team trying to crack into the top 4 with THFC. And we get to see two Americans start the journey of keeping a team in the top Flight with Reading (Convey and Hahnemann).
Chelsea start their title defense for the 2nd year running against Man City. The new signing, Ballack, is in doubt do to hip injury. Joe Cole is out as well, along with Makalele, Geremi, Cech, and Huth. So the payroll might be worth it for the month of August and hopefully the fitness talked about in the two blogs below will have been pushed into the back of the mind as an after-thought.

So now I must force myself to sleep with only 8 hours and 20 minutes til the first kickoff of the 06/07 season.