CONTEST: TRY EPLEPSY:

Choosing My EPL Team (Bill Simmons, Page 2: ESPN)

Picking an English Premier League team is like picking a new car: If you don't throw yourself into it and assimilate as much information as possible, you could end up getting stuck with a lemon. That's why I spent the past seven days sifting through more than 4,000 reader suggestions, downloading YouTube clips, surfing goofy European sites, checking out every team's sponsors and jerseys, Googling every team's name along with the phrase "celebrity fans," TiVo-ing old EPL games on DirecTV's Channel 613, reading up on team histories and everything else.

And you know what? Much like buying a car, the whole process was more enjoyable than I thought it would be (as evidenced by the fact that this column is in two parts and more than 6,000 words). Honestly, I haven't liked soccer since the New England Tea Men were thriving back in the mid-'70s, and I'm making the leap based on the fact that it's serviceable TV fodder in the mornings when I'm answering e-mails and reading various Web sites. But soccer does have the one thing that drew me to sports in the first place: Great crowds. There's nothing like following a sport with fans who know how to make a big game feel even bigger. [...]

[A]s I delved into the English Premier League -- starting from scratch, really -- three things struck me over everything else. First, English soccer goes way back to the 19th century (The Football League was founded in 1888). Second, picking a team really IS like picking a car -- every team offers something unique (good and bad). And third, the passionate arguments from hundreds upon hundreds of readers (we're talking about e-mails in the range of 1,000-1,500 words) convinced me even more that I was doing the right thing. I'm going to find a team and follow them for a year. Maybe two. Maybe 10. Maybe for the rest of my life. Who knows? Consider me curious. And if it doesn't work out, no hard feelings.

I kept six goals in mind throughout the screening process:

Goal No. 1: Avoid the whole "jumping on the bandwagon" thing. I didn't want to be like those losers in the mid-'70s who started rooting for the Cowboys or Steelers just because they were winning.

Goal No. 2: Avoid a team that's too tortured. Already went down that road with the Sox. Once was enough.

Goal No. 3: If possible, gravitate toward a city that could double as a potential vacation spot. (Translation: London.)

Goal No. 4: Put it this way: I'd rather have less hooligans in my life than more hooligans. I don't even like when my dogs get rowdy.

Goal No. 5: Pay careful attention to the list of celebrity fans attached to each team. For instance, one of the EPL teams (we'll reveal which later in the column) counts John Gotti and Osama bin Laden among its fans. I'm not a celebrity, but just in case somebody mistook me for one, that's not a list I'd want to be on.

Roman Abramovich
Getty Images
Meet Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich -- a Russian billionaire who spent lavishly to build his championship team. Can you root for a team like that?

Goal No. 6: Pick a team that's successful enough to crack Channel 613 from time to time and will avoid the ignominy of getting kicked out of the EPL. And by the way, that can happen. At the end of every season, the bottom three teams are relegated to the second division, with the top three teams from the second division getting called up. (Imagine if baseball did this?) You don't want to be stuck with a team that gets relegated. So that factored in more than anything else.

There are 20 EPL teams in all. I ruled out nine immediately because of relegation dangers and other factors...

This column is a couple years old, so here's a quick guide for the coming season.

To begin with, you have to choose one of the big 4 to prefer to the other 3, because even though it's only early July, sixteen teams have already been eliminated from title contention, as they are every year.

If you're a Yankee fan you want to go with Manchester United. They're the biggest-budgeted, winningest team in recent years and have that earned-arrogance of the pin-stripers. They also, like the Yankees, have the best player in the League--Wayne Rooney--but they play him out of position and he's an emotional timebomb, again like Arod. Several of their other key players are past their prime but still know how to win. And their youngsters are over-hyped. By the end of last season they were the 21st Century Yankees, a team pretty clearly headed into a fallow period, but they had the good sense to ditch Cristiano Ronaldo, giving them an opportunity to rebuild their otherwise dire offense around Rooney. Ideally, Alex Ferguson would use him like a Frank Lampard or Steven Gerrard between the forwards and the midfielders, allowed to play as either. The problem is, he's also their best striker, whereas Liverpool has Fernando Torres and Chelsea has Didier Drogba. Basically, they need two Rooney's, one to make the pass and one to convert it.

If you're a Sox fan, you probably have to go with Liverpool. For one thing, the city and iots fans are almost universally loathed. For another, despite past success they're snake-bit in recent years and manage to lose the League to Man U even when, as last year, they're obviously the superior side. They are decidedly the second team. Just when it looked like they'd win this year, Man U was fortunate enough to dump Christiano Ronaldo, which makes them the favorites again.

Liverpool does have the best two player combo in the world--in Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres. Torres is the scorer but also has a work-rate like a utility infielder trying to stay in the majors. Gerrard can score himself or set up others, though he isn't particularly attentive on defense and tends to make rash tackles, so is subject to refereeing to an unacceptable extent in an elite player (think of a slightly more mature Michael Bradley but who refs can't treat as badly). The team is worth watching if for no other reason that they play the formation that the US National squad should adopt--more or less a 4-2-2-2.

Chelsea and Arsenal play the prettiest football in the League and the former have some decent defenders too. Think of Arsenal as the 1980's California Angels--trying to beat you with offense--and of Chelsea as a potential Red Sox of the aughts, if they can stop other teams from scoring.

Now, having picked one of the 4 teams that might actually win, you can pick a favorite to genuinely root for. There's a handful of teams that can compete against the big 4 on occasion and are likely to finish in the upper half of the table, who are worthy of consideration. Fulham as a good coach, excellent goalkeeper, and two Americans--Clint Dempsey and Eddie Johnson. They're coming off their best finish ever--7th place, see what I mean?--and lost almost no one. Stoke plays a very physical brand of game and they have Rory DeLap, the guy who throws the ball so well that no one in soccer can figure out how to defend against it. They don't really have a good enough offense to relieve pressure on themselves so they have to defend well. And they don't have the money to bring guys in. They're a team that ought to plunge into America to sign players and we should hire their coiach--Tony Pulis--even as a part-timer, to run the national team. Bolton Wanderers are another honest side with a good coach and keeper. These are three unsexy sides you could follow and no one would accuse you of front-running.

Everton, West Ham and Aston Villa are all worthy and harbor ambitions of breaking into the top 4. They each have a very good coach, but none really has the depth that the money of the big teams provides. They are therefore prone to have stretches where they look as good as any team in the League, followed and/or preceded by stretches where they're quite vulnerable. Their plight tends to be exacerbated by having to play in the consolation playoffs of Europe--the Europa Cup--which sees them play numerous pointless games. Fulham joins Everton and Aston Villa in that quandry this year.

Last year's early season surprise was newly-promoted Hull City. They got off to a great start then had an incident where their brash coach--Phil Brown--lectured the team on the field at halftime in front of the home crowd instead of waiting until they were in the locker room. They also seld a few players at the break and completely fell apart in the second half. They lost on the final day of the season but managed to stay up when their competition lost too. At any rate, they bring in the great young American striker, Jozy Altidore, but seem almost certain for relegation.

One other team worth mentioning is Manchester City. Perennial second cousins to United, they have absurdly wealthy new ownership from the UAE and have been throwing money around like there's no tomorrow. This has given them a huge payroll but no one is quite certain how the guys they've bought will fit together. And, between their spending spree and their Arab ownership, everyone is rooting for them to fall flat on their faces. Imagine George Steinbrenner in a burnoose.

As we did last year, we'll host an EPL fantasy league. Jim in Bingo had the shame of being behind both Brothers early in the season but rallied as fiercely as Hull folded.

You can sign up here:

http://fantasy.premierleague.com/M/home.mc

And we'll invite you to join the Brothers Judd bracket. I never did figure out how they did the scoring, so don't ask.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 13, 2009 5:07 AM