Mourinho is right - this will be the most hotly-contested Premier League season in years

 
Talent pool: Harry Kane, Alexis Sanchez, Diego Costa and Wayne Rooney will be amongst the stars next season
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John Dillon3 July 2015

International footballers from Inter Milan may be heading for Stoke City.

Crystal Palace are planning transfer raids on Paris St Germain. West Ham spirit a big name signing, Dimitri Payet, away from Marseille and the head of the FA there says it is “embarrassing,” that English football is so much richer and more powerful than the French game.

It is at the height of the summer during the transfer window that the ceaselessly expanding might of the Premier League is made so starkly apparent to the rest of the game.

In a world where Stoke can line up a £12 million deal for Inter’s Swiss midfielder Xherdan Shaqiri and Palace can contemplate paying £10m to glamorous PSG for Yohann Cabaye, the effects of the forthcoming £5.14 billion television bonanza for England’s top flight clubs are already becoming apparent.

The money doesn’t come on stream until 2016. But quite plainly, it's worth it for clubs to spend big now to increase their chances of sharing in the lavish windfall of the next contract, which runs from 2016 until 2019.

It's also worth taking bigger gambles even if they are ultimately unsuccessful. Crucially, the value of the parachute payments to those teams relegated during this period are going to leap massively in line with the new deal - even though they will be paid for only three seasons after the drop.

There is a reason, of course, that the Premier League attracts all this lovely TV money, with its next enormous foreign rights deal yet to be struck.

It is because the football on offer is so rip-roaringly, gut-bustingly, eye-buggingly fierce, robust and competitive.

It may or not be the best on offer, depending on your taste. The decline in English fortunes in the Champions League makes it clear that among Europe’s true elite – the past three winners were Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich – standards are higher.

But the Premier League is certainly the most fiercely-contested on the globe. The most spectacular, passionate and unpredictable. And that is why the whole planet is glued to it on screen, from 4am in the morning local kick-off time in Los Angeles to midnight in Sydney.

Just this week, Jose Mourinho, triumphant boss of Chelsea, delivered his verdict after two seasons back in his favourite football nation and declared: “The Premier League is more difficult to win than ever. Even the teams without the same human potential than the top teams in the league really fight. Every game becomes very competitive.”

The pick of the televised games in August and September

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He added: “The good financial situation that every club has allows even the smaller and promoted teams to get good players and be competitive."

What this means for the forthcoming season is that the Premier League battle from top to bottom is going to be more of a struggle of will and mentality than ever before.

If the smaller clubs are spending big, then the big clubs will spend much, much bigger. So the pecking order at the top won’t change.

But this new financial muscle will bring talent, style and extraordinary skill at all levels of the competition (well perhaps not at Newcastle unless they get their cheque book out soon.).

We’ve seen enough of the Premier League to know that attractive, pure football is a huge part of the package

But the rabid intensity of the competition will now be cranked up even further. And surely, that will make mental strength of the kind Chelsea displayed to secure the prize last season more critical than ever, no matter how stellar an array of new signings arrive at Old Trafford, the Etihad and the Emirates.

Even before the forthcoming TV deal comes online, Premier League clubs are becoming more vastly profitable in other ways.

A report by the accountants Deloitte published last month said that in 2013 -14, the clubs achieved record revenues of £3.26 billion and profits and record pre-tax profits of £187 million

Another survey for this year ranked 11 Premier League clubs among the top 25 commercial “brands” in the game.

Meanwhile, football’s business, financial and media landscape is changing so rapidly these days that the indicators about the under-lying trends come from all kinds of differing sources.

The teenage son of West Ham’s co-owner David Sullivan, for example.

It's a fair guess that the information Jack Sullivan broadcasts on Twitter comes straight the horse's mouth.

Here, from left-field recently, was a message he sent out which made plain the effects of the new TV deal.

After the West Ham full-back Aaron Cresswell was tied to a new, highly lucrative five-year contract, a fan asked: Where is all this money coming from? Now its like we are seriously rich?

The reply stated: “The new TV deal will see all BPL (British Premier League) clubs start to spend big money in the next few seasons.”

The co-chairman, with the Hammers move into the Olympic Stadium also looming, is already proving the point.

Thanks for the info, Dad. And what’s for tea?

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