The Season Ahead: Twenty Clubs and a Long Summer of Waiting

Mancunia are champions and everyone else is a challenger, which is another way of saying everyone else is second. Marlborough have rebuilt around a back line that concedes the way a vault refuses to open. Wellsford have a generational midfielder and the unbearable weight of finally being expected to use him. Aigburth got their best player back from a year on the physio table. The promoted three arrive wide-eyed and will leave, most likely, the way the promoted three usually leave. None of it has kicked off yet. That is the best part of July — the month where every hope is still technically alive, and no result has yet been allowed to kill one.