Although not an ideal scenario for manager Tony Pulis, the way his players made things tough for a previously rampant Chelsea, suggests of better things to come for the Potters. Now in their 3^rd season as a Premier League club, the midlands outfit can consider themselves an established force.

Having not played in the top flight since 1984, not much was expected of Stoke when they took their Premier League bow in 2008. They took the league by storm. Tony Pulis, going for the Sam Allardyce school of tactics, put out a strong team playing a largely long ball style who were not afraid to rough teams up.

With Rory Delap’s long throws and a feverish home support, the Brittania Stadium has now been established as one of the more difficult destinations for Premier League sides with Aston Villa, Arsenal and Spurs all suffering defeats there over the last couple of seasons. Indeed, it has become one of the hallmarks of a Premier League winning season to grind out a result against Stoke and that is testament to the excellent management of Pulis.

Survival was the name of the game two seasons ago and last season’s 11^th place finish was a decent result, especially with many promoted clubs often enduring the dreaded ‘Second Season Syndrome’.

Stoke remain a team hard to beat and are surely too good to get relegated this season, early season form aside. The question now is, where to next?

The obvious conclusion would be Europa League qualification, either through an exceptionally strong showing in the Premier League or a decent run in the cups. For either of these scenarios to succeed Stoke need to gamble. More money needs to be paid on transfer fees and well as players being paid higher wages.

Events at Portsmouth last season show how big a gamble this can be and from most perspectives, Stoke seems like a sensibly run club. However, the capture of Kenwyne Jones for £8 million shows that they are not completely shy in their ambitions. Tony Pulis will be aiming for further improvement this year and anything resembling a struggle will not go down well with the fans.

A step up to the top 6, or even top 8, is probably a step to far but for one of England’s oldest clubs, the steady building job goes on.

Craig Bellamy has never been a stranger to controversy so he probably enjoyed it immensely when his move to Cardiff City dominated the headlines on 17^th August.

Bellamy is undoubtedly an extremely talented player with most people agreeing that he was Manchester City’s best player last season. However, now in his 16^th season as a professional footballer, his career will always be remembered for its controversies.

Notable incidents include the hurling of a chair at Newcastle coach John Carver and, most famously, the attacking of Liverpool team mate Jon Arne Riise with a golf club on the eve of a Champions League encounter in Barcelona.

Bellamy’s ability to fall out with managers has been legendary and it is no surprise that he has found himself on the move quite frequently. At Newcastle, Blackburn, Celtic, Liverpool and Manchester City, fans have seen that his excellent talents usually come at a cost.

Along with players like Kieron Dyer, Lee Boyer and Ashley Cole, Bellamy’s behaviour on and off the pitch is seen by many as an example of everything that is wrong with the modern day footballer.

Bellamy’s value to Manchester City was hardly in question but Roberto Mancini is in a position of luxury and probably saw the advantages in off-loading his loose tongue and potentially negative influence.

Cardiff City have teetered on the brink of administration for the last couple of years so many an eye brow was raised when this transfer went through. Even though it is a loan move, Bellamy’s wages are surely too high for Cardiff to afford. Something about this bit of business smells funny.

This aside, Cardiff have now got the best player in the Championship and must be a good bet for promotion if Bellamy stays fit. Cardiff manager Dave Jones will be hoping it comes with the minimum of controversy.

A difficult summer for Steve Bruce was distinguished mainly by player sales, most notably with Lorik Cana moving to Galatasaray for £6 million and Kenwyne Jones joining Stoke in an £8 million deal. Bruce is now in his second season in the Sunderland hot seat and he will hope for an improvement on last season’s disappointing campaign.

As a club, Sunderland is in the middle of a transition phase. Up until Bruce’s appointment in 2009 they were ‘SundIreland’, the Celts of north-eastern England. And what a story it was.

In 2006, just before the fall of Ireland’s ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy, a group of wealthy Irish pub owners and property magnates formed the ‘Drumaville Consortium’. Led by former Irish international, Niall Quinn, a Sunderland icon, the consortium bought out the majority holding in the north-east club.

Soon after, Quinn, then chairman of the club, caused a media whirlwind with the appointment of Manchester United and Irish legend Roy Keane as manager. Keane’s appointment was pure Hollywood and soon the ‘SundIreland’ juggernaut was in full swing. With a team packed with Irish players, Keane steamrollered his way into the Premier League.

It was not long, though, until Sunderland’s Irish dream began to die. With the club enduring a tough first season in the Premier League and the Irish economy crumbling the ‘Drumaville Consortium’ sold the club to Ellis Short, an Irish-American businessman.

Keane was next to go, resigning in 2008 amidst a pack of allegations which varied from him not having a good relationship with Short or Quinn to having lost the trust and respect of his players, who were rumoured to have celebrated upon hearing of his resignation.

After Keane’s departure, Sunderland were no longer big news. Keane was replaced by Ricky Sbragia who gamely steered the club to safety.

Most of the Irish players have now left the club and Quinn is the last remaining survivor of what was once a great Celtic dream.

Of the Sunderland team, and indeed squad, which defeated Manchester City on Sunday, there was not one Irish player. The charter flights from Dublin, Cork and Waterford have now stopped and ‘SundIreland’ have gone back to being plain old Sunderland.

In an ultra-competitive Premier League, Bruce has a tough job on his hands and would regard a top-half finish this season as a good result. The Irish dream is over but Sunderland will live on.

For the first time ever, Spurs have reached the land of milk and honey and will spend at least half the season rubbing shoulders with footballing royalty. This will add significant value to the club while also putting Harry Redknapp in a much stonger position to attract top quality players.

For Peter Crouch, a hat-trick sealed a great personal triumph but it is worth sparing a thought for another of the squad’s strikers. Robbie Keane was an un-used substitute on Wednesday and Roman Pavlyuchenko’s introduction as a second-half substitute sent a clear signal that Keane is now firmly in position as Tottenham’s 4^th choice striker.

With the transfer window clock now ticking, Keane has some big decisions to make over the next few days. He will have no shortage of suitors in the Premier League but any transfer away from Spurs will be an admission of failure and a massive blow for Keane, now in the autumn of his career.

The recent news that Jermaine Defoe probably needs a groin operation has provided a ray of light to Keane. Crouch and Pavlyuchenko are too similar in style to play together, so, unless Redknapp decides to buy a new striker, Keane’s presence will be required over the next few weeks.

That one of those weeks is an international break is a blow to Keane but he still stands a very good chance of playing against Wigan, West Brom and possibly Werder Bremen in the Champions League. If Keane makes the most of these opportunities and proves to the manager that he’s still got it, Redknapp will probably then take the sensible option of rotating his strikers throughout the season and giving Jermaine Defoe some well earned rest time.

This should be a given for Redknapp anyway as Spurs will be expected to compete in the Champions League while, more crucially, maintaining their Top 4 status in the Premier League. It is a squad game now for Spurs and the sooner Redknapp sees this, the better. Otherwise he will be faced with the prospect of a burnt out squad by Easter.

For Robbie Keane, the opportunity to play around 20 games this season provides him with one last chance to prove himself as a top level striker. For a player whose career never fully flourished, but came so close, it’s crunch time.

Perhaps fittingly, the free transfer that Liverpool have brought in, Joe Cole, is also a wounded soul so this could be a match made in heaven.

Cole was born in London in November 1981. As a schoolboy, he scored 7 goals in a youth team international as England hammered Spain 8-0. The media attention on Cole as a youth was massive and from the tender age of 16 he was widely touted as being the next great England player, the biggest sensation since Paul Gascoigne.

Cole was fast-tracked through the West Ham youth system and went on to make his debut at the age of 17. Despite playing in a struggling West Ham side, which was eventually to be relegated in 2003, Cole’s reputation continued to soar and he was rewarded with a transfer to Chelsea the following season.

It was at this point that most expected him to fulfil his potential and become a world star but, frustratingly, this failed to happen for him. Coming under the pragmatic tutelage of Jose Mourinho, Cole was moulded into a left-sided midfielder. Instead of his natural talents being developed in a more natural play-maker role, Cole’s wings were clipped. He was told that no place in the Chelsea team would be his unless he learned to track back, tackle and play a team game.

Frustrating as this was for Cole, he gamely put his head down and played a significant, if not spectacular, role in the Chelsea successes of the last decade. During this time he has played 56 times for England and scored 10 goals. For most players, this is a decent career, but for Cole this is not good enough. He has failed to regularly hold down a starting spot for club or country. He has failed to become one of the greats, as many had predicted, and time is running out.

Joe Cole is now 28 and has, probably, 4 years left at the very top of the game. He has been brought to Liverpool as a play-maker and by potentially lifting this fallen giant, he has the opportunity to finally become a legend of the game. Opportunities don’t come much better than this.

As the song goes, the best things in life are free. Both Liverpool and Joe Cole will be hoping this is true.

Despite being one of the founding members of the football league, Burnley were still small fry in the flashy, gluttonous world of the Premier League. The Lancashire club started strongly and the 1-0 victory over Manchester United at a raucous Turf Moore was an arrival party to be savoured.

Steering Burnley to these dizzy heights was Owen Coyle, a Scotsman with a modest playing career behind him. Coyle had showed great talents in managing Burnley to the Premier League as well as a brilliant run to the Carling Cup semi-finals during the same promotion season.

With a small budget, Coyle’s Burnley were a charming outfit and played a decent form of passing football to please the purists.

It was no surprise, then, that Coyle’s name began to be linked with vacant managerial jobs at bigger clubs. Indeed, with the average lifespan of a Premier League job so short, it only seemed like a matter of time before Coyle eventually took a step up.

It was, therefore, quite controversial when Coyle decided to take the Bolton Wanderers job last season. Burnley fans felt betrayed, especially since Bolton would not necessarily be considered a bigger club than their neighbours.

Looking at Bolton and Coyle now, it is hard to argue with his decision. Early results this season have been good, particularly the 2-2 home draw with Birmingham last weekend where defeat seemed all but certain from 2-0 down. Bolton sit in 5^th place at this early stage and look set to be much improved since the last few seasons of drab football under the unpopular Gary Megson.

Megson’s Bolton were physical and direct but after an era of ugly football under Sam Allardyce, their fans were in need of something different. Coyle’s high tempo game has been like a breath of fresh air and for the first time in years, there is a palpable sense of optimism at the Reebok Stadium.

At Burnley, Coyle’s successor, Brian Laws, failed to save the club from relegation last season. They are back in the Championship but the success of the Coyle years has placed them on a financially sound footing and they will return some day in much better shape.

In the meantime, Coyle’s decision to join Bolton is proving so far to be a success and he will continue to make his mark over the coming seasons. Only the most bitter of Burnley fans could begrudge him that.

It seemed like Beckham’s England career was over when Capello revealed during a television interview before the recent friendly against Hungary that the match would be a chance for him to say goodbye to the Wembley crowd.

When asked about selecting Beckham for future England qualifiers, Capello said, “I say thank you very much for helping me at the World Cup but probably he is a little too old.”

Capello’s changing stance was confirmed last week when he said that “the door is always open for all players”. When asked directly about Beckham’s future, Capello replied, “ask me in 2012.”

Capello should know better than to show cracks in his armour . Since England’s humiliating exit from the World Cup, he has been savaged by the English tabloid media. The lowest of all England’s gutter newspapers, The Sun, recently published a picture on their back page of Capello with donkey’s ears super-imposed. ‘Donkey’ Capello is in for a rough ride.

This is hardly new ground for the English tabloids with previous England managers ‘Turnip’ Taylor and Terry ‘Vegetables’ on the receiving end of similar treatment in the past. The English press are experts at building managers and players up only to knock them down from the same very pedestal. The England manager has traditionally been number one in this regard.

Capello has committed to England until at least the European Championships in 2012 and he is going to have to show continuing resilience in the face of these ongoing attacks. He is a much better manager than any of the tabloids suggests and a quick look at the possible alternatives for England reveal a frightening lack of talent in the English game.

For Capello to survive, England must start winning again but mistakes like the Beckham turnaround need to also be avoided. Beckham’s presence on England’s bench as a glorified cheerleader at the World Cup was an embarrassment to Capello. With 115 Caps, he will forever be an England icon but at 36, his time is surely up.

Capello needs to concentrate on the future and now, more than ever, is the time to cut Beckham loose.

More than any other club, the East Londoners could do with a calm season of mid-table mediocrity. The last few years have been anything but easy for them.

What seems to have been an endless spiral of controversy and trouble was kick-started by the Carlos Tevez affair in 2007. Tevez had signed for West Ham in what seemed at the time to be a major transfer coup. Things weren’t as rosy as they seemed though, and news soon emerged that Tevez’s contract was, in fact, owned by an Iranian businessman.

Tevez was the driving force in West Ham’s survival that year, most notably scoring the winner as the Hammers beat Manchester United 1-0 on the last day of the season, thus condemning Neil Warnock’s Sheffield United to relegation.

The Blades felt robbed as Tevez was an illegal player and launched a protracted legal suit against West Ham. Seeking compensation for their relegation, it was eventually judged that West Ham would pay Sheffield United £30 million.

Just after the Tevez signing, West Ham was bought out by an Icelandic consortium, led by Eggert Magnusson. With little experience of the usually sordid finances of Premier League football, the Icelandics came in all guns blazing, signing players like Freddie Ljungberg  and Keiron Dyer on massive contracts.

Soon, though, the Icelandic dream died. By 2009, it had emerged clearly that the crippling economy in Iceland had directly affected the consortium and West Ham teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. In a Carling Cup game last season against local rivals Milwall, ugly fan violence rubbed salt into the wounds of an already tarnished club.

Gianfranco Zola was faced with an impossible task as manager last season and, with one of the smallest squads in the Premier League, did well to avoid relegation.

West Ham are under new ownership now, the former porn kings David Gold and David Sullivan fitting in nicely with the clubs recent grubby history. They showed ruthlessness in sacking Zola after last season’s disappointments and have appointed the quiet Israeli, Avram Grant in his place.

Grant has got a fight on his hands, especially since very little transfer funds have been forthcoming from the new owners. Key players like Scott Parker, Carlton Cole and Mark Noble are crucial to the Hammers’ future success and Grant needs to do everything he can to keep hold of them.

Otherwise another uncomfortable season awaits.

During his tenure as Chelsea manager, Mourinho scooped up every domestic honour, most importantly loosening Manchester United and Arsenal’s grip on the Premier League crown. With his brash mannerisms and loose tongue, he was the tabloid writer’s dream and the British press anointed him as their golden boy.

Beneath this exterior, however, was a major problem. Mourinho played negative football, more suitable to the pragmatic Italian game than the glitzy entertainment fuelled Premier League. Abramovich was unhappy that his vast investment was producing such cynical football. He wanted style as well as substance and this was what ultimately led to the departure of Mourinho after the Rosenberg debacle.

Mourinho has gone on to greater things since, while Chelsea have undergone something of a reconstruction. That they have finally, 3 years later, fulfilled Abramovich’s desire is down to the management of Carlo Ancelotti, the quiet Italian.

Last season, Chelsea once again took the Premier League but, for the first time ever, it was achieved as the team playing the best brand of football. Mixing a quick passing game with ruthless counter-attacking Ancelotti’s team scored 3 or more goals in 16 Premier League games. On the final day of the season, they needed to beat Wigan to take the title and this was achieved emphatically with an 8-0 victory.

This season, it seems that nothing has changed. Retaining the majority of last season’s squad, Chelsea have opened their account with 6-0 victories against hapless West Brom and Wigan sides.

Didier Drogba looks to be playing at the top of his game while Florent Malouda and Nicholas Anelka have both put disappointing World Cup campaigns behind them and have also started strongly. With Frank Lampard pulling the strings in midfield and the outstanding Michael Essien back from injury, Chelsea once again look like a formidable outfit.

Ultimately this year’s number one goal is the Champions League, something they have never won. If Chelsea take Europe’s top prize, and they will take some beating, it will be done against the back-drop of attractive, free-flowing football, something which is sure to bring a smile to the face of Roman Abramovich.

Top of the agenda for those sick of seeing their accumulators busted is the Half Time Saver. Paddy will kindly refund all losing 4 folds and upwards if the bet is winning at half time but not at full time.

Could be the difference between a pleasant Saturday evening with the missus or sleeping on the couch in a fit of Premier League induced rage. Take note, the maximum refund here is £100 but with only the very biggest gamblers staking more than this on their accumulators, it looks about right.

Paddy Power Premier League Bonuses

For those punters already planning their summer holidays for 2011, Paddy Power has also laid on some longer term incentives. Fans of the bulky and petulant, yet prolific strikers of the English League should take interest.

If your pick for top goalscorer this season finishes the campaign with over 30 goals, Paddy Power will double your odds.With the sulky Drogba already on 3 and the sweary Rooney sure to re-discover his touch soon, this one looks like a steal.

So, with the season now over a week old, the message to punters is clear- do your homework, find the best deals and make the most of your bookmaker’s generosity!