Venables can add spice to heady mix of the big three

Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool may monopolise betting for the title but a football man who at last has the ammunition for a serious assault could inspire Leeds to new heights

In the great sweep of English football history, Leeds United versus Manchester City at the first curtain rise of a new Premiership variety show is maybe only a minor time warp. But it is none the less fascinating for that.

Thirty-odd years ago it would have pitted the gnawing professionalism of Don Revie against the extravagant vision of Malcolm Allison. Today it has another pragmatist, Terry Venables, against one of the last of the chargers, Kevin Keegan, and if the comparison is not exact – Allison was arguably the most original thinker English football has ever known – it serves well enough to illuminate what could prove to be the most intriguing dimension of the new campaign.

While City fans are naturally agog to see if Keegan's £21m summer splash can produce even the odd echo of the explosion of aggressive football which carried his Newcastle so close to the title in the Nineties, a more sustained and harder analysis of Venables's performance is surely inevitable.

There are two main reasons for this. One is rooted in the circumstances of Venables' career, the fact that this hugely respected coach, who was picked out by his mentor Allison as the brightest young football man he had ever known, has never before been so well placed to strike for the championship of England. The other is that in the dangerously exposed Premiership economy, when the division of wealth has been disturbingly solidified to the point where the odds-makers give only three clubs, Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool, a serious chance of winning the title, Venables' stewardship of Leeds might just exert an old and precious principle of the game.

It is that a brilliant coach can make not only a difference – such a man will always be able to do that in any football climate – but a decisive one. One potent enough, just perhaps, to disturb the accumulation of power that has seen Manchester United win seven and Arsenal two of the last 10 titles.

Of course we know that the power bases of Old Trafford, Highbury and Anfield are guarded by football men of high quality. We know all about the competitive ferocity of Sir Alex Ferguson, the subtle brain of Arsène Wenger and the combination of passion and intelligence which irrigates the work of Gérard Houllier. But Venables, the outsider, the adventurer, can bring formidable strengths to his new challenge. He has a freshness of ambition which he admits has had his senses in a whirl from the moment he was approached by Leeds. He knew that that the financial circumstances of the club meant that Rio Ferdinand's move to Manchester United was probably inevitable, but the resources he is left with surely constitute the basis for a serious drive for the great prize.

"Sometimes in life," says Venables, "you suddenly find yourself a position which feels right. That's how I feel now. For quite a time I had been wondering about what I most wanted to do. I enjoyed my time at Middlesbrough the season before last. It reminded me how of much I enjoyed coaching. But did I enjoy it enough to re-immerse myself in the game and all its pressures? Evidently I did. When Leeds came, I knew, deep down, that I wanted it very much."

Venables, no doubt, has a chance of breaking into the cartel of football's plutocrats. Harry Kewell, Robbie Keane, Mark Viduka and Alan Smith are plainly major talents in search of a little moulding. The suspicion must be that Lee Bowyer could fill a warehouse with his demons, but Venables held off a legion of Paul Gascoigne's while drawing from that agonised superstar the best phase of his career. Jonathan Woodgate may be responsive to the healing touch of Venables. The midfield authority of Olivier Dacourt has been retained and with Nigel Martyn and Paul Robinson, Venables has a well protected goal. Yes, Venables has the means to make a run for the glory – and give the Premiership a dimension of wider competition it has lacked for several years.

He also has the potential to remind all the plc suits where, when all the wheeling and the dealing is done, the real cutting edge of football success still resides. It is in the capacity of a football man to do his job with freedom and confidence. It is ironic enough that it could have taken a financial crisis, if not an outright meltdown, to re-instate the proper value of a manager allowed to operate on his own terms.

Astonishingly, Sir Bobby Robson is poised to provide still more supporting evidence this new season. His extraordinary development of Newcastle last season was placed by some in the near miracle category, but such a reaction showed traces of both ageism and ignorance. At 69, Robson is not so much a phenomenon as a football man of enduringly sharp fit who refuses to forget any of the lessons of a long and distinguished career. Signing Laurent Robert and Craig Bellamy were anything but matters of chance and speculation. Robson knew Robert would provide the vital quality of width and skill. Bellamy brought something which will always be one of football's most telling commodities - raw speed. Robert gave Newcastle new balance and Bellamy supplemented the ageing legs of Alan Shearer. Now the old fox invests in the Portuguese prodigy Hugo Viana. Width, speed, and youth – the lifeblood of a team on the move.

Whether the shrewd instincts and inspiring touches of Venables and Robson will seriously impact on the Big Three is certainly one of the key factors in the new season, and the value of their doing so can scarcely be over-estimated.

Ferguson and Wenger have not been slow to imply that the Premiership has become something of a personal argument, one that Houllier might be more inclined to join if he was not so understandably preoccupied with his hard-earned truth that winning any title is no substitute for the ability to watch the sun come up in the morning. But then, who knows, Houllier's emergence from serious illness, his widening sense of the importance of life beyond the touchlines, may have released some inner tension from within both himself and his team. If the result is a greater spontaneity in a Liverpool already so well equipped with such talent as Michael Owen and Steven Gerrard and now augmented by the potentially wonderful panache of Senegal's World Cup sensation El Hadji Diouf, Fergie and Arsène, not to mention El Tel and Sir Bobby, could all be left peering into the middle-distance.

But if money is indeed scarcer now, enough of it may well have congregated in the same old places to confound all the devices of a Wenger and a Houllier, a Venables and a Robson. Apart from Keane and Veron, Giggs and Scholes, Beckham and Van Nistelrooy, United also have the one thing they so conspicuously lacked all of last season, the one through which they were supposed to canter like Nijinksy in a selling plate. They have a centre half of youth and proven ability who cost them £3m more than the combined summer spending of their principal rivals Arsenal, Liverpool and Leeds.

United had the means to go out and solve their one glaringly identifiable problem in one stroke of the pen at a time when Barcelona admitted that they couldn't cover the wages of one of the great stars of the World Cup, Rivaldo. That, in the dog days of plc football, was a statement of deep residual power. It is why the bookmakers, in their remorseless disregard for romanticism, are probably right to offer United at a mere 5-4. For myself, I like Leeds at a far from generous 14-1. I like the idea that one of our brightest football men still believes in himself enough to take the odds with a quip on his lips and the stirring of a song in his heart.

INDEPENDENT WRITERS PREMIERSHIP PREDICTIONS

JAMES LAWTON - CHIEF SPORTS WRITER
1 MANCHESTER UNITED 2 LEEDS
3 ARSENAL 4 LIVERPOOL
FA Cup: Leeds
Worthington Cup: Tottenham

GLENN MOORE- FOOTBALL CORRESPONDENT
1 ARSENAL 2 MANCHESTER UNITED
3 LIVERPOOL 4 LEEDS
FA Cup: Leeds
Worthington Cup: West Ham

KEN JONES - COLUMNIST
1 ARSENAL 2 MANCHESTER UNITED
3 LEEDS 4 LIVERPOOL
FA Cup: Liverpool
Worthington Cup: West Ham

GRAHAM KELLY - COLUMNIST
1 ARSENAL 2 MANCHESTER UNITED
3 LIVERPOOL 4 LEEDS
FA Cup: Liverpool
Worthington Cup: Leeds

BRIAN VINER - FEATURE WRITER
1 MANCHESTER UNITED 2 ARSENAL
3 LEEDS 4 BLACKBURN
FA Cup: Newcastle
Worthington Cup: Everton

CHRIS MAUME - COLUMNIST
1 MANCHESTER UNITED 2 ARSENAL
3 LIVERPOOL 4 NEWCASTLE
FA Cup: Manchester United
Worthington Cup: Tottenham

PHIL SHAW - FOOTBALL WRITER
1 MANCHESTER UNITED 2 ARSENAL
3 LIVERPOOL 4 LEEDS
FA Cup: Liverpool
Worthington Cup: Middlesbrough

TIM RICH - FOOTBALL WRITER
1 MANCHESTER UNITED 2 ARSENAL
3 LIVERPOOL 4 LEEDS
FA Cup: Newcastle
Worthington Cup: West Ham

STEVE TONGUE - FOOTBALL WRITER
1 MANCHESTER UNITED 2 ARSENAL
3 LIVERPOOL 4 LEEDS
FA Cup: Chelsea
Worthington Cup: Middlesbrough

NICK HARRIS - FOOTBALL WRITER
1 MANCHESTER UNITED 2 ARSENAL
3 LIVERPOOL 4 NEWCASTLE
FA Cup: Manchester United
Worthington Cup: Southampton