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Premiership Betting: Comfortably dumb English fans head smack into new season

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Within 15 minutes of Iker Casillas lifting the European Championship trophy, Dan Fitch was scouring the internet for news of pre-season friendlies

International football is the methadone to the domestic season's heroin. It fills the gap, but you really need the hard stuff flooding through your veins. The stuff that can take you to indescribable heights and the very lowest of lows.

For football to work, you have to care. Defeat has to be unbearable. Winning needs to be orgasmic. With England not taking part in Euro 2008, the tournament was always going to be a sterile experience.

And yet, I enjoyed this tournament all the more for England's absence. Too often the semi-finals and final of a tournament has been a bitter irrelevance to me, due to England's painful capitulation at the quarter final stage.

But without the distraction of the home nations, I think that we focused on the tactical side of the game more. What did these sides have that we lacked?

Barely any of the teams involved played 4-4-2 and those that did were not successful. The players that took this tournament by the scruff of the neck were not strikers, but midfield playmakers operating behind the front man.

It is true that a large percentage of Premier League teams now employ a 4-3-3 or 4-5-1, but few use it to their attacking advantage, in the way that Manchester United do. For most it's all about getting the extra numbers in midfield, so as not to be overpowered by the best teams.

England can boast a number of players that would probably be employed by European sides in an attacking free role, behind the striker. But Rooney leads the line at United, Joe Cole is stuck out on the flanks at Chelsea, whilst Gerrard is moved from pillar to post at Liverpool.

English football is guilty of trying to fit players into systems, rather than showing the faith to build a system around a talented player. Platini once said that if Glenn Hoddle has been born French, he'd have won 150 caps.

But does the average Premier League fan want our teams to play like European sides? To hold the ball at all costs and choose the right moment to launch careful attacks, rather than playing at the sort of breakneck speeds that characterise our game? I'm not so sure.

White Hart Lane isn't a place where kick and rush football is played (not since George Graham left), but when Spurs are knocking it slowly around the back and holding possession, you can set your watch by a plethora of nearby idiots screaming 'attack, attack, attack'.

We may have foreign coaches and players, but the terraces are forever English. We're noisy, impatient and in stadiums where we're right on top of the action. We demand end to end stuff and those on the field generally comply.

It will be interesting to see how some of the more delicate performers at Euro 2008 adapt to the Premier League. At Tottenham, I can't wait to see Luka Modric in action. He may have a physique like Butterflies era Nicholas Lyndhurst, but he showed against Germany that he has the strength to control a game amongst a bigger side. Spurs are [3.35] in the winner without the Big Four market.

Deco is a player I've long admired, which is one of the reasons it's so disappointing that I'm going to have to hate him now that he's signed for Chelsea. Chelsea are [3.15] to win the Premier League behind Manchester United at [2.62].

Arsenal are [6.2] to take the title, but this may rise as their players jump ship. However, Wenger has ruled out the signing of Andrei Arshavin, suggesting that he's not physically capable of playing in our league. When the mastermind behind the team most committed to the beautiful game eschews such a talent, it highlights how our game is balanced.

After the cerebral pleasures of Euro 2008, we're back in the chaos of the Premier League. It's a bit like going from Mozart to The Ramones. You know what you should prefer, but there's just something about sheer dumbness that's strangely thrilling.