The 2005-06 Premier League season would begin with a Manchester derby.
Not Manchester United against Manchester City.
Manchester City against New Manchester United.
The fixture list had barely been released before the opening weekend became one of the biggest stories in the British press.
Van Gaal against Mourinho.
Manchester City against the Red Rebels.
Old rivals in a city whose footballing balance was changing almost by the month.
There was already plenty of history between them.
The previous season, Manchester City's draw with New Manchester United had come at the beginning of a damaging run of results for Mourinho's side. What had initially looked like a minor setback developed into a winter collapse that eventually cost the Red Rebels the Premier League title.
Now they would meet again immediately.
New Manchester United returned as champions of Europe.
Manchester City were no longer the disorganised side that had been humiliated under Kevin Keegan.
Van Gaal had transformed them.
Vieira, Van Bommel, Yaya Touré, Van der Vaart and Sneijder gave City one of the strongest midfields in England.
Ibrahimović led the attack.
Kolo Touré, Kompany and Shay Given had strengthened the defensive spine.
More signings were still possible.
For newspapers, it was perfect.
A derby.
A tactical rivalry.
A chance for revenge.
Two ambitious clubs fighting for control of Manchester.
With Manchester United appearing increasingly vulnerable under the financial pressure created by the Glazer takeover, the rise of New Manchester United and Manchester City had added an entirely new dimension to English football.
And the opening weekend was only the beginning.
The second round would bring Chelsea against Arsenal at Stamford Bridge.
That fixture had become considerably more hostile after the Ashley Cole affair.
Arsenal supporters were furious with Chelsea.
Wenger had attacked Chelsea's transfer conduct publicly more than once.
Cole's relationship with Arsenal had deteriorated almost beyond repair.
Whether the transfer was completed before the match or not, the atmosphere promised to be poisonous.
Then came the third round.
Chelsea against New Manchester United.
Ancelotti's side had won the Premier League the previous season, but Mourinho had beaten Chelsea home and away.
That remained one of Ancelotti's greatest frustrations.
During his end-of-season assessment, the Italian had admitted that failing to defeat New Manchester United was the one major blemish on Chelsea's championship campaign.
He wanted another chance.
New Manchester United had their own reasons for caring.
They had lost the league by a single point.
Chelsea's consistency had ultimately decided the title race.
Mourinho and his players did not need anyone to manufacture motivation for their first trip to Stamford Bridge of the new season.
The heavyweight fixtures continued.
Liverpool would host Arsenal in the fourth round.
Manchester United would face Manchester City in the fifth, while New Manchester United welcomed newly promoted Droylsden.
Liverpool would then host Manchester United in the sixth.
By the time newspapers had worked through the opening weeks, a pattern had emerged.
Almost every round seemed to contain at least one major fixture.
Whether that was deliberate or simply the result of an unusually competitive league hardly mattered.
The Premier League now had six clubs with realistic ambitions at the top end.
New Manchester United.
Chelsea.
Manchester City.
Manchester United.
Arsenal.
Liverpool.
Behind them were clubs such as Newcastle, Everton, Tottenham and Blackburn, all capable of making life difficult for anyone.
Droylsden added another intriguing story.
The Bloods had climbed into the Premier League under Manuel Pellegrini and were immediately labelled by some journalists as the Red Rebels' younger cousins because of the close relationship between the clubs and the number of New Manchester United players who had developed there.
West Ham were returning to the top flight as well.
There would be no shortage of storylines.
A recent Europe-wide survey had asked supporters which domestic league they considered the most attractive.
The Premier League received roughly forty per cent of the vote.
La Liga followed on twenty-eight per cent.
Serie A, the Bundesliga, Ligue 1 and the rest shared what remained.
The numbers reinforced a trend that had been developing for several years.
Foreign investment was entering English football at unprecedented speed.
Television revenue was increasing.
Commercial income was growing.
English clubs were performing better in Europe.
The Premier League was becoming the centre of world football's financial expansion.
More takeovers were already being discussed.
Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra had been repeatedly linked with Liverpool.
In Ethan's previous life, Thaksin's attempts to acquire Liverpool had failed and he had eventually turned his attention towards Manchester City.
That route no longer existed.
Manchester City already belonged to Abu Dhabi investors.
So Thaksin's interest in Liverpool had continued, although nobody seemed certain how advanced the talks really were.
West Ham had attracted foreign interest.
So had Birmingham.
That created another debate.
How much control should English football exercise over who was allowed to own its clubs?
The FA and Premier League had previously taken a relatively permissive approach.
Ethan had argued that this could not continue indefinitely.
At the previous owners' meeting, he had proposed formal financial tests for prospective buyers.
The central issue was debt.
A wealthy investor purchasing a club with his own capital was one thing.
Borrowing heavily against the club itself in order to acquire it was something very different.
Manchester United had become the obvious example.
The Glazer family's acquisition had loaded enormous debt onto a business that had previously been financially healthy.
Supporters were furious because the club would now be expected to help finance the cost of its own takeover.
Ethan wanted that kind of acquisition restricted.
The proposal had gained support from both the Premier League and the FA.
A formal framework was now being drafted.
Prospective owners would have to demonstrate that their acquisition funding was sound.
The league would examine debt structures.
The source of funds would be reviewed.
Owners would face restrictions on extracting excessive money from their clubs.
Investment in infrastructure and youth development would be encouraged.
The precise details were still being negotiated by lawyers, economists and football administrators, but the principle had already been accepted.
A takeover resembling Abramovich's investment in Chelsea would likely pass.
So would Abu Dhabi's acquisition of Manchester City.
A heavily leveraged purchase structured around loading the debt onto the club would face far greater scrutiny.
Had the rules existed earlier, the Glazer takeover might have been extremely difficult to complete in its current form.
The regulations borrowed certain principles from systems elsewhere in Europe, including Germany's emphasis on preventing clubs from becoming disposable assets for owners, but the Premier League had no intention of copying another country's model wholesale.
English football had its own commercial structure.
The objective was not to prevent investment.
It was to prevent reckless ownership.
At the same time, reform of the Football League was finally moving ahead.
Changes originally planned for the previous year had been postponed.
They would now be introduced for the 2005-06 season.
The old First, Second and Third Divisions beneath the Premier League would be rebranded as the Championship, League One and League Two.
The three divisions would cooperate more closely on sponsorship and commercial matters, with the Premier League providing additional support.
The name changes attracted attention.
The more important reforms happened underneath.
Since the end of the previous season, the FA had been carrying out inspections of professional clubs throughout England.
The purpose was licensing.
Every club would be required to meet minimum standards for youth development, medical provision, training facilities and stadium infrastructure.
Championship clubs faced the most demanding requirements outside the Premier League.
Their academies would need at least two proper training pitches, qualified youth coaches, specialist goalkeeping provision, physiotherapy support, a club doctor and appropriate medical facilities.
The personnel had to hold recognised qualifications.
Simply naming somebody as a coach or doctor would not satisfy the inspectors.
League One and League Two requirements were less expensive, but the basic principle remained.
Clubs needed proper youth coaches.
They needed medical staff.
They needed suitable training facilities.
The days when a professional academy could exist largely on paper were supposed to end.
Stadium standards were being tightened too.
Championship clubs were expected to have grounds capable of holding at least fifteen thousand spectators.
League One clubs faced a threshold of around ten thousand.
League Two clubs were expected to reach roughly eight thousand.
Promotion to the Premier League would normally require a ground capable of accommodating at least twenty thousand, although temporary exemptions could be granted when a club had a confirmed stadium project already under construction.
Manchester City were an obvious example.
The standards were strict.
Some smaller clubs complained that the costs were excessive.
A few faced the possibility of being denied promotion or even losing their place if they failed repeatedly to comply.
But the FA had first circulated the proposed requirements during the summer of 2004.
Clubs had been given a year to prepare.
Most had found a way.
The governing bodies also understood that demanding higher standards without providing financial support would be unrealistic.
So the reforms came with money.
Every club in the Championship, League One and League Two would receive an annual £250,000 youth-development subsidy.
Across the seventy-two Football League clubs, the programme cost £18 million per year.
The funding was shared.
The government and FA together provided £10 million.
The Premier League contributed the remaining £8 million as part of its wider commitment to the English pyramid.
For clubs at the top, £250,000 was not transformative.
For a lower-division academy, it could fund several coaches, improve facilities and keep a development programme operating for an entire season.
Another problem was more difficult to solve.
England did not have enough qualified coaches.
New Manchester United had already created its own coach-development programme in Manchester.
The FA now planned additional professional courses in London and elsewhere.
The goal was not simply to issue certificates as quickly as possible.
The content itself was being changed.
Youth coaching would become more technical.
More small-sided football.
More one-on-one work.
More passing under pressure.
More decision-making.
More emphasis on movement away from the ball.
Traditional sessions built around endless running and full-size matches for very young players were being discouraged.
Five-a-side and other reduced formats would become a much larger part of the national curriculum.
The intention was simple.
Produce footballers first.
Athletes could be developed later.
Technique and creativity were much harder to recover once they had been neglected during a player's formative years.
Taken together, the reforms represented one of the most ambitious attempts in years to modernise English youth development.
For a long time, the FA had talked about producing more English players.
The results had been disappointing.
Premier League clubs increasingly recruited abroad because foreign academies were producing technically superior footballers.
The national team's future had become a source of constant concern.
Government pressure increased.
Premier League clubs themselves began accepting that the system needed to change.
Once those interests aligned, reform became much easier.
The surprising part was discovering how much money English football could actually find once everyone agreed that youth development mattered.
A quarter of a million pounds for every Football League academy was substantial support.
Elsewhere in Europe, youth departments sometimes competed for prizes worth little more than symbolic sums.
English football had the resources.
The problem had always been deciding where to spend them.
Anyone studying the reforms closely could see New Manchester United's influence.
That was one of the reasons Ethan had wanted Andy Walsh involved at the FA.
The club could test ideas internally.
If they worked, Walsh could argue for broader versions within English football.
The Times went further.
In one feature, the paper suggested that many of the reforms looked like an attempt to take principles proven at Newton Heath and adapt them nationally.
The article did not claim every English club should copy Mourinho's football.
That would have been absurd.
What mattered was the developmental philosophy behind it.
Technical security.
Fast decisions.
Constant movement.
Pressing as a collective.
Players comfortable receiving the ball under pressure.
New Manchester United had demonstrated that English footballers were entirely capable of learning those ideas.
Beckham could play that way.
Terry could.
Curtis could.
Michael Johnson could.
Ishmael Miller could.
The academy was providing even more evidence.
The England youth sides were increasingly filled with players from Newton Heath.
Ishmael Miller captained the under-19s.
Michael Johnson captained the under-17s.
At under-15 level, New Manchester United provided seven members of the squad, five of whom were regular starters.
Theo Walcott wore the captain's armband.
Jack Wilshere and Jack Rodwell were among the other standout prospects.
For English football officials, that mattered more than any theoretical coaching paper.
The system was producing players.
And those players did not resemble the stereotype of technically limited English football.
A recent under-15 friendly against Germany had attracted considerable attention.
England won 6-2.
Walcott, playing through the middle, scored a hat-trick.
Every one of England's six goals involved players from the New Manchester United academy.
The score was impressive.
The football impressed coaches even more.
England controlled possession for long stretches.
Players exchanged positions.
They pressed together after losing the ball.
The midfielders were comfortable receiving under pressure.
The forwards combined rather than simply chasing direct passes.
For once, the praise was not about English youngsters being stronger, quicker or more committed than their opponents.
It was about technique.
Decision-making.
Control.
The under-15 European tournament later that summer would provide a much more serious test.
England had not won a major European youth competition at that level since the 1980s.
As the Premier League grew richer, the country's youth teams had paradoxically become less successful.
Now there was cautious optimism that the trend might finally be changing.
Nobody sensible believed one talented age group could transform an entire football culture overnight.
But the direction was encouraging.
New Manchester United had spent years trying to build a particular kind of player.
Technically secure.
Tactically intelligent.
Comfortable without the ball.
Aggressive when pressing.
Quick enough in thought to play at the highest level.
Now England's youth teams were beginning to show some of the same characteristics.
For supporters watching those youngsters, it was difficult not to imagine what might happen if the reforms continued for another five or ten years.
The Red Rebels had already changed Manchester.
They had changed the Premier League.
Perhaps their greatest influence would eventually be seen somewhere else entirely.
In the future of English football.
(To be continued.)