On December 31st we throw a party, we have some drinks and we make promises for the new year. I’m going to eat better. I’m going to drink less. I’m going to get myself on track, baby! If we keep one or two of these promises deep into the year, we feel good. But the important thing is it’s a new year.  A fresh beginning.

So here we are: the eve of the new Premier League season. For most football fans, this is where the year changes over. Happy New Year.

 I’ve decided to make some resolutions as a follower, a writer and a fan. Please feel welcome to post your own “New Year” resolutions in the comment section.

1) Fantasy Football…

I’m going to see it through to the end this season. For once.

 Here’s how my fantasy football odyssey usually goes: Ethan signs up. Ethan feels great about his starting XI. Ethan does well for a few weeks. Players get injured and booked. Ethan forgets to make changes before the deadlines. Ethan finally trades that striker who’s been doing f*ck all. That striker gets a hat trick and two assists the following weekend. Ethan throws his hands up in the hair mid-December as the notification emails pile up in his inbox and his team becomes a hollow shell of former greatness. Ethan tells, himself: next year, next year…

Well its next year. And I am keeping up with it this time. For real. I don’t care if I end up in the relegation zone of my group with less points than 07/08 Derby County. As long as I am still involved in the spring, I’ll be happy. Must be how Michael Owen feels as well.

2) Watch More of the Matches…

I am always up for watching good football no matter who’s playing. But last season I pretty much just watched Liverpool plus whatever was shown on FSC. Since I don’t have Setanta at home, watching those matches means going to the pub and going to the pub means spending too much. Last season I’d go for Liverpool and maybe stick around for the fixture afterwards. But this season I’m going to try to go both days and catch as much as possible. I’m sure I’ll miss some of the earliest morning matches, but I want to take in more and thus have more to write about, more to complain about, more to over-speculate about in the next transfer window. Besides who needs sleep when there’s football to watch?

3) Drink Less…

(Whispering: “How is he going to manage this? He just said he’ll going to the pub more often…”)

I’m not one to go out at night and drink until the sun comes up. But when watching football in the mornings and afternoons, I’ve been known to take down one or two more pints than I intend. The problem is the sipping of the beer becomes a nervous habit during a tense match. I clutch the glass like a security blanket and continually drink from it not out of thirst, per se, but just to have something to do besides fret. The beers go down fast during a match and head right for my love handles.

The solution is simple. I’m going to put the pint glass down. Set it on the bar or on the table and step away. I can pick up some other nervous habit like drumming my fingers or cracking my knuckles and go back to drinking beer at a leisurely pace. If the beer is not in my hand, I will only sip at it intermittently during pauses in plays. As long as there’s not an overwhelming number of corner kicks, I’ll be fine. I gave this a test run during the Atletico friendly last weekend. It went well. One cup of coffee and two pints got me through the whole ninety minutes. This is my new target. We’ll see if I can keep it up during the matches that matter, where the tension really mounts, but I think I can spend/drink less while watching more this season. It’s just a matter of adjusting my routine.

4) Get Fit…

Now this is starting to sound more like a traditional new year’s resolution list. And this one ties into drinking less. But it also ties into wanting to get in shape and play some regular football. Writing during the day and working in a restaurant at night has made it hard to get together a regular exercise schedule, but as with the cutting back on matchday pints, it is a matter of altering the routine. Besides: I want to look sexy for the day my future wife stumbles into our pub in a Torres kit and asks: “Is this seat taken?”

5) Keep Up With The Championship…

Since the Championship isn’t largely broadcast in the states, this will be harder than watching more Premier League matches, but I’m determined to know more about the teams in the next flight down in the coming season. Even if it just means reading more, I want to have a better grasp of all things Championship.

Last Saturday, I stuck around for the West Brom/Newcastle match on Setanta 2. A Geordie I know showed up (the only Newcastle supporter in the pub that day) and I hung out with him while he watched his side grind out a 1-1 draw. Everytime a Newcastle made a bad pass or a bad play, he groaned and said, “Welcome to the Championship.” But mostly he had a decent attitude considering his circumstances. “I’ll take a draw away,” he said at the end, a lot less glum than I would have expected. Made me think about how I’d act if my club got relegated.

I watched as a neutral, but I admit I got chills when Damien Duff scored. The build-up and the goal looked top-flight and gave me a thrill.

There’s so much drama in the Championship. So much can happen. With relegation and promotion changing the face of the league each year, there is ample room for new teams to become dominant and successful in an ever-changing arena. It is never the same teams coming up every other season. There’s something to fight for on both ends but the quality of football still makes the Championship a good watch. I look forward to seeing which teams fight for promotion and also how John Barnes does with Tranmere. I’d like to see Newcastle come back up for sentimental reasons. Maybe with one or two of the other former top flight stalwarts. Sheffield Wednesday? Nottingham Forest? (Ah, how I’d love to see Liverpool beat Nottingham Forest for old time’s sake.)

6) Read More…

As a writer and as a fan, I like to read as much as possible on the beautiful game. But working, writing and watching often gets in the way of plowing through a good book. (I’ve been chipping away at the mammoth The Ball is Round by Steven Goldblatt for weeks and I’m only an eighth of the way through the thing…) But I’m determined to keep up with the books.

My reading list includes:

Among the Thugs by Bill Bruford, Brilliant Orange by David Winner and Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson are all at the top of my list. I’m also curious about The Beckham Experiment by Grant Wahl, though I’ll probably look for it in the public library rather than buy it, and I’ll be picking up Bill Simmons’s The Book of Basketball when it comes out for some nice sporting contrast (I like to inject some baseball and basketball reading here and there).

So there it is. My resolutions for the year. We’ll see how many I keep.