The best Premier League season or just the most random? We’ll see

W hat exactly is going on? Did Roy Hodgson returning to Crystal Palace begin a chain of events whereby all football will slowly but surely go back in time. Premier League: the Benjamin Button years. Frank Lampard is heading back to Chelsea, Leicester are considering Martin O’Neill. What next? Gerry Francis at Spurs? Roy Evans to push Liverpool back up the table? Will Harry Redknapp and Frank Lampard Sr be in the away dugout at Craven Cottage on Saturday for West Ham’s trip to Fulham?

Is it just easier to hire a manager whose laptop is already connected to the wifi or at least knows where the toilets are? Here’s hoping O’Neill doesn’t tip up at Filbert Street for his first game.

So much is made of DNA, of “understanding the football club”. And such is the irrationality of fans that we love to cling to this unidentifiable nostalgia and history – for most of us there is little else. Broadly speaking, football clubs are the same. A ground, a training ground, a gym, some cones. A kit, an away kit, a really bright third kit, a really, really old kit man who’s seen it all.

There are lots of players who kiss the badge, but have almost no affinity with whichever club they happen to be at. Then there’s us, fans condemned to supporting them because of where our parents ended up or some other twists of fate over the past century or so.

But we have convinced ourselves that it isn’t like that, that our club is somehow different to the others, and maybe someone who was really good at kicking the ball in our shirt 10, 20 or 30 years ago, will automatically understand how to inspire some different, younger players to be really good at kicking a slightly newer ball in a slightly newer shirt, even if they’ve already had a go at doing