There are only 27 days to go before the 2008/2009 Premier League begins when Arsenal kicks off at the Emirates Stadium against West Bromwich Albion.After taking a little break to write the EPL Travel Guide, I’m now back on a daily basis for what will hopefully be insightful analysis and news regarding anything and everything Premier League-related.As well as writing the new book, I also took some time this past weekend to redesign the EPL Talk site. You may not have noticed, but the articles have moved from the left column to the center, while the sidebars now take up the left and right side of the screens.Over the next few weeks, I’ll be making some other enhancements to the site to make it better than ever, so keep an eye out for those.In the meantime, be sure to check out the other sites in the network. Kartik Krishnaiyer over at Major League Soccer Talk has been covering SuperLiga as well as talking up a storm for the Major League Soccer Talk Podcast.Lonnie Smetana at Champions League Talk has been busy covering the Intertoto Cup, the first qualifying round of the UEFA Cup and Champions League first qualifying round.Mark Moll from Bundesliga Talk has a feature on new Borussia Dortmund manager Jurgen Klopp.Over at Championship Talk, Shakira Graham has almost completed her sneak preview of all of the clubs in the Championship. She’s saving one of the best ones for last (Swansea City).At Serie A Talk, Kevin Walker has pictures of the new Inter Milan jerseys for the 2008/2009 season.

Great news. The Premier League has opened the doors to its 2008/2009 Fantasy Premier League, and on behalf of EPL Talk, I’d like to invite you to join our private league.

To play for free against hundreds of football fans from around the world, here’s all you have to do:

1. Visit the Fantasy Premier League site and log in
2. If you’ve never registered before, go to http://fantasy.premierleague.com/M/register.mc
3. After logging in, click the ‘League’ link in the left navigation
4. In the “Join A League” field, enter the code 55864-15648 and then click the ‘Join League’ button

Last season, out of the 113,062 teams that participated in the competition, the EPL Talk private league ended in 61st position and had 430 players participating. Let’s try to beat those records this season!

The winner of the EPL Talk Fantasy Premier League will receive a package of Premier League-related prizes from EPL Talk, so may the best manager win!

Join the 2009-2010 Fantasy Premier League today!

The EPL Talk Euro 2008 Fantasy Football League ended in 46th place in the Best Leagues standing with an average score of 268.2. As far as we can tell, we ended up in first place among the private leagues originating from the United States. Here are the top 10 winners. First placed Luis Arias wins a Euro 2008 jersey of his choice. Congratulations.

1. Steddy2000, Luis Arias, 334 points
2. Scursed, Saullus Valasinas, 321
3. UDontNoWhatY:DoinFC, Pat Pence, 310
4. Riverdale FC, James Dutra, 308
5. The Man Moths, Jude Eichas, 304
6. Alpine Wanderers, MT, 298
7. Foolish FC, Mark Aegerter, 297
8. Walker’s Old Boys, Kevin Walker, 291
9. Winning 11, Leonard Vitarana, 291
10. Athleague FC, Little Rudiger Connaughton, 290.

Be sure to check back with EPL Talk this summer when we announce the launch of the EPL Talk private league for the 2008/2009 season.

The first person who emails a PDF of issue number two of the EPL Talk Magazine to me at thegaffer[at]epltalk[dot]com will receive their very own EPL Talk T-shirt (pictured; blonde not included). As soon as I receive it, I’ll update this post. So if you see no note here, then you still have a chance to get the T-shirt.

The T-shirt reads “For Hardcore Soccer Fans Only.”

I’d like to get your valuable input on a couple of new ideas I’m interested in implementing to EPL Talk. Over the past 12 months, the EPL Talk site has zoomed up the charts and you’ve posted 7,943 comments. As a result, I’ve taken down the message boards because the banter between you, the readers, has been taking place in the comments of the posts instead of the message forum, which is fine by me.What I’d like to do, though, is make the site more interactive, essentially more 2.0. Currently the only opportunity to interact with the site is in the comments section. So, I’d like to get your thoughts on two new ideas and what ideas you have to make them work for you and your fellow readers:

• A wiki, and/or
• Interactive maps.

Wiki: I could create a wiki (a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content) and incorporate it into a section of the site. But the question for you is what information should the wiki profile that would be remarkable?One idea is to build a wiki featuring all countries of the world. Each country’s page would then list how you can find the Premier League on TV, radio and on the internet (for highlights). This list could be updated by users around the world so no matter where you live, you can find coverage of the Premiership.If you’re not familiar with a wiki, here’s the football wiki at Wikipedia.Interactive maps: We’ve all seen Google Maps, but there’s also the opportunity to make them interactive and collaborative so that other users can add markers and other points of interest to the maps. But what type of interactive map would be useful, addictive and something that you’d return to as a resource again and again?As an example, EPL Talk created a static Google Map last year to highlight the stadiums visited on a 2006 tour throughout England.Please share your ideas and feedback via the comments link below. The ideas should be Premier League-specific. Thanks in advance for your valuable insight.

EPL Talk is the second most valuable soccer blog according to the list of the Top 100 Most Valuable Sports Blogs researched by Juiced Sports Blog.The criteria used to compile the list measured the number of links, Google Page Rank, traffic rank and other factors. In the Top 100, EPL Talk is ranked number 36 and is valued at $146,496. In contrast, WorldSoccerDaily.com is valued at$4,816, while CSRN’s web site is valued at $3,399. The Offside, meanwhile, was ranked the number one soccer blog in 11th place.I’d like to thank you, the readers, for your loyalty and support. And also the fellow bloggers at EPL Talk who are Michael James, Ty Duffy, Lonnie Smetana, Jeff Hash, Ferd, Andrew Morris, Paul Bestall, Sam Dalton and Ian Cahir.Be sure to continue returning to the site this summer as we have lots in store. In addition to Premier League transfer news, coverage of preseason friendlies and previews of the new football shirts before they’re even released, we’ll have daily news and analysis of Euro 2008. Plus, I’ll be in Switzerland at Euro 2008 blogging, snapping pictures and relaying back podcasts to capture the mood and atmosphere of one of the greatest soccer tournaments.

When you type the words “soccer blogs” into Google, the search engine returns a listing of 2.9 million pages indexed. Rather than wade through the massive amount of blogs, here are the top 5 blogs based on the number of subscribers to their Feedburner RSS feeds:

1. ArseBlog, 2,991 subscribers
2. Soccerlens, 1,565
3. EPL Talk, 466
4. Soccer Shout, 312
5. Throughball, 171

Sadly, Throughball.com is on hiatus. Whether Josh, the blogger, will return looks unlikely.The top 5 list was compiled by researching over 100 of the top soccer blogs. Only blogs that publicly feature on their web site the number of Feedburner RSS feeds they have were included.

• The EPL Talk Podcast has been nominated for a Football FanCast Podcast of 2007/2008 Award. Please take 30 seconds and vote for EPL Talk now. No registration required, and thanks in advance for your vote. We don’t make a single dime from the podcasts, so if you can show your appreciation with a vote, we’d greatly appreciate it.
• Last night EPL Talk launched a new feature to the website which allows you to rate each article, but also rate the comments made by you, the readers. Plus you can add your avatar, so it’s viewable by everyone when you post a comment (or if you’re an EPL Talk writer, when you also post an article). We’ll be keeping a close eye on the new feature to see how well it works. If it succeeds, we’ll add it to the EPL Talk sister sites.
• One of the readers last week (Dave M) mentioned that it would be nice if there was a way to be notified when content was added across the EPL Talk network of sites instead of having to subscribe to separate RSS feeds for each site. If you’re in the same boat as Dave M, go ahead and bookmark EPL Talk’s Friendfeed page (or better yet, subscribe to the RSS feed).
• The EPL Talk blog/website has zoomed into second position in the Top Soccer Blogs section of Ballhype’s website. Thanks for your continued support.
• If you’re looking for a list of this summer’s preseason friendlies for Premier League clubs, visit the Preseason Friendlies page on EPL Talk.