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James Richardson, Sean Ingle, Barry Glendenning and the one and only Fernando Duarte make up the panel for this first Football Weekly proper of the new season.

We begin by marvelling at Ian Holloway’s Blackpool. The worst side in the history of the Premier League (TM) confounded the critics by hammering Wigan 4-0. Only Chelsea loooked more impressive. And Aston Villa, if we’re being generous.

Meanwhile, it was a weekend to forget for pretty much every top-flight goalkeeper with the exception of Manchester City’s Joe Hart, while Joe Cole started his Anfield career with a red card as he was sent off for Liverpool against Arsenal. Has anyone else made a worse debut?

Finally, we look forward to the midweek European games, including Tottenham’s Champions League qualifier against Young Boys.

Have a listen and post your feedback below. We’re also on iTunes, Facebook and Twitter, and if you enjoy this type of thing, get your daily dose of fooball with our tea-time email, the Fiver.

James RichardsonBen GreenSean IngleBarry GlendenningFernando Duarte

• Manager expects Carragher and Gerrard to stay ‘for life’
• Attempts to bring Sami Hyypia back to Anfield have failed

Roy Hodgson has confirmed that Liverpool will hand Jamie Carragher a new contract once the club’s ownership saga and transfer dealings are resolved this summer, and is confident the defender and Steven Gerrard will remain part of the Anfield furniture “for life”.

Carragher has entered the final year of his contract after change of manager and the uncertainty surrounding the club’s future under Tom Hicks and George Gillett put negotiations over an extension on hold. While it is unusual for Liverpool to allow a player of Carragher’s standing to get so close to a Bosman transfer, Hodgson has no concerns about losing the 32-year-old. The Liverpool manager said the defender will be approached with a new deal once rebuilding efforts and possibly a takeover are complete.

“I’m sure it [a contract extension] will be a priority,” said Hodgson, whose team were drawn against Trabzonspor of Turkey in the Europa League play-offs today. “Quite frankly so much has happened in the last five weeks, the hours I’ve spent at the club are enormous, that we haven’t actually got round to discussing contracts with players. I now know that Carragher has got one year left. That’s the only contract of a player that I know about. If you asked me how many years the others have got, I haven’t got a clue.”

Hodgson believes the Bootle-born defender and Gerrard will retain integral roles at the club long after their playing careers have ended. Hodgson wanted another Liverpool stalwart, Sami Hyypia, to return to Anfield in a coaching capacity this summer but was unable to convince Bayer Leverkusen to release the Finnish defender.

He added: “I can see players like Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard never leaving Liverpool Football Club. I can see them always being part of the club. In the same way I’m a bit disappointed that my attempts to bring Sami Hyypia back failed. It only failed because he’s so important to Bayer Leverkusen. We couldn’t get him out of his contract. He’s one I would also put in the Jamie Carragher-Steven Gerrard mould, Liverpool for life. Unfortunately he was let go at the end of the season before last and we can’t get him back. He’s too valuable to them.”

Liverpool’s Europa League ties – on 19 and 26 August – add to a congested start to the season for Hodgson, who insists the Premier League should not have scheduled its opening weekend three days after a known international date.

“It is frustrating not just for me, but for 90% of my colleagues,” he said. “In the Premier League there are very few teams who don’t have a lot of international players on their books going away. Fifa set this date a long time back and we have known 11 August is a Fifa date. It is a bit unfortunate they have decided to start the league three days after that.

“It would have been nice if that could have been pushed back and we had the same sort of time the teams in Italy, Spain and Germany have to prepare, because their leagues don’t start until after ours.”

Hodgson has allowed the Swiss defender Philipp Degen to join Stuttgart on a season-long loan.

LiverpoolJamie CarragherSteven GerrardAndy Hunterguardian.co.uk

What is the Premier League if not capitalism without democracy? China and Liverpool FC are made for each other

Is there some kind of tear in the very fabric of the news universe? It has been a week in which areas one would hope to be discrete have collapsed troublingly into one other. Not only has Naomi Campbell been to the Hague, but the People’s Republic of China is frontrunner to buy Liverpool football club. Well, I say the People’s Republic itself, though obviously that would put pressure on space in the directors’ box at Anfield. Rather, the bid is being fronted by the entrepreneur Kenny Huang, but is widely believed to be financially backed by the China Investment Corporation, the investment arm of the Chinese government.

Though it’s not even the first time representatives of a foreign government have tried to buy Liverpool – Thaksin Shinawatra had a crack while he was still Thai prime minister – this latest development would seem to mark the moment at which the already storied history of the Premier League finally tipped into overblown satire. We’re now officially living in the age of the football-industrial complex.

Clearly, any China-backed purchase of Liverpool would offer excellent potential for cultural exchange – I should like Mao’s embalmed body to be brought for a ceremonial lying in state in front of the Kop, or at the very least to see the old devil paraded for photocall in the manner of a new star signing, ideally wearing a strip reading CHAIRMAN on the back. As yet, the benefits of Liverpool gaining representation on the UN security council are unquantified, but can be surely estimated as being worth at least three points a season.

Such synergies all depend, of course, on the Chinese government being able to pass the Premier League’s “fit and proper person” test for new owners – although famously, no one has ever failed it. In fact, I couldn’t be more sure of an outcome were Usain Bolt to offer to race me to the corner shop.

In the interests of accuracy, the aforementioned test has been renamed the “owners and directors test”, presumably because post-Thaksin et al it became impossible to say “fit and proper person” without doing immensely sarcastic air quotes. What the amendment to this flimsiest of forms shakes down to is a requirement for would-be owners to prove they have the funds to sustain a club, which, Premier League’s chief executive Richard Scudamore has declared, will prevent “a repeat of the Portsmouth situation”. How long before the league finally accepts its geopolitical importance, and Scudamore upgrades his silly little test “to prevent a repeat of the Korean peninsula situation”?

For now, though I’m no expert, one imagines Beijing will be good for the cash. China is apparently doing quite well at the moment, and while there’ll doubtless be the usual gripes about not wanting to pay over the odds for a right back, it probably helps if the person holding the purse strings is the second largest economy in the world as opposed to Dave Whelan.

As for further background checks, I think the powers that be will recognise a clubbable sort in the Chinese government. When itinerant chiseller Sven-Göran Eriksson was weighing up whether to take the job managing Manchester City, then owned by Thaksin, he deployed the most rigorous of vetting procedures to assess the former Thai PM’s record. “It was enough for me to make a phone call to [Premier League chairman] Sir Dave Richards,” Eriksson explained. “He [replied], ‘Absolutely clean’.”

That’s how it works, you see. Though not a noted expert in south-east Asian politics – Thaksin’s human rights record had been widely condemned and he was under threat of corruption and fraud charges – Sir Dave is what is known in the game as a “football man”. Considering that fellow holders of this epithet include Ken Bates and Phil Gartside, you might suspect “football man” is merely a euphemism for a word we don’t print in the Guardian unless it’s in reported speech. But “football men” have made the Premier League what it is, bless them, and it would take more than whinges about state-sponsored human rights abuse to take the wind out of their radioactive self-belief.

Just as modern China is a grimly chastening rebuke to those who claimed you can’t have capitalism without democracy, so the Premier League of recent years has been a similarly rude slap in the face to those who declare you can’t just waltz in and buy a club and imagine you own it. One of the running jokes beloved of my colleagues on the Fiver about this period is to parrot the Bill Shankly-inspired line that “118 years of history and tradition isn’t for sale” – before adding “except when it is”.

In the end, what is the history of the Premier League, if not capitalism without democracy? Whether disgusted fans of any team think that this year’s passing oligarch or asset-stripper truly “owns” their club is presumably a matter of as much concern to said oligarchs or asset-strippers as the views of peasants are to the Chinese government. Which is to say, bugger all concern. The only surprise about China’s bid is that the so-called People’s Republic didn’t alight on the Premier League sooner. They really are made for each other.

LiverpoolChinaPremier LeagueNaomi CampbellMarina Hydeguardian.co.uk