You can't beat this time of year for sport. Through the weekdays the anticipation gets so feverish that it's hard to hold normal conversations with the unafflicted. The GAA championships toss up a big game, weekend after weekend, and now that the schedule has thinned down there's few enough games for us to be able to enter into microscopic explorations of the teams involved.

Those of us who enjoy the conversational trade in unsubstantiated rumour and salacious gossip get our paunches full at this time of the year. MacX caught MacY with his wife and there's none of them talking in the dressing-room. MacZ said he'd walk if the county chairman was allowed near training again. And then there's the Premiership.

I don't think I ever enjoy the Premiership as much as in the week before it starts. Everyone on the starting grid with nulle points, all the transfers just about done and dusted, new kits and new squad numbers unveiled. I buy every English broadsheet Sunday paper and plough through the Premiership preview pages for the week trying to form an average impression of where other people think Leeds United will finish the season.

This year is worryingly promising. Leeds have made all sorts of friends in the media by playing weirdly attractive football in the latter half of last season. Leeds fans are temperamentally inclined towards viewing any bottle, even a full one with the seal on, as being half full, and those predictions which put the club finishing fourth again seem to take inadequate account of several key factors.

Leeds are one of those clubs which best exemplify the difficulties of teams trying to bridge the gap between the top three and the rest without merely pumping £70 or £80 million into the problem. As such they have earned our loyal pessimism.

Firstly, Leeds look likely to lose Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink. Twenty-goal-a-season guys are tough to come by, especially given the rigid Leeds wage structure. Having been purchased two years ago as a virtually unknown Dutch player toiling away in the middle regions of the Portuguese league, Hasselbaink's career has blossomed at Leeds. He has been coached and motivated well by managers who have given him sharp prods when he has tended towards laziness. The Premier League has suited him, too, and he made sufficient progress to be included in the Dutch World Cup squad. Naturally somebody was going to pick him off, and naturally, football being football, loyalty is no longer part of the equation. Hasselbaink can earn no more than £22,000 a week at Elland Road. Atletico Madrid can offer him about twice that plus sunshine and the differences between Madrid as a place to live and Leeds as a place to live.

So he has banged in a transfer request, and, despite Leeds having denied the request, the news that Real Madrid are willing to splash £23.5 million on Nicolas Anelka is likely to encourage Jesus Gil at Atletico to increase the offer of £10.5 million for Jimmy Floyd.

Well and good. A sale at such terms would represent a healthy profit on a player, but the disruption to the team, the disillusioning disappearance of a folk hero and the realities of the market make it a depressing business. If Leeds go out into the market with a £10 to £12 million cheque in their blazer pocket, that automatically becomes the minimum asking price for any top striker on the market - unless they pick up a Bosman stray, which the club has proved singularly poor at doing.

The conundrum is that anyone worth paying £10 million or more for feels he's worth more than £22,000 a week. So the alternative is to drop down and fish in a lower league. Twelve u12 million would buy two Robbie Keanes, but you are back to the realm of risk. Keane struggled for the latter half of last season, got swatted like a fly by the Arsenal defence and is less than a sure fire bet to score at the rate which Jimmy Floyd did.

In the absence of Jimmy Floyd, Leeds will fall back on their younger players. Difficulties looming here surely also. Jonathan Woodgate, the young centre half, had a wonderful debut season last year. He will be a remarkable player if he doesn't fall back a bit this season. Accordingly, Dave O'Leary has beefed up the competition for places a little and now has a list of players - Radebe, Duberry, Moleenar and Hiden - who can play in the centre of defence.

The same solution isn't feasible for Alan Smith or Steve McPhail though, and you need only look at Alan Maybury's drop to the periphery at Leeds to see how quickly it can all go wrong.

Maybury, captain of the last FA Youth Cup-winning team from Leeds, an Irish international at all levels and a thoughtful, beautifully composed player, looked like a blue chip investment. Last year he got injured. This summer he's back, but his only outing in a Leeds shirt pre-season has been a reserve team trip to Whitby Town. The kid has a mountain to climb.

Leeds, with a team bursting with players in the early twenties or younger, are going to suffer a lot of casualties like that in the course of a long season. You look at the squad list and wonder what will happen to them if the season turns into a slog and the buzz goes out of it. Shiver.

But that's the thrill of anticipation. I'm still game for the annual £100 bet with my mate that Leeds will finish higher than Chelsea. I can still accommodate general disillusionment with the state of professional soccer with the excitement of looking through squad lists and seeing how many of Brian Kerr's kids are rising in the pecking order at their club.

We'll be looking out for Michael Reddy at Sunderland to see if Alfie Hale has pulled off another coup, we'll be hoping Ger Crossley gets a bite at Derby County and keeping an ear out for word of Richie Partridge in the Liverpool reserves, and seeing if Dominic Foley can turn a career around at Watford.

This is a big season for people like McPhail and Maybury at Leeds, Richard Dunne at Everton and even for Keith O'Neill at Middlesbrough, who needs to stitch more than half a dozen games together for somebody sometime soon. There's so many others on the cusp. Gavin, Baker, Cummins at Boro, Quinn at Coventry, Mahon surprisingly still at Tranmere, McKeever and Quinn at Sheffield Wednesday. With Kinsella, Duff, Carsley, Kenna, McAteer and Kennedy having dropped form the Premiership, the partisan Premiership supporter needs replacements.

This is the best week though. Looking forward, everyone except Everton fans hopeful about the new season. The real turning of the seasons.