My Two Cents

I must begin by saying that as Latin American I try to ignore the British league as much as possible. But I understand your reasons for choosing a Premiership team so her goes my two cents.

I agree that rooting for Man U, Arsenal, Liverpool or Chelsea would be like a Mexican moving to the States and rooting for the Yankees and the Patriots. Wait a minute...I just described my father. Anyways...

The three teams I would suggest are Newcastle, Tottenham, or Reading.

My first choice is Reading. They are a small club that does a lot with very little and their coach is awesome. He won't last long there I can promise that. He's just too good and a club with more "history" will probably take him away. They also have an awesome Irish player named Kevin Doyle. I like that kid, he plays with heart, umph, and pizazz! Not to mention the fact that they have an old Ecuadorian star named Ulises de la Cruz at defense. This guy helped his country make it to their first World Cup ever, you can always root for someone like that. Add a controversial African forward, Lita, and you got yourself a team homeslice!

But their uniform is kinda blah: blue and white horizontal stripes.

Now the risk with Reading is that this might be just a fluke and you could easily find them relegatted in like five years if their good players are bought by big clubs and their coach is lured away. So in the words of Jesus' immortal friend from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, "choose wisely, for while the true Grail (club) will bring you life, the false Grail (club) will take it from you."

I have to get back to work now but I will post my Newcastle and Tottenham thoughts latter.

Latin American futbol is better
CUBO

Narrowing it down

1) A team that I can root for without a translator
Not many options -- it's either England, Scotland or MLS (ha).

2) A competitive future
This automatically eliminates all the Scottish teams, bar Celtic and Rangers. In England, you can probably rule out the likes of Derby and Birmingham. Also depends on how competitive you want to be -- if you need to be in the hunt for the title, it's the Big 4 or bust. If you just don't want to be relegation fodder every season, you have more options.

3) A bar in New York City where I can watch games with other drunkards
Shouldn't be a problem for any of the English teams -- pretty much every English Premier League match is shown in the US, be it live or same-day-delayed. I don't know if all the Celtic and Rangers games are televised, but I would guess that most are.

4) A star player or two
Very subjective category. But just about every team in England has some players who would qualify as stars. Except for maybe Derby and Birmingham (see #2).

5) An interesting history
This will vary widely, but the majority of the clubs in England have been around for decades. Plenty of good stuff for you to chew on, once we get that far.

6) Cool uniforms are also welcome -- gotta look good when I'm hooliganing
We'll leave this till the end, as a kind of tie-breaker. Rest assured that there are no Oregon Ducks among the contenders.

Let me ask you a couple of other questions. Do you care about the home city (as in, no way I'm rooting for a team from Liverpool)? Do you care about the style of football (as in, I love watching 0-0 snoozefests)? Do you care about the type of fans the club has?

I'll think of more as we go.

Futbol priorities

1) A team that I can root for without a translator
2) A competitive future
3) A bar in New York City where I can watch games with other drunkards
4) A star player or two
5) An interesting history
6) Cool uniforms are also welcome -- gotta look good when I'm hooliganing