WHY SAY ANYTHING?

Ups and downs…..

So the season is almost over and here’s what we already know. Manchester City are Premier League champions and Carabao Cup winners. Wolves will be playing in the top division next season. Either Chelsea or Manchester United will win the FA Cup and Liverpool still have a chance of winning the Champion’s League.

Barring a miracle, West Bromwich Albion will be in the Championship at the start of next season, where they will probably be joined by Stoke City and Southampton.

West Brom made the mistake of appointing a manager, in Alan Pardew, with no pedigree as far as avoiding relegation is concerned and will pay the price. Stoke City and Southampton both left it too late and their new managers with too much to do in order to save them. The holes had already been dug far too deep.

Meanwhile, back at the top, Manchester City fans have been practising being witty at the expense of their neighbours with cries of “mind the gap!” being heard at The Etihad in reference to the distance between City and United in the league table.

As a responsible publication we feel it our duty to remind supporters from the blue bit of Manchester that the gap between the clubs is actually as follows:-

15 Premier League/1st Division titles

3   Champion’s League/European Cups

7   FA Cups (possibly 8 at the end of this season)

So maybe it is they who should be more mindful of the gap!

Managers in London…..

With Arséne Wenger definitely heading for the door marked “do one” we could see two of the top six starting next season with new managers assuming that Chelsea have a similarly marked door.

Who will replace them? Why don’t they just swap jobs? Imagine that! Wenger as the new Chelsea manager. What a reception he would get from the fans! Unfortunately, pleasing though it may be to us neutrals, it is not a scenario we envisage being played out in real life and it is more likely that we will see Max Allegri and/or Luis Enriquez in London pretty soon although at which club is not yet known.

This manager merry-go-round is, of course, something which Chelsea have become used to over the years since Roman Abramovich took over but it is all new to Arsenal. They must now go through the same procedure as Manchester United when changing manager after more than twenty years with the old one.

Firstly, they have to employ an inexperienced man with no clue how to manage a big club and, when this fails, they have to appoint an egotistical eccentric who won’t listen to anybody. He can then be fired when they realise that the one they should have approached in the first place has become available.

Eventually they will get it right and it will only have cost them the price of a couple of world class players in paying off the managers they shouldn’t have employed!

Liverpool in Europe…..

What is it about Liverpool and the European Cup/Champion’s League? They have already won it five times and have now gone further than any of the other four English participants this year! Not bad when considering that the Manchester clubs and Chelsea would have been expected to progress further than the Merseysiders and have all fallen by the wayside.

If they can win the trophy they will have won it twice since the turn of the century. Not bad when you think that they have never been Premier League champions and the last time they won the title was nearly 28 years ago. CHAMPION’S League? Where does that name come from?

Good luck to them anyway!

And finally…..

A quick last few words on the Arsenal manager’s job. How’s this for a thought? Arséne Wenger and Didier Deschamps to swap jobs. Wenger could try his hand at finding some French talent, (he used to be very good at that!), and Deschamps can return to the Premier League on the other side of London and, probably, to the annoyance of Chelsea supporters.

Now that would be newsworthy!