Archive for the ‘Premier League’ Category

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Nemanja Matić has decided that Manchester United need to sign some experienced players in order to challenge for the title next season.

What does this actually mean? Is he saying that Antonio Valencia (33), Ashley Young (32), Marouane Fellaini (30), Juan Mata (30), Ander Herrera (28), Alexis Sánchez (29) and himself (30) don’t have enough experience between them to win the Premier League title?

Or is he saying that the younger players aren’t good enough and need replacing with experience? So some of Pogba, Martial, Rashford, Shaw, Rojo, Lindelof and Bailly need to go and make way for some older players to come in! (more…)

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José Mourinho will point to a second placed finish in the Premier League and, no doubt, try and spin this as progress on last year’s sixth place. Taken in isolation he is right, there has been a slight improvement in league performance.

What must also be taken into account is that the only other team to improve on last season were Manchester City and we all know what they did! In fact, of the top six, United and City were the only two to improve on last season’s eventual league position.

Chelsea went from first to fifth, Arsenal went from fifth to sixth, Tottenham Hotspur went from second to third and Liverpool remained static in fourth. So the fact that United managed to climb into second can be put down, in part, to the failure of the others to improve or even maintain their previous season’s form. (more…)

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When Sam Goldwyn was misquoted as having said that “a verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on” a more accurate misquote would have been that a contract of any description isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

Whilst that would not be strictly true it is getting to the stage, particularly in professional top flight football, where the necessity of a contract could be called into question.

Over at Manchester City the dastardly deed has been done. Pep Guardiola has signed a contract extension which will keep him at The Etihad until 2021. Unless he leaves before the end of the contract! Or maybe he will fail spectacularly and get fired before the end of the contract! (more…)

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The Premier League has gone from a two-team competition whereby it was contested between Manchester United and Arsenal, to a two-team competition whereby Arsenal were replaced by Chelsea. It then became a three-team competition when Manchester City woke up one morning to find they had won the lottery.

In fairness, they didn’t become serious contenders overnight and it wasn’t until they had spent many millions that they won the title back in 2011. They have since won it a further twice. (more…)

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Football supporters of the top clubs these days are about as patient as a five-year-old on Christmas Eve.

Back in the seventies, when Mancheser United were relegated to the second division there were disappointed shrugs and sighs of resignation but little else.

It had been coming for a while and, when it finally happened in 1974, nobody was really surprised and the optimism of Tommy Docherty in predicting that the club would bounce straight back to the first division was infectious. (more…)

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And so to the final day of our troll through the Premier League managers. We have now considered the futures of fourteen of the poor souls and decided that most of them will continue to collect their relatively easy money for another few months at least.

If not, they will leave their current employ to be appointed by another clueless club who will continue paying them an absolute fortune for very little, if any, return. West Ham and Everton seem like good candidates for out of work managers to be interviewing!

Another example of the recycling trend is about to occur in West London. We have just been reading that serial failure Steve McClaren is to be announced as their new manager by serial losers QPR. This will change the perception of neither the club nor the manager! (more…)

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It’s day 3 of our look through the Premier League clubs and who will be retaining the services of their manager for next season.

Up to now we have decided, either through fact or fiction-which-may-become-fact, that three of the ten we have considered will be leaving for pastures new. So who will be joining ArsĂ©ne Wenger, Antonio Conte and Claude Puel in seeking alternative employment? (more…)

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Following on from our article yesterday where we began our look at which managers will stay with their clubs for next season, today we continue through the alphabet with the next five.

Crystal Palace

Roy Hodgson

Mr Roy has pulled several rabbits out of the hat this season and has actually had Palace reasonably safe from relegation for quite a while. He is now at an age where he won’t want to be moving around the country too much although, in fairness, he has been at that age for about ten years! (more…)

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(The back of ArsĂ©ne Wenger – a view for which, despite his success, many Arsenal fans had been praying for quite a while)!

Arsenal

Arséne Wenger

Our bet is that he will stand down and let somebody else have a go! Seriously though, it is now a month since Wenger made his long overdue announcement hat he is leaving his job at the end of the season and the club are, apparently, no nearer appointing a successor.

Whilst we appreciate that they have time on their side they don’t really have time on their side. Everything is relative and it is a fairly safe assumption that the new manager, whoever he may be, will want a full pre-season with the squad. (more…)

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Yaya Touré played his 316th game for Manchester City in what was a historic occasion both for him and, as it turned out, for the club.

City won the game against Brighton 3-1 and in so doing set a new record for points achieved – 97, goals scored – 105 and wins in a season – 31. These figures will probably change again when they play Southampton in the last game of the season but this is the one where the records were made. (more…)