If
(a) Arsenal win 2-1 at St James’ Park;
(b) Chelsea draw 0-0 at the Bridge against the Toffees on the final day,
Both teams will be identical on (a) points (b) GD (c) goals scored (d) goals conceded.
and there could be a playoff to decide on third place.
Would not happen, surely. But in the realms of possibility. Interesting.
Stat courtesy F365.
Dave Whelan. Photo from Football365.com
This is a comment from RuggerTyke at a post in the Guardian:
It’s been a fairy-tale for the man who built a sports empire after breaking his leg in the FA Cup final, taking his local club from the bottom tier to the Premier League, culminating a stay of 8 years which many expected would merely last a year, with an FA Cup win against one of the richest side in the world only to then a few days later, do what had been expected of them ever since they were promoted and get relegated.
This has come in the same year that the business Whelan, a proud Thatcherite, founded, JJB Sports, a company he ran with very dubious ethics, finally went in to liquidation and ceased to exist, having been bought out by Sports Direct, owned by the chairman of Newcastle United and the team they could have pipped in their race for survival.
It’s been the end of a seriously elongated fairytale for Dave Whelan, the man who polarised a strong Rugby town when he built the stadium that propelled the Football side and had the Warriors grudgingly share, which has ended in a very bittersweet manner; a script so outlandish it is, along with the carving on the trophy made where Whelan was born, already engraved in folklore.
Martinez will most likely leave but despite being younger than the longest and most successful football manager in British history, it remains to be seen whether Whelan has the heart and desire to continue, so this may well be the end of the Latics – of the least recognisable with that moniker merely a decade ago – and their David; the Goliath slaying minnow may never reach the dizzy heights of the Top Flight again.
Then again, I wouldn’t put it past DW to employ the man who took them up originally, Jewell and bounce straight back up. With the usual blend of carefully sourced South American flair and homegrown heroes plucked from obsecurity, naturally.
——
Of course, you would find a lot of DW hatred across English websites and sports pages. In Guardian because of DW being a Thatcherite; and in the others because of him being an old blusterer.
But really, it’s been a fairytale for him and for Wigan. Loved their stay at the Premier League.
May they jump right back up.
I fear, though that it might not happen.
Interesting Observation:
In the PL, number of red cards against Man United this season? Zero. In the PL, number of red cards against Man United? Zero.
Has this ever happened to any team at all earlier in any season in any major football league? I doubt it.
Interesting? Yes. Surprising? No.
Read this article, superbly well said.
Also, there is this superb comment by MirandaC, which needs re-posting. So here goes.
If England are threadbare at higher level it isn’t the fault of the top Premiership clubs whose academies are providing a footballing education second to none, as shown by the fact that three of the semi-finalists in this year’s NextGen, the under-19s CL, are English: Chelsea, Arsenal and Villa – the first two of which are all to often unthinkingly blamed for depriving young British talent of its rightful chance.
In fact almost a hundred percent of the intake into those clubs’ academies at age 9-10 is local. The question to ask, therefore, is why so many of those local kids who get to enjoy coaching and facilities that are the envy of the world from their earliest years fail to make it. What’s missing, the talent or the ambition and graft?
Don’t know about other clubs, but at Arsenal in recent years two English kids, Wilshere and Gibbs, who entered the academy at age 9 have made it into the first team; the others, many of whom were considered just as talented initially – e.g. Henri Lansbury and Jay Emmanuel Thomas – did not, reportedly because they fooled about and failed to put in the grind. Of Arsenal’s current Next-Gen first-choice team only three (Chuba Akpom, Isaac Hayden and Nico Yennaris) are English; the remainder are Bulgarian, German, Dutch, Catalan, Swiss … i.e. kids who entered the academy in their mid- teens but who in a couple of years have risen to the top, leaving their English counterparts lagging behind.
It seems unlikely that these foreigners are innately more talented, especially in the case of the Catalans and Germans who, had they clearly been embryo Iniestas and Messis, would surely have been snapped up by Barca and Bayern’s academies rather than exiled to cold, rainy London? It must, then, be the other factor that makes for success: application. Foreign kids are putting in the effort and making better use of the coaching and facilities than the locals who’ve enjoyed them from their earliest years.
Since being lousy at football isn’t built into the English gene pool, and since there’s no lack of opportunities provided by top Premiership clubs, that leaves us with the culture at large. More precisely it leaves us with the football media.
Instead of giving NextGen the coverage it deserves, the Guardian has treated us to a series of space-fillers – e.g. that one about England’s Rio hotel. This epitomizes the problem. Youth development, kids’ stuff, who gives a fuck about that? Which clubs are doing an excellent job and deserve applause for their success – that’s Arsenal, Villa and Chelsea - and which clubs are not and deserve to be shamed – that’s City who failed to make it through their NextGen group – does the Guardian give a toss? No, it does not. What it cares about, or imagines its readers care about, is the waterbeds and shopping and security at England’s Rio hotel. Why are we surprised that 13-14-year-old English kids have absorbed our interests and values? We’ve taught them that their little competitions where they get to pit their skills and graft against their contemporaries at Europe’s top clubs are of no importance or interest; still less important was the work that produced their success. What’s important in England is shopping and waterbeds in a luxury hotel already booked for a tournament that England haven’t yet qualified for. English football doesn’t do football, not as such; it just does footballing bling.
The Guardian is quasi-left-lib, and sometimes does not remain my cup of tea; but the comments are often amazing! Here’s one.
Nothing new here, but for an amazing line.
And here’s the line:
Were all those cold winter mornings on the training pitch to gain glory in the shirt or drive home from training in a flash car? Actually, don’t answer that.
This is a good enough line to start writing a short story on it…
Horrible, sanctimonious, defensive post at F365 today.
And here’s my response.
You Brit media folks are funny.
You had a witch-hunt against Wasim and Waqar and Imran about reverse swing, and then when your own boys used that very skill to win you an Ashes, it was suddenly the best innovation in the world. Similarly the four fast bowlers of West Indies.
While the dirty foreigners were diving, it was all wrong. When Gerrard and Rooney were doing it, you feigned blindness… and when the evidence was glaring in front of your eyes, it suddenly cannot be SO bad. Bale is just jumping away from injury after all! Question, how many of Bale’s dives this season were when he was jumping away from potential leg-breakers? And if the dive was just to get away from contact, and if there’s been no contact, Bale and Suarez and Gerrard and Rooney should just get up and not writhe about in the ground like they have been shot. Isn’t it?
Be hypocrites, we all are sometimes. But agree that you are one, in this case. And don’t do it in the passive ‘it’s just to save his career’ manner that you did over here.
Bale’s a wonderful talent. And he dives. Just like Suarez. But of course you will not have a witch-hunt against him. He is the pet of the British media!
Here’s an amazingly funny quote from FISO:
My girlfriend says she’s leaving me because of my obsession with Fantasy Premier league. In my defence, I have Baines, Huth and Rafael.
Article in F365
One Acronym. BRIC(S)
The world is changing, the world’s economic power centers are getting more evenly distributed. Sport is always a follower of global economic trends – If anything, this is a lagging indicator.
Here’s a nice post: and says a lot about football today and yesterday in the Europe, I suppose. The below excerpt by Johnny Giles, is a clincher.
“These were great players who loved the game. Weren’t getting much money, weren’t playing for the money. They should have been treated with more respect and dignity when they finished playing. When I hear about the clubs now moaning about the wages – now I don’t feel sorry for them because I remember the days when they treated payers very, very badly.”
And this warms the heart.
The non-flying Dutchman, the sole reason for my Arsenal fandom, will find his rightful place in front of the Emirates.
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