Football: Premier League Mid-Table Mediocrity


That Swansea wall, it's not very tall - even when they're jumping

Fulham: What A Difference A Goal (Or 10) Makes

All in for the Prem's mid-table monstrosities

It appears that a goal (or 10) is the difference between a best of the rest team and the mid-table mediocrities. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Fulham’s ninth place puts them at the tail of the best, while Liverpool’s eighth place appears to put them at the top of the mid-table mediocrities. Thinking about early season expectations it’s clear that Liverpool have badly flopped – a Carling Curse Cup win and an FA Cup final place is no compensation for a dire Prem season, while Fulham have exceeded their Prem expectations (if failing badly in the Europa League).

Indeed, the difference between a best of team and a mid-table mediocrity is often that the former end up being disappointed in their failure to get into the Champions League positions, while the latter overachieve by besting the also-rans and failures of the Prem. Fulham are a perfect example of mid-table mediocrity (and here we’re using the term mediocrity in the sense of ‘having only an average degree of quality and skills), a team that lacks any clear ‘stars’ yet has a suitable degree of talent to form a team. Players like Dempsey, Murphy , Pogrebniak and Dembele each have a fine level of skill and would be a valuable asset to the teams below or around them, yet you sense that they may not excel in the teams above them. Similarly it feels as if players like Duff and Senderos have had their days at the top table and found their places a little lower down the league.

Still, another fuck up of a season for Liverpool and one of these teams will be pushing for ‘best of the rest’ status.

West Brom: Uncle Roy Done Acceptably

I recall a few years ago, when ‘Appy ‘Arry went to an obviously relegated Portsmouth and inexplicably steered them to Prem survival, FA Cup glory and almost certain financial oblivion. No one believed he had done it. Yet Roy’s success at in transforming West Brom from yo-yo addicts to Prem mediocrities on a tight budget, without spunking millions on transfers, is equally impressive. And his pulling together a team that is somehow more than the sum of its parts is a quality Engerland will desperately need.

Even more than Fulham, West Brom epitomise the characteristics of the mid-table teams. Largely comprised of the journeymen of the Prem – I can’t think of a West Brom player who teams above them fantasise about buying, or who would genuinely improve a serious international side – West Brom is a triumph of team ethos and tactics over individual achievement.

And if football is about the challenge of competing playing philosophies, then the Fulhams, West Broms, Swanseas and Norwichs represent the triumphs of particular tactics over those of sides for whom ‘passion’ and ‘pride’ are shorthand for not having a clue.

Swansea: It’s Like Watching Pocket Pet Barcelona

Swansea and Norwich, both newcomers to the Prem, represent a welcome step forward for a league that has had something of an air of corruption and decay about it for the last couple of seasons. Unlike previous promoted sides like Wolves or QPR, you sense that both teams, Swansea in particular, have risen based on a clear, coherent footballing philosophy – a way of playing that isn’t simply hoofing the ball to the big man and hoping for a lucky knock down.  Indeed, Brendan Rogers’ side would be ill-advised to use the latter style, not least because their average height is about 3 foot 11.

More than any recently promoted team, Swansea have brought a genuine style to the Prem. Their passing has been fabulous and they have given games to all but the biggest teams. And even when they weren’t winning, they stayed true to Rogers’ philosophy. And unlike Fulham and West Brom, there are players here who could certainly be a useful addition to the bigger boys. Vorm is one of the keepers of the season, good for at least half a dozen extra points, Britton, Dyer and Allen comprised a midfield that most clubs would give their eye teeth for. And in Sigurdsson and Caulker they made some of the best use of the loaning system. It’s an indication of the quality of the side that Chelsea’s supposed ‘young great’ McEachran barely got an appearance, let alone a start. And an indication of the team’s quality that 11th seems a tad disappointing. Let’s hope Rogers, who has turned down an interview at Liverpool, can keep his team together and build on this success.

Norwich: Agriculture Goes Upmarket

At the start of the season Norwich looked certainties for relegation. They had the usual low level team’s problems coming to grips with the pace and dynamism of the Prem. Some of their early matches were littered with genuinely dangerous, late tackles and, in striker Grant Holt, they appeared to have the lardiest frontman in the business. Yet for all this, they persevered. Rather than playing a great passing game, they concentrated on being very hard to beat and pressing hard on the break.

More than practically any other side, Norwich showed the value of obdurate pig-headedness and tactical astuteness. And after a rocky start, they adapted their game to suit the Prem. And Grant Holt was a revelation. Sure he is a lardy as they come, but he has the kind of ballet feet that most strikers would kill for. But it’s an indication of the precarious nature of the mid-table teams that Holt senses that this is his moment to ‘better’ himself (Liverpool would love him) and has submitted a transfer request – never a ringing endorsement of a side. His 17 (yes 17) goals help separate Norwich from the low grade losers and relegation scrappers below them.


Football: Premier League Best Of The Rest 2012


Yahoo! Cisse celebrates bashing in another outstanding goal.

Newcastle Utd: Best In Show

Can it be that Newcastle actually started the season with Joey Barton in their ranks? It’s a measure of the stunning transformation in the side that it seems almost inconceivable that any of their previous olde engerlish spine of Nolan, Carroll and Barton were anything other than a distant memory for the club.

Their dramatic rise from mid-table mediocrity to the foothills of Europe is down to the most effective set of transfers since Wenger first brought in Viera, Petit and Anelka. Demba Ba, Cabaye and, above all, the inspired Cissé have blended spectacularly with Krul, Coloccini and the excellent if erratic Hatem Ben Arfa to produce the surprise team of the season.

If it was a bit of a shock to see Newcastle regularly holding down a top four position during the first half of the season, it was rewarding to see them there or thereabouts during the run in. Ultimately they were only undone thanks to losses to some of the big boys like Arsenal, Man City and, er, Wigan (although they weren’t the only ones to get a grand duffing by the upstarts).

It’s a tribute to manager Alan Pardew that Newcastle have become everyone’s second favourite team (narrowly pipping Swansea), playing great football and scoring tons of fabulous goals (3 out of the top ten goals of the season ain’t bad). And it’s a veiled compliment that all the big teams are looking at their star players. Let’s hope the team stays together for at least another year as I look forward to their participation in the Europa League – they’ll surely take it more seriously than Spurs or Liverpool and have a far more realistic chance of success. A season there and they’ll be ready for the Champions League.

Chelsea: That’s Not Rebuilding, That’s Killing Your Children

The first real disappointments of the season, Chelsea’s problems are a snapshot of the difficulties of the Prem. A successful side looking over the edge of the hill, they were desperate for rejuvenation, a dose of fresh blood to provide respite to the aging legs of the Drog, Terry, Lampard, Cole, Cech and co, while bringing on the second squad of Ramieres, Miereles, Malouda and, above all, Torres. Bouyed by an new manager, the Europa League winning André Villas Boas, what could possibly go wrong?

Strangely enough it seems that the aging big boys didn’t take kindly to being told that they were no longer the be all and end all of the club’s planning. Equally, new tactics failed to spark the new boys into action. You sense if Villas Boas had been able to get something (anything) out of Torres things might have turned out differently. Instead Chelsea flopped down the table (not as drastically as Arsenal, but pretty badly nonetheless) and serious action was required.

Amazingly Di Matteo has pulled the team around and despite only finishing sixth, their worst season for a long time, they have achieved Abramovitch’s dream of the Champions League final and have a genuine chance of winning the one prize he really values.

Everton: Overachievement As Standard

God knows what Everton manager David Moyes does during the summer. But whatever it is he really needs to change it. Everton’s season was, well, classic Everton. Start poorly, come good over the Spring and the run in and finish in the Top Ten. You sense that if only he could get Everton to kick off their season in, say, October rather than February, then Everton would be genuine contenders.

Instead, yet again, Everton are left to ruminate on what might have been. If only Pienaar hadn’t got googly eyes for the big time at Spurs, where his benchwarming stats were impressive, if only Cahill hadn’t been injured, if only they’d bought Jelavic in the Autumn rather than the Spring. If only they’d beaten Liverpool in that FA Cup semi-final.

Still finishing above Liverpool makes this a season to savour for the blues.

Liverpool: That’s Not A Season, That’s A Catastrope

£100 million+ spent on new players, a venerated manager with Premier League winning experience, the most expensive English striker, what could possibly go wrong? Try September 18. when possibly the worst Liverpool team in living memory was comprehensively shafted by Spurs at White Hart Lane. Liverpool were so bad that they were four down by the 67th minute and had lost two men by full time. After this, the team was simply a carcrash waiting to happen.

Add to this the kind of PR fuck up that only Gerald Ratner could dream about, as Liverpool managed to turn the Suarez/Evra racist incident from a mishap into a total disaster. Rather than coming out and saying something like , “hey, he/we made a mistake, we’re really sorry, Liverpool has always been about fair play and values, we’ve seen great players come to Anfield and their talent has never been related to their skin colour”, a move which might have turned a calamity into an advantage, they reinforced the sense of blind, pig-headed entitlement that suffuses the city.

They even managed to make winning the Carling Cup, where they scraped by a poor Championship side, look like more of a disaster than Arsenal’s loss the previous season.

With an seemingly endless set of failures, Carroll, Adam, The Invisible Henderson and, above all, Downing, Dalglish managed to turn even Liverpool supporters against him (albeit very politely). Whether he gets the chance to continue the job next season is highly debatable.


Football: Best Of The Prem 2012


Sergio Aguero goes mental having just won the prem with the last kick of the season

Man City: That’s The Way To Do It

WOW! Top of the Prem for most of the year, biggest pockets by around a billion or so, best team and they snatch glory from the brink of catastrophe with the final kick of the season. That’s the Man City way of winning the league. No doubt they have been the best side this season, with games against Spurs away and Man U being the highlights, but I suspect that consolidating second rather than winning the Prem was their goal at the start of the season. It was only when they roared away with the league over the Autumn that winning it became a realistic achievement. And even then it was a darn close thing.

Their off-pitch shinanighans and mid-season slump showed that this City side are still vulnerable. A number of players, Silva and Dzeko in particular, looked burnt out by the end of the season, and it took a while for Yaya Touré to get over the Africa Cup of Nations. Still even wantaway munchkin Tevez and notorious bad boy Ballotelli came good in the end.

With a first title in the bag City are bound to be having a big summer, what with finally shipping out five years worth of not-quite-up-to-it talent at rock bottom prices and needing to improve their squad if they want to realistically challenge in Europe as well as dominate the Prem.

Man U: Title No 20 Will Be Hard Work

How the season ended. As they say, the table never lies

It’s hard to tell what will hurt United the most, knowing that they pushed City so close that they ended up with enough points to win the Prem in practically ever other year, or knowing that they lost it on goal difference. United’s faces when they heard that Aguero had scored had the kind of shell-shocked look about them that only an entire year in the trenches can bring.

If last year’s surprise Champions were United’s worst team in living memory, then this year’s team were potentially even worse. They lost Vidic and Ferdinand for much of the season, had a new keeper who took time to find his feet, and hadn’t really done anything to beef up their midfield. Players who came in, Cleverly, Jones, Smalling still looked like ones for the future, while Ashley Young merely lived up to his Villa hype, the occasional great goal and a lot of diving. It’s a sign of concern that it took the return of the previously retired Paul Scholes to really kick start their season.

That said, their form in the second half of the season was outstanding and had they held City at home to, say, just the two goals, they could have been Champions themselves.

Arsenal: How Did That Happen?

To lose one key midfielder during the close season is bad, to lose three smacks of incompetence. In selling Fabregas and Nasri (albeit unwillingly) and losing Wilshire to injury for a year, Arsenal managed to gut themselves completely. Certainly their replacements, Ramsey, Arteta and Rosicky never quite fulfilled the potential, as their nose dive into the bowels of relegation during the Autumn clearly showed. So it’s pretty damn impressive that they managed to not only regain their place in the top four but actually improved on their final position last year.

Still Arsenal’s failings are well known and were very visible this season. A suicidal defence, especially when it’s not heavily protected from midfield, a thoroughly lousy set of second teamers  capable of losing to pretty much anyone, any time, anywhere (Chamakh, Bendtner, Vela, Djourou, Squillaci, Park, and Arshavin are just the pick of the bunch), a pretty disastrous history of transfer dealings (see useless second teamers list) and the internal fortitude of a roasted marshmallow. Nothing that happened this season, aside from the replacement of the retiring Pat Rice, looks like changing any of that. They can’t afford another close season of selling their best players.

Four moments stand out in their season. The first was Szczesny’s penalty save against Udinese in the Champions League qualifying round. I think if Arsenal had lost that game their season really would have imploded. The second was Sagna’s goal against Spurs. 2 down, having played well, it was a trasformational statement moment, a stern bullet into the net followed not by a celebration, but by a determined retrieval of the ball and a race back to kick off. A rare moment when the entire team effectively said, ‘Fuck this, we mean business’.  The third was the removal of Arshavin. His return to Russia seemed to galvanise the team to their most consistent run of results. Finally, the short term import of Thierry Henry after Christmas gave the fans something to shout about and sparked something in the team itself.  None of which should camouflage the fragility of Arsenal’s position. This has been a dreadful season that Wenger and the team have somehow managed to salvage. This summer is possibly the most important of Arsène’s reign.

Spurs: Mind The Gap

Not that there really is that much of a gap, a single point and equal goal difference was the difference between Spurs and Arsenal. Yet not so long ago, before that Sagna goal in fact, Spurs were 13 points ahead and potential Championship contenders. Now they face a painful wait to discover whether 4th will actually be good enough to get to the Champions League qualifiers. Their collapse has been one of the most impressive slides this season.

Rumour has it that it was all ‘Arry’s fault, as his eyes bulged a little too far into his head when his Engerland coronation was announced by his media chums, but the fact is that his team simply ran out of steam. Like City they played beautiful football for the first half of the season (their total demolition of Liverpool at home being a particular favourite), but like them they hit the wall some time in early Spring. And, unlike City, they didn’t have the players to step up and fill the gaps left by an exhausted Bale, Modric, Van der Vaart or Adebayor – something that was quite clear when their second teamers failed to make it out of the Europa League group stage.

With a bunch of older players or loanees beefing up the side, you have to feel that this team is on the cusp and may already have peaked. It will need substantial readjustment over the summer, especially if Man City decide they want Adebayor back or sell/loan him to someone else or fancy a bit of Modric to go with Silva and Nasri. So let’s hope Bayern win the Big Cup and Spurs get their golden ticket for next season.


Football: Prem 2012 Over Easter


Handbags At The Ready Gentlemen

If footballers liked handbags, chances are they'd be handbags like this, only with go faster stripes and Nike logos all over

As we drift inexorably into ‘Real Squeaky Bum Time’, the psychological effects of a year in the Prem are beginning to manifest themselves. Now there are those of us who might say that in a season where we’ve seen Tevez huffing off after he decided he couldn’t be arsed to huff on, where Suarez refuses to confront the fact that he appears to be both a cheat and a racist, where ‘Appy ‘Arry can admit to his dog trousering a 10% fee for its role in the Peter Crouch transfer (or something like that), that the psychological effects might already have burst to the surface like a series of unsightly boils. But no, apparently that was only the start of it.

The Easter Fortnight (for that is what it is as any fule kno) has seen more Prem football being flung at us poor punters than it is humanly possible to actually absorb. Apparently we have jumped from Week 30 to Week 33 in the space of about 5 days. Flagship BBC football show Match Of The Day has had to go into total 24-hour nuclear lockdown, sacrificing not only presenter Colin Murray’s self-esteem, but doing away with those many ‘oh-so-amusing-not’ YouTube montages they seem to spend all their time putting together now that they can’t quite afford to buy any football highlights to show us. Shows on Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Wednesday have reduced all but the most stalwart of MOTD diehards to gibbering slime. Even former top pundit Hansen was sent out for a breather but he made the mistake of going to see one of Liverpool’s matches, which just indicates how mentally scarring the whole experience has been for all concerned.

So On To The Handbags

So, what with minor details like Who Will Win The Prem, Who Will Get The Big Cup Places, Who Is For The Drop and, most vitally, Who Is For Coming Above Liverpool In The Table still to be resolved, it’s no wonder that some in the Prem have begun to feel the heat. And while we haven’t seen anything quite as funny as the Dyer vs Bowyer bustup of the olden days, we saw a bevvy of on-pitch same team beatings (or team bondings as Craig Bellamy apparently calls them). How we laughed when plucky Wolves keeper Wayne Hennessey laid into experienced salt and alleged drunkard Roger ‘two relegations’ Johnson for the latter’s defensive fuckuperies.

How we doubled over when superMario went mental and started having it out with his teammates over who was going to take a free kick, as if that was going to make any difference to the finest slide down the table since Newcastle manager Kevin Keegan went ballistic on TV and gift wrapped the Prem for Man U all those years ago.

So What Has Been Happening On The Pitch Then?

Man U have turned their monster wheeled juggernaut up to 11 and have effectively simply bulldozered themselves into first place. Admittedly this is as much thanks to some very dubious refereeing over a number of matches as it is to their actual sporting prowess. It appears that where Man U are concerned refs and their support teams are happy to remain ignorant of the Laws of the game regarding both what is a penalty and what constitutes offside. Over the course of matches against Fulham and QPR, Man U have effectively been gifted six points (and the Premiership), while QPR could be taking the plunge into the Championship. So the next time Ferguson bitches about refs, someone should put him straight.

Meanwhile, former big cheeses Chelsea haven’t found themselves immune to the bonuses of refereeing stupidity. Their match against Wigan saw them gifted not one, but two clearly offside goals. Admittedly Wigan were able to score a totally legitimate goal, but apparently they still only count the same as offside ones the ref has given. So it was all the points Chelsea and a sack full of nothing (and hello relegation) for Wigan.

Not getting the benefits of anything are plucky spring chickens Tottenham Not-Quite-So-Hotspur. Their slide down the table has been matched only by Wolves and Blackburn, although admittedly neither of those has quite as far to fall, even if their landings will be oh so much more painful. Spurs are currently suffering what is known as ‘relegation form’ as they struggle to actually accumulate any points at all. It’s impressive to think that while Man City may have thrown away the title, Spurs have managed to turn a potential 13 point lead and third place into a possible 5 point gap and participation in the Race For Fourth/Sixth in just over a month. Still they’re in the FA Cup semis which will surely keep their fans happy. Until they are eliminated by Chelsea thanks to a no-doubt offside assisted goal.

Aside from one crap performance at QPR, Arsenal appear to have salvaged their season. Not content with rising to third, which given their appalling start to the season is nothing short of miraculous, they effectively ensured Man City would sacrifice the title by giving them as good a 1-0 kicking as it’s possible to do. Not only did they beat City, but superMario was sent off, lickspittle turncoat Nasri had the kind of game he’ll have to go into therapy to forget and Arsenal fans celebrated by doing the Posnan goal celebration as City players fought each other down the tunnel at the end. Ahhh, happy days eh?

Trundling around the mid-table marshes hasn’t been fun though. Stoke appear to be punching above their weight in 12th, given their goal difference suggests they should be around the 15th place spot, while the likes of West Brom, Swansea, and Sunderland look like they have certainly done enough to avoid relegation, but probably not quite enough to embarrass Liverpool. That feat is being left to Everton (currently embarrassing Liverpool), Fulham and, astonishingly, Naarich, who are merely three points behind the reds. A few more ‘Liverpudlian’ results and King Kitman’s Kombine could be involved in the very exciting Race For Tenth.

Down in Deathsville (population 6), it’s a grim life scraping in the dirt for points. Especially when you don’t just believe everyone is against you, but everyone actually is against you, including the refs. Wolves are discarding points like they were competition losing crisp wrappers, Wigan can’t score enough to compete with the poor decisions that are going against them, Blackburn can’t defend, QPR can’t keep 11 players on the field, Bolton continue to believe that David Ngog is a goalscorer and Aston Villa can’t seem to accumulate the 3 points they need to create real distance between themselves and the other poor suckers at the bottom.  The dream of relegation for McLeish, Hughes and Wolves is still very much on.


Football: Prem 2012 Week 30


That Swansea wall, it's not very tall - even when they're jumping

Normal Service Has Been Resumed

After slightly more than three quarters of the season, the big boys are coming good. Well sort of. An easy win over Aston Villa by Arsenal starts to open up the gap between third and fourth place, helped in no small measure by a thoroughly tedious nil niller between Chelsea and Spurs, while a regulation 1-0 over Fulham sends Man U to the top with the same 3 point margin.

Man U and Arsenal begin to establish gaps at the top.

The only shock of the season (the amazing way that Villa haven’t found themselves in the relegation spots aside) has been the continued presence of Newcastle in and around the top six (level with Chelsea, eight points ahead of Liverpool). Their ploy of relentlessly flogging crap English has-beens who aren’t really good enough for the Prem and replacing them with exciting foreigners seems to be paying off (who would have thought eh?). And for at least a whole half of the match their front three of Ba, Cissé and Ben Arfa simply tore a very poor West Brom into little pieces.

Certainly those three look a far better bet than Liverpool‘s dredging of the English ‘bargain bin’. What with the combined strengths of Adam, Carroll, Downing and Henderson failing to stop Wigan beating them at Anfield. And their performance isn’t helped by the thought that, like Benitez before him, Old King Kenno appears to have gone stark raving mad, apparently believing that kit deals are more important that league position and that success in the Carling Cup has negatively affected his players. Although he could be right about the Carling Cup given what happened to Birmingham after they won it last year. Liverpool fans, however,  believe the madness started almost as soon as Kenno began playing Charlie Adam.

The real story of week 30 is the apparent late-season slump of both Man City and Spurs. Both have played great football this season, but both rely on key game changing individuals rather than a team style. And it’s clear that Silva, Bale and Modric have, in the words of Arsène Wenger, “entered the red”  and become significantly less effective. And Wenger should know the dangers given he has driven the likes of Vermaelen and Wilshire into the red and lost them for whole seasons at a time. That drop in performance of only 1 or 2 per cent can derail a team’s entire season. City’s hopes for the title seem to rest on the return of Carleeto and Nasri somehow emerging to take on the mantle of Silva as much as they do on Man U dropping points, while Spurs’ ambitions for Champions League football appear to rest on maintaining a 5 point gap over Chelsea and hoping the blues don’t win the Champions League.

The most impressive game wasn’t Arsenal’s drubbing of Villa, although that was a perfect piece of early spring football. Rather it was Everton‘s win over Swansea. Certainly the most amusing sight of the week was Swansea assembling a wall. Given their average height is approximately 3 foot 7, they do look like a group of ball boys out on the training pitch. Still, they have been bossing the likes of Man U, Chelsea and Arsenal with their patient, quick passing possession football, so height isn’t everything. So it’s to Everton’s credit that they ended up first neutralising Swansea’s play, then dominating the game. It wasn’t very pretty, but unlike, say, Sunderland or Stoke, Everton don’t simply compensate for a lack of top class skill by being thuggish and mindless. Instead they’re playing a tight defensive game, with good attacking options.

And there was even time for a couple of goal scoring revelations. First, Peter Crouch scored a fabulous volley for Stoke against Man City that was reminiscent of Salas’ goal against Engerland ages ago, albeit he didn’t have to move as much and it was slightly further out and to the right. And, even more staggering (as if the thought that Crouch could score a goal of such subtle beauty wasn’t enough), Naarich farmhand Grant Holt did for a sorry Wolves with a lovely run in and chip over their keeper, before deftly nodding the ball into the net. After Coates’ fabulous scissor volley against QPR earlier this week and Theo’s great trap and strike against Villa, we really have been spoilt for goals.


Football: Prem 2012 Week 29


"That, Mr Anderson, is the sound of inevitability..."

 

Could This Be Wenger’s Best Season Ever?

You might have thought that a season in which you lose your two best midfielders, suffer injuries to all your functioning full backs (not to mention centre halfs), fall to the almost bottom of the league, nearly go out of the Champions League in the initial skirmishes (but for a fine penalty save against Udinese) and get spanked by not just Man U but by Blackburn too, would never be considered successful.  Yet consider this.

When Liverpool lost the plot during their year long farewell to Benitez, they sunk to the foot of the Prem and it’s taken them the best part of 3 seasons to reestablish themselves as a promising mid-table team who will only be in Europe next season thanks to a win on penalties against a mediocre Championship team. When Spurs celebrated their Cursed Carling Cup win in 2008 with a protracted spell in the bottom three and saw Juande Ramos replaced by ‘Appy ‘Arry, it took them three years to challenge for a European place, and they still look shaky doing it. Rebuilding, it’s a tough ask.

In contrast, Arsène Wenger could accomplish the apparently unthinkable, by taking his revised Arsenal team into the Champions League for the 15th consecutive season. And you have to admire what he has done. In less than 6 months he’s essentially rewired the entire Arsenal side, moving their focus from the close control interplay that emphasised Cesc Fabregas’ strengths, to a more varied, dynamic, and threatening side that plays to the skills of Robin Van Persie. And he’s done all that while integrating a new back four and a midfield that contains none of last year’s first choice starters (Fabregas, Nasri and Wilshire).  And now, following their worst start for ages, they’re third above Spurs, Chelsea, Newcastle and Liverpool (three of whom they’ve beaten in the last month) and could even finish off better than they did last season. If he pulls this off it really will be one of his greatest triumphs.

Could This Be The Best Mid-table Welsh Prem Side Ever?

Prem table week 29.

Whisper it quietly (is there any other way to whisper?), but Swansea are the saviours of the Prem. At a time when defences are proving themselves incapable of actually, you know, defending; when many of the Prem’s stars are consistently firing blanks; when there seems to be a hemorrhaging of skill and technical ability from the league; and when far too many matches are, dare we say it, thoroughly tedious, Swansea have been a revelation. Like Blackpool last year, they achieved promotion playing a brand of on-the-floor passing that isn’t normally associated with the Championship. And they’ve stuck to their game plan all season. And it’s been fabulous. And, unlike Blackpool, likely to be successful.

Initially their close passing game proved effective at home, but unproductive away. Now they appear to have got to grips with the pace and dynamics of the Prem and they’re starting to win away as well. Their win at Fulham was a lesson in ballkeeping gameplay and great to watch. Their real challenge for the remainder of the season is to keep their standards up while ensuring they just miss out on qualification for Europe next year and keep hold of players like Vorm, Brittan and Siggurdson. Another Prem season without distraction should see them establish themselves as a serious Prem team rather than a yo-yo club.

Are QPR The Prem’s Comedy Boys?

After the season they’ve had, you’ve got to hope that the guys who made the fabulous QPR The Four Year Plan are still there filming. Because the goings on at QPR this season are, if anything, even funnier than the time they spent chasing promotion. Unlike Swansea, QPR have pursued Prem survival with determination but, apparently, no coherent football plan. Instead they’ve bought not one, but two teams of footy misfits and flung them together on the pitch, much like a record company showering the world with pop singles, desperately hoping one or two of them will stick and that success will carry them through. After Warnock’s splurge on Barton, Wright-Phillips, Traoré, Ferdinand, Young and ever-injured Kieron Dyer failed to bring instant on-pitch joy, they spunked up again, this time on new manager Sparky and some of his chou-chou, including Cissé, Onuoha, Zamora, Taiwo and Diakité. And they still manage to find a place for Sean Derry in the team.

And yet, and yet, every so often one of those records sticks in your head, gets in the charts and for a fleeting second everyone’s a Kylie fan. In QPR’s case it’s their 3-2 comeback win against Liverpool. If there’s one team who appear to have also bought into the buy in bulk, see if it sticks ethos epitomised by QPR, it’s Liverpool. And their summer splurge of talent fell spectacularly at the last. The Curse of the Carling Cup strikes again.

Double Standards At The Manchesters

Why is it when Man U play poorly yet still win, snatching a victory from the jaws of defeat, it’s confirmation of their amazing strength and proof, just in case umpty thrumpty titles weren’t enough, that they have the staying power to win the Prem, yet when anyone else achieves victory without playing well, it’s evidence of the weakness of their squad and their failure as players? So that instead of talking about Man City’s spirited win against Chelsea, we’re left talking about how difficult it might be to reintegrate Leetle Carlito, or the decline of in-the-red David Silva. With one point in it and all to play for, the Prem is still wide open for the Manchesters.