There are only nine more days to go and the underdogs are ahead! Were the EPL to end today, Leicester FC would be the Champions of England for the 2015/16 season.
Well deserved? Thoroughly deserved? Or lucky? I would say that wherever you find your team on the league table today is exactly where they deserve to be.
Arsenal continue to shoot themselves in the feet, perhaps finding it hard to reset their annual goal of champions league football to a Champions of the season as they watch the usual title challengers falter. Watching Arsenal the last few games make you laugh, as you wonder how they have played games without any real desire to win or even play as champions. The only game I have seen them battle hard recently has been the North London derby, where I guess, pride was the utmost concern.
Chelsea FC continue to flatter to deceive with excellent football, but ultimately what matters is the trophy cabinet on prize giving day. Nobody remembers how well anybody played in a few years from now, as what would matter would be how many trophies were won and by whom.
It is a different kind of pressure playing to win the EPL and another type of pressure playing to salvage a season ‘already written off’
The true test lies in what this team can win. That they have exceptional talent has never been in doubt – we saw them blast off last season to two trophies – the true test has always been, can this team go on and dominate English football? Can they go on and become serial champions as they did during the six of the last eleven years. Well, last night’s display once again tells me what I have said at the beginning of this season: where were the leaders? Where were the champions? Where was the defiance? What happened to the Chelsea team that would play for ninety five minutes even when starring defeat in the face? After PSG’s second goal yesterday, it was curtains. 10th place in the league? You can’t argue against that can you?
Manchester City make up the numbers in the under-achieving category, especially with the expensive and exceptional squad of talent, experience and youth. Maybe they won against Liverpool that froze on the big night, had the first meeting been a league game and the second one the cup final, I don’t know what could have happened.
City need an overhaul of personnel, tactics and strategy. Perhaps there are too many similar cooks in the kitchen? Perhaps there needs to be a change of direction from buy, buy, buy into buy what we truly need. How far can they go in the champions League? I think any team can go as far as possible because the knock out stages of the UCL are unpredictable.
Can the core of this team begin to dominate from next season under Pep?
LVG seems to have saved not only this season but perhaps the next one for now. As United continue to resurrect and rack up points and wins, LVG’s job seem to be safe at least for now.
But can the Dutch man take United back to the apex of English football? Can he throw the young boys in deep and get the results that most fans would want from United? I have to say I honestly don’t know, only time would tell.
But as Leicester continue to dominate the big boys as we sprint down the final 90m, I have to say a big kudos to Claudio Rainieri and his magicians, for daring to take on the big boys and putting down a marker for all the small and medium clubs to follow.
Can Leicester lift it? They deserve to if they do so