Twenty four points left to fight for in this exciting Premiership season and one thing is certain, whoever wins the Premiership 2014/15 would be worthy champions indeed.
Who will be standing on egg shells on the final day of the season? Who will miss out on the Champions League next year? Who will be relegated from the Premiership? You know what? Your guess is as good as mine, and I don’t think even the betting masters have figured this one out.
It has never been this close in recent years both at the top and at the bottom, with every team scrapping for points at every game. At the top end of the table, Chelsea lead the pack with two wins above Manchester City, who are eight points ahead of Tottenham in seventh place.
Chelsea 67 – Man City 61- Arsenal 60- Man United 59 -Liverpool 54- Southampton 53 – Tottenham 53
At the bottom of the league table, the story is the same with Hull City in 15th place, just 3 wins above Leicester City, who are bottom of the league table.
Hull City 28 – Aston Villa 28 – Sunderland 26- Burnley 25 – QPR 22- Leicester 19
Truth is that IT would go down to the wire, as results in recent weeks have once again suggested. Sunderland, Aston Villa, Crystal Palace, WBA, and QPR have either sacked their manager or parted ways with their manager with ‘mutual consent’ and it won’t be any surprise if others decide to do away with their managers as we sprint into the final bend of the championship finale.
Louis Van Gaal has come from the rear to challenge for the title and perhaps for the top spot in remarkable fashion, but regular readers of my column would have noted how I tipped Manchester United to do well even at the start of the season when the team was playing badly.
One I didn’t tip for a fortune change is Brendan Rogers, who has since turned the tide at Liverpool, but with a tough game against Arsenal coming up, he’ll have to do it probably without Skirtel, Gerrard (retrospective punishment and Red card) and perhaps Adam Lallana.
Chelsea and City continue the banter at the top while Arsenal and Tottenham prove that they have what it takes to stay in the contest until the last day of the season.
As I have regularly said in my columns, injuries, suspensions, more fixtures (National team, FA Cup) and pressures would have a say in this finale, and I am sure we still have more twists and turns before the end of the season. As they say in football, it ain’t over until the fat lady sings.
THE CLASS OF THE EL CLASSICO
As I watched Real Madrid take on Barcelona at the Nou Camp yesterday, the quality of football on display showed again why Luis Suarez, Cesc Fabregas, Javier Mascherano, Thierry Henry, Alex Song and Thomas Vermaelen have swapped the turfs of the premiership for the bright lights of the Camp Nou in recent years. It was a classic act.
The football was sublime and breath taking; the movements on and off the ball were on purpose, either creating space or chance for team mates, the passes were swift, accurate and decisive, ball possession was excellent and at times appeared to be glued onto the feet of the gladiators, not occasionally, but incessantly throughout the entire game and you could count the number of misplaced passes and unforced errors in single digits on both sides.
Eighteen or Nineteen of the players on the pitch yesterday would walk into any team in the world, and any national team for that matter, and the few who wouldn’t were either young talents still learning the trade from the masters they were playing with, or they were players bought at the close of the season and who have not entirely fit into the shoes they started only to wear at the turn of the season. The tactical awareness, game intelligence, and the use and denial of space was exhilarating.
Four or five of the players on the pitch are among the best 7 players in the world at present, and If you’re still wondering ‘what happened to British clubs in Europe’ what you saw on display yesterday is the standard that the best Premiership clubs and players must aspire to attain.
If you take the nationalities of the players on display yesterday you’ll find a mix of players from Spain, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Holland, Uruguay, Portugal, France, Chile, Croatia, Belgium, and Wales. There was no single African player on display and no British player on display.
The rest of the world have three years to catch up before the next world cup, otherwise we may already have an idea where the semi-finalists of the next Copa Mundial would be coming from once again.