True that. Say what you like about Rafael Benitez, but he won the Champions league with Djimi Traore at left back. Not too many managers around with that byzantine achievement on their cv.
It looks like Chelsea have given up on 3rd/4th by getting mauled at Anfield. If they want Champions League money next year, they’ll need to beat Bayern.
This result will surely help get the hopes up for next year in the Scouse Boom/Bust cycle.
If they do win, I feel for whichever team does finish in 4th. Imagine being Newcastle and managing 4th, only for it to mean Europa instead of Champions league
I’ll be really disappointed that Liverpool don’t finish 4th this year, should Chelsea win it.
In the US every single game will be broadcast live this Sunday. Of course you have to have the right channels and some are live streamed on the Internet, but still every single game.
Amazing! Suck it Sir Alex you fucking prick.
Ha!
Soccer is so boring!
Wow!
Mr. Noisy Neighbor, indeed.
Perhaps the greatest ending to any season in any sport I’ve ever followed!
That’s the way to finish a season. Fucking hell, I don’t even support anyone there.
As someone once said: football, bloody hell. Can’t remember who it was ;).
Unbelievable. I’ve never seen anything like it. If you told me ahead of time it would go down like that, I’d never have believed you.
The only downside is that QPR doesn’t get relegated. Not that I have anything against QPR but Joey Barton is fucking asshole; he deserved to be a bigger goat than he was.
Spend £900m. Win the league on GD.
That sucked, but what can you say? Football, bloody hell. United will get it back next year.
You forget yourself, sir!
Not really, a couple of years ago we had a final day in the Dutch league where three teams could win it. Every 10 minutes we had a different virtual champion. PSV eventually won over Ajax with equal points and a better goal difference by one (1!!) goal. The third team (AZ Alkmaar) would have won it if they won their game; they drew, but hit the post in the last 5 minutes…but no one cares about this league, since it sucks. There also have been a few years that Barca won the championship, solely because Real couldn’t beat Tenerife in the last round (with all kind of penalty kicks and the like).
Still a nice end of the season, it’s just that we don’t see it that often in the EPL. Somehow I like it more now that ManU actually thought they were going to win it…so much more satidfying than if City had won by 5-0.
2002/03, Rangers beat Celtic by +1 on goal difference. Both had 97 points, but Rangers were +73 vs Celtic’s +72. Rangers won their last match 6-1, which included a 90th minute penalty for Rangers, and Celtic won 4-0.
Even the English league has an arguably better candidate for most dramatic finale - 1989, when Arsenal won the league with almost the last kick of the season, deep in injury time at the end of the last game, which happened to be against their rivals for the title (the final round of games were not played simultaneously). The two teams finished with the same number of points and the same goal difference, but Arsenal had scored more goals.
For today to top that, it would have to have been City vs. United, held on a day by itself, and with similar goal differences. Still an amazing last day, though.
How did it suck? Amazing finish and the best team over the entire season won.
Went to the Everton game today - we dominated Newcastle which surprised me, as in theory they were playing for CL qualification. It was plain sailing though.
The worst attack of Cityitis in history was overcome in the dying seconds - shame IMO as the comedy would have been epic. I’m disappointed they won as it seems like the final victory of total plutocracy in the game. I do have some friends who are long-suffering (and I mean long-suffering) City fans so I’m happy for them at least.
I can only see both Manchester teams diverging from here - with City getting better and Utd falling away. Utd fans will argue it the other way around - as in look how basically shite we are yet we contested things to literally the last kick of the season. If we stopped being shite then we’d take charge. Not the case IMHO - a few years of under-investment (by the standards of top clubs) has done some damage and Ferguson won’t be able to turn it around in his remaining time left.
Sad to see Bolton go, especially as it meant QPR staying up.
There’s some interesting stuff here, what with the finale yesterday and some of the review of the season comments.
I think the closeness of the league between the two Manchester clubs (and their distance from the chasing pack) has obscured that the overall league currently is more competitive than it has been in some time - which is not to say that the quality is as high as it was 4 or 5 years ago either. Arsenal, Tottenham, Newcastle and (on their day) Chelsea have the ability to beat anyone in the league - but they also have the tendency to drop points against unlikely teams. Throw in teams like Swansea, Norwich and (towards the end of the season) Wigan who were well capable of creating upsets with quality play and you might think that the overall quality of the league was really high.
It isn’t. It is a real testament to SAF and Manchester United that they pushed the league all the way to the wire because this is not a vintage Manchester United team. The lack of real investment from the Glazers is, I think, beginning to tell as the side has relied on very old players (Scholes had a good season but how desperate are you for a quality midfielder that you have to bring someone out of retirement to get one?), some very young players who needed time to bed in (De Gea being the most obvious example) and some guys who just don’t have it anymore - Ferdinand being a prominent example (Vidic being injured was a big problem for them this season). That they got so close speaks to will and organisation, for which they are to be commended. All that said, any team that concedes 4 goals at home to Everton, 6 at home to Manchester City and barely gets a shot in during the biggest game of the season away at City is not going to be up there with the last 20 years worth of Manchester United sides.
The fact is though that the league is not very good - all those teams mentioned above can beat each other because, collectively, the standard of defending is low in the Premier League at the moment and every team has glaring flaws (usually at the back, though for Chelsea it is over-reliance on ageing players). I’d go so far as to say that the teams near the top of the league in 06/07 would likely be near the top of any composite competition that could (virtually) be created.
Manchester City have spent a lot of money - but they’re not the first to do this to win a title. Blackburn and Chelsea have been down this road before. They deserved to win the title - if you beat the team in 2nd twice and one of those is 6-1 away from home, you can hardly have people claim that you were not deserving. Still, for all the money that they’ve spent, they’re also still a flawed team - overly reliant on Silva and Yaya Toure in midfield, struggling to find the right striking partnership (Aguero plus who?) and very thin at the back (if Kompany goes down, they’re absolutely screwed - much more so than Manchester United, who at least had Evans to come in when Vidic went down - the problem was more Ferdinand over there). You can spend all that money but the team is not very deep and probably not well balanced. I see them getting dumped out in the first knockout stage of next year’s Champions’ League for instance.
It’s been an exciting season but it’s going to be interesting to see what happens in the summer. Everyone could stand to invest but the financial fair play rules coming in make it difficult in some respects and Wenger has already said that he expects limited movement due to the economic downturn. Unless some quality youth team players are due to come through for the sides in the upper part of the division, I can see next season being similarly exciting but with the overall quality of the league still lower than in previous years.