Despite some poor results in Europe last week, the Premier League remains on course to be handed a fifth Champions League spot once again for next season. The longer this current campaign goes on, the more that just feels like a very bad joke indeed.
There are only two progressive teams at the top end of our league at the moment and they are Manchester United and Arsenal.
The rest are treading water – if you are Manchester City – or thrashing around aimlessly at the deep end.
Yes, that’s you Aston Villa, Liverpool and Chelsea.
Certainly the race – if we can call it that – for the fourth – and maybe fifth – Champions League places has become an embarrassing spectacle. In third, United have been impressive and at times now play the best looking attacking football in the Premier League.
There is no guarantee it will last but for now it is enough.
But Villa, Liverpool and Chelsea have been pitiful and results since around Christmas tell the sorry story.
Villa, for example, have taken just 12 points from their last 12 games (that used to be called relegation form) but somehow remain in fourth place after Sunday’s defeat at United.
Liverpool, in fifth, have picked up 17 from twelve games and Chelsea – currently labouring in sixth and four points above Brentford – have earned just 20 from their last 14 attempts.
None of them average more than 1.4 points per game over this spell as the season enters its defining weeks and, given the £700million gross spend at Anfield and Stamford Bridge, it’s a pretty dismal and inexcusable effort.
The Premier League is likely to be awarded its fifth Champions League spot on the back of historical performances by its clubs in Europe. But we can all see it for what it is, namely an attempt by UEFA to appease the big footballing institutions by cramming as many of them in to the competition as possible.
If the Premier League doesn’t end up with the fifth spot then it will go to LaLiga or the Bundesliga.
I have thought for a long time that the big leagues have too many places. Two Champions League spots felt right. Three at a push. Once we got to four and five – a quarter of the whole league! – then the game was up.
European competition should be about elite level football. Currently I wouldn’t cross the road to watch Liverpool or Chelsea play. Villa, a smaller squad built more parsimoniously, are perhaps a slightly different story.
Bruno in POTY running – again!
United deserved to beat Villa and the way they rallied to take the game in the wake of Ross Barkley’s equaliser showed how much they have grown since the difficult days of Ruben Amorim.
Things like that used to knock United from their stride, such was their collective mental weakness. Slowly, they are improving on that.
Once again their best player was their captain Bruno Fernandes and it’s mind-blowing to think there was a scenario where they could have sold him to Saudi Arabia last summer.
His assist for Matheus Cunha’s killer goal was his 16th of the league season and took him past a record set by David Beckham back in 2000.
I was ridiculed last season for voting for Fernandes as my Premier League Player of the Season but as the campaign reaches its denouement he is close to getting my vote yet again.
Other contenders swirling around my head currently are: David Raya, William Saliba, Jordan Pickford, Igor Thiago and Granit Xhaka.
Two goalkeepers, a central defender, a holding midfielder and two attacking players.
That probably sums up the way this season has gone in the Premier League…
Murray still the GOAT
Line of the weekend came from the BBC’s John Murray at Old Trafford.
‘That’s off the shins of Mings,’ said Murray after a block from Villa defender Tyrone.
‘Which sounds like a peninsula off the west coast of Scotland.’
Murray – for other reasons than this – remains the best in the business.
The world laughs at Chelsea huddle
The shambles at Stamford Bridge before Newcastle’s defeat of Chelsea reflected badly on everybody.
The decision by Liam Rosenior’s players to form a huddle without asking referee Paul Tierney to move smacked of shameful entitlement. A depressing snapshot of the modern game.
Tierney’s apparent willingness to remain central to the story was just as embarrassing. He should have excused himself or blown his whistle. He was supposed to be in charge, after all.
More broadly, the whole excruciating mess spoke of an enduring problem with a lack of relationship between players and match officials at the top level. That is something that is getting worse. Neither side trusts the other anymore. VAR has only made it worse and now everybody else is laughing at us.
For proof, go to the X feed of the MODUS Super Series darts last night…
Gordon wins Rooney row
On the field Anthony Gordon played the starring role for Newcastle whose mini-revival has seen them face Manchester United, Manchester City, Barcelona and Chelsea in the space of a week and a half and come away with two wins, a draw and just one defeat.
Gordon’s role through the middle for Eddie Howe’s team will have impressed England manager Thomas Tuchel, who names a squad on Friday and is keen to find as many alternatives to centre forward Harry Kane as possible.
The Newcastle forward was subsequently right to call out Alan Shearer and Wayne Rooney for appearing to suggest his omission from the team against Barcelona on the grounds of illness was suspicious.
Gordon, who came off the bench that night, suggested in post-match interviews after the Chelsea game that such high-profile pundits need to ‘do better’ and was admirably backed-up by his manager.
On this occasion, Gordon had a point and it was strange that Rooney was not offered the opportunity to discuss the matter by host Mark Chapman when he appeared on the Match of the Day sofa last night.
The former England captain – who has plenty of experience as a manager – was asked about it on his BBC podcast this morning and didn’t appear in any frame of mind to back down.
‘Nobody was questioning his desire to play,’ said Rooney. ‘It was just strange because if you are ill you are usually out of the game completely.’
Hard work starts now for Max
Rooney was considerably more astute and engaging when talking about Arsenal wonderkid Max Dowman.
Rooney knows what it’s like to score a Premier League goal as a 16-year-old – he did it for Everton against Arsenal in 2002 – and when asked whether players are better protected from outside influences in the modern game, only had to mention two words to make his point.
‘Social media,’ he said.
It will be a tough road for Dowman from here. Others have walked it and struggled. We wish him well and as part of that any suggestion he should be called up for England any time soon should be nipped in the bud right now.
Arteta’s perfect timing
Arsenal were not at their best but won the game on the back of Mikel Arteta’s smart substitutions and it’s not the first time that’s happened.
In fact 21 Arteta subs have now contributed goals or assists this season – that’s seven more than Brighton, the second team on the list.
Moment of the afternoon before Dowman’s introduction, though, was the block by defender Riccardo Calafiori to deny Dwight McNeil with the score at 0-0.
Described in some quarters as a ‘scorpion block’, it’s a decent way of painting a picture of an extraordinary piece of athleticism.
Arsenal fans, meanwhile, are calling for a statue of the Italian. Not like them to be so reactive and over-emotional….
Silva should get it by now
Excuse of the day (or maybe the season) came from Marco Silva of Fulham in the wake of his team’s drab draw at Forest.
‘The weather was not the best for both teams,’ he said.
Silva has managed more than 300 games in English football and a chunk of them were in Hull. He should know how it works by now.
City were a great side. They aren’t now
Pep Guardiola will not give up the title chase while there is breath in his body but he summed up his team’s issues perfectly after Manchester City’s drab 1-1 draw at West Ham.
‘We can’t manage to do the win, win, win, win that we used to at this time of the season,’ said Guardiola.
Sometimes it’s worth reminding ourselves just how incredible some of Guardiola’s great City teams were.
In winning the league two years ago, for example, City won nine and drew one of their last ten games.
In their treble year of 2023, they won twelve on the bounce from mid-February. In 2019, they won their final fourteen!
The current City team are a work in progress but are frankly miles off that level.
After City beat Real Madrid in the Champions League group stage last December, Guardiola warned they would have to improve hugely to compete at the back end of the season.
It just hasn’t happened and the sight of Phil Foden on the substitutes’ bench right now is perhaps the saddest in the English game.
Tudor still a huge gamble
At Anfield Tottenham more than deserved their point but the risks in retaining coach Igor Tudor remain huge.
With thirteen players missing through injury or suspension, it was an admirable point for Spurs but the challenges between now and the end of the season are clear.
Points won at places like Liverpool when nobody expects anything are valuable but it’s not these results that will keep Tottenham in the Premier League.
Starting this weekend, Tudor’s team have homes games left against Nottingham Forest, Brighton, Leeds and Everton. These are the games on which survival will be built and they come with a completely different kind of expectation and pressure.
Tottenham have won twice at home all season in the Premier League is clear so the need for vast improvement is clear and I am not sure Tudor has it in him to bring it about.
Before yesterday’s unexpected result, Spurs executives were already looking ahead to the Forest game as the definitive date in the immediate calendar.
I would still have sacked Tudor last week.
Don’t forget Leeds
Those talking of a three-way scrap between Spurs, Forest and West Ham to avoid the third relegation spot are missing something. Four teams are involved and the other one is Leeds.
Daniel Farke’s team have had a good season after last year’s promotion but danger still lurks.
Two of their last three games are away at Tottenham and West Ham and it feels as though they will need to be clear of it all by then.
Is this the end of Saturday afternoon football?
The FA Cup quarter-final scheduling looks as though it’s been done by an infant with a crayon.
Port Vale at Chelsea (166 miles) takes place at 5.15pm on a Saturday while Leeds fans will need to travel back from West Ham (201miles) on Easter Sunday evening.
Meanwhile the one match not requiring any proper travel – Manchester City v Liverpool – kicks off at lunchtime on a Saturday.
But then this is a ship that has sailed.
There were only two Saturday 3pm Premier League games this weekend. Maybe I am the only one who feels there is something wrong about that.
