Football: Glories of future past in the Age of Apocalypse.

[Iskaral Pust]

Leicester’s season unraveled after getting walloped by Liverpool in late December.  And their form since lock-down was even worse: every opponent with something to play for beat them.  They only had success against a couple of teams who were themselves adrift.

It’s a pity to see Bournemouth gone after years of playing attractive football, but they’ve paid the price for too many bad transfers.  Villa are bloody lucky to stay up after their season, but two wins and two draws in their last four games just about got them over the line. 

[Soylent Brown]

With regard to Watford's owners, there's been talk that Pearson punched one of his players, so perhaps they weren't to blame for that one.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

33 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

So will Rogers be sacked after Leicester managed to drop from 2nd place earlier in the season to 5th?

Would be overly harsh. I don't think anybody had them in their top 4 pre-season prediction. I think most people thought it would be City, Liverpool finishing 1-2. 3rd presumably Spurs, and 4th was a bit of an unknown, with Chelsea's transfer ban, United's continuously post Ferguson rebuild, and maybe Arsenal also being in the mix. 

Sucks that they bummed out of the CL, but on a sober assessment, they still exceeded expectations this season.

Overall, I think it's fair to say, that the Corona break did not really benefit the smaller clubs like Sheffield United or Leicester. Not totally surprising, I might add.

[Soylent Brown]

Leicester's form had already dipped before the break though - they got 17 points from the last 17 games.

But yeah, finishing 5th is pretty good, I can't imagine he'll be sacked.

[ljkeane]

2 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Sucks that they bummed out of the CL, but on a sober assessment, they still exceeded expectations this season.

Overall, I think it's fair to say, that the Corona break did not really benefit the smaller clubs like Sheffield United or Leicester. Not totally surprising, I might add.

I think that's sort of true. I wouldn't be sacking Rodgers and, yeah, they've exceeded preseason expectations but I think it's probably more accurate to say they significantly exceeded expectations for the first half of the season and have probably been well below the level you'd expect of them for the second half of the year. It's fair enough that they couldn't keep up the pace they started the season at but if they'd just seen out the season at their average level they'd have comfortably made the Champions League (and they'd gone to shit before lockdown so it's hard to blame it on that).

[A Horse Named Stranger]

1 minute ago, Soylent Brown said:

Leicester's form had already dipped before the break though - they got 17 points from the last 17 games.

But yeah, finishing 5th is pretty good, I can't imagine he'll be sacked.

It wasn't just them dipping tho. United getting Pogba back and coming out swinging also played part in it. Otherwise they might have been able to cling onto a top four spot.

[Raja]

16 minutes ago, Soylent Brown said:

 there's been talk that Pearson punched one of his players, so perhaps they weren't to blame for that one.

oof, didn't know this.

 

[Iskaral Pust]

8 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Overall, I think it's fair to say, that the Corona break did not really benefit the smaller clubs like Sheffield United or Leicester. Not totally surprising, I might add.

I agree that the Foxes and Blades never really rediscovered their form after their break (although aside from two wins in March, Leicester had pretty much already tanked in Jan-Feb), but why did you think the break was expected to be a challenge for smaller clubs?  I would expect that kind of mid-season break on aggregate to be a help to teams with smaller squads.  I’m not saying it turned out that way, especially with City scoring for fun in most of their games since (but still fragile in three losses), and United also with a relative advantage from the break, but both of those were a continuation of their form before the break.  And Liverpool’s slight loss of focus and cutting edge is a case of a big team not handling the break very well, but also consistent with pre-break form.

Southampton, Brighton and Burnley, for example, all have small squads and seemed to collect points at a better rate since the break. So I don’t see any particular big club bias in the effect of the break.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

9 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

I agree that the Foxes and Blades never really rediscovered their form after their break (although aside from two wins in March, Leicester had pretty much already tanked in Jan-Feb), but why did you think the break was expected to be a challenge for smaller clubs?  I would expect that kind of mid-season break on aggregate to be a help to teams with smaller squads.  I’m not saying it turned out that way, especially with City scoring for fun in most of their games since (but still fragile in three losses), and United also with a relative advantage from the break, but both of those were a continuation of their form before the break.  And Liverpool’s slight loss of focus and cutting edge is a case of a big team not handling the break very well, but also consistent with pre-break form.

Southampton, Brighton and Burnley, for example, all have small squads and seemed to collect points at a better rate since the break. So I don’t see any particular big club bias in the effect of the break.

Fixture congestion. I mean it was obviously there'd be quite a lot of games in a small amount of time (deeper squads), add  five subs, and on top of that, loss of rhythm/cohesion after a break, also the individual quality of players. When teams are a bit disjointed and lacking match fitness, I think you have a higher chance of getting some individual heroics out of the star players than from a random player out of the Sheffield United team (with all due respect). TBF, I also expected City to just go thru their remaining games like the proverbial hot knife thru butter, which didn't happen.

[Consigliere]

Rodgers will certainly not be sacked. Overall Leicester did have a good season but there will be huge disappointment at letting slip a 14 point lead over 5th place. There will also be concern that their poor form was not broken by the 3 month pandemic hiatus and that it will carry over into next season which is less than 2 months away - the added fixture congestion from the EL which Leicester didn't have to deal with this season could hamper them next season as well. 

 

Also, I hope that Arsenal win the FA Cup so Spurs will have to enter 2nd round qualifying. That's sure to annoy Mourinho and maybe hasten the meltdown. A Mourinho meltdown is quite funny when it's not happening to your team. 

[Consigliere]

3 hours ago, ljkeane said:

United have looked good in a lot of ways since the restart but they really don’t look comfortable when teams press them as they’re trying to play out from the back.

Yep. That's been a glaring weakness. It sort of reminds me of Arsenal playing out from the back under Emery though not as bad. It's too slow and predictable which just encourages the opposition to press high. We've got to work on moving the ball faster and players having better movement to make themselves available for a pass. 

[polishgenius]

1 hour ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

It's fucking football, not some life and death situation. Get a grip!

 

It can be possible for something to be completely unimportant and still be a dick about it, y'ken? It wasn't a major massive deal, but you were being a bit of a dick.




I wouldn't be sacking Rodgers but this season did show both his strength and his continued weaknesses as a manager and I wouldn't be shocked to see him go at the first sign of extended poor form next season- Leicester City's owners are not Watford or Southampton a few years ago, but they've been ruthless in their time.

 

 

Big achievement for Arsenal scraping above Burnley on the final day.

[polishgenius]

Seen it pointed out that that hawkeye failure when the Villa keeper fell into the net with the ball and the watch didn't buzz has quite literally kept Villa in the Premier League.

 

 

 

[ljkeane]

24 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

Seen it pointed out that that hawkeye failure when the Villa keeper fell into the net with the ball and the watch didn't buzz has quite literally kept Villa in the Premier League.

If they’d lost by one goal instead of drawing 0-0 they would have stayed up on goals scored.

ETA: Wait, no I’m wrong. They’ve got a worse goal difference so it did keep them up. I read the negative goal difference the wrong way round.

[Raja]

Keane and Micah Richards here are priceless