A rushed look at this years Premier League

The End of Season Review

The date is the 14th of May 2010 5 days after the rollercoaster of the Premier League jolted to a complete holt. A season, which has at times lacked in quality but has never been short of surprises, a season where mighty forces of the past have fallen, and where finally enquiries are being made about the corporate bastards using our football clubs as toys and business opportunities after the first ever Premiership club went into administration. As well as all that there was one of the tightest battles for fourth place I can ever remember, the title race kept
The first few months started off like any other, there were a few changes to some of the top sides, Chelsea had a new manager in but no real big signings were made in the summer, United has lost their wonder kid to Real Madrid for a record 80 million pounds, Arsenal again went in with the belief that they could go and win the league with a youth team and City splashed out more cash then any other premier league club with their new Arabic owners. The opening day did have one significant result in it that at the time spectators wouldn’t of predicted, Tottenham beat Livepool at White Heart Lane. As a Chelsea fan I always do find it amusing when Liverpool lose because having had to witness a Chelsea and Liverpool tie over 20 times in the past 5 years is no laughing matter. But yes would you believe it everybody’s favourtie whipping boys Tottenham managed to fight for and win the dog fight for 4th spot this season and change the face of the “Top Four”, they deserved it more then City and was more consistent then Villa (Although Villa were my favored team for the spot). There was always this constant horrible feeling that even though Liverpool were playing without any spirit or any skill and for the first time in their history dropped out in the group stages of Champions League, as well as going out in the 3rd round of the FA Cup to Reading, that despite all of this I could still picture how the last day of the season would play out, 3rd minute of stoppage time, it’s 1-1 and if Liverpool win they seal fourth after an unprecedented 10 wins on the trot, ball gets wipped out from a corner “ It comes to GEEEEEEEERRRRARRRRRRRRRRRDDDDDDDDDDDD” and Steven Gerrard, savour of Mersey side belts in a 30 yard volley in the last kick of the game…Typical Liverpool. But instead they finished 7th, one of their worst performances in the league for years. Benitez looks like he’s out of the job, and towards the end of the season all their star players were looking unbelievably depressed. It wouldn’t surprise me if one of the big 2 (Gerrard or Torres) were to leave in the summer.
The race for the title however was a bit of a different beast this season. Those of you who know me will know that I am a Chelsea supporter, always have, always going to be, but this season my love for them changed ever so slightly. The same way that your relationship is with a mate who you love dearly, but whenever you go out and get pissed he can’t help but start trouble. This was pretty much Chelsea’s attitude to games this season, whenever we would look like losing most of out star players would get aggy with the referee and we’d lose all faith in getting anything out of the game. This was shown when the Special One came back to the Bridge to tactically, mentally and physically out do us in every department. The loss came without shock really, Mourinho knows Chelsea inside out and he is the greatest manager in the world…we never stood a chance. But he had it played out so well. Shut Lampard out the way so we had to no playmaker, get on Drogba’s nerves so he loses his temper and probably gets sent off (Which he did) and hit us on a counter attack where we was consistently weak this season. A situation we was never in when the Special One was in charge of us. Despite the loss in Champions League I took many positives out of it. Both United and Arsenal were left back in it, this meant another 2 mid week games for top players to get injured in, or to just generally get jaded in. A lot of my non-Chelsea fans couldn’t understand this but as it goes I turned out to be right. Rooney was injured in the first leg of Uniteds tie against Bayern Munich, the Wednesday before we was set to play them, and Fabregras and Arshavin were injured for Arsenal in their fantastic game against Barcelona at the Emirates. Which did eventually lead to a dip in form for both of our rivals and for us to steam ahead. There were a few further hiccups but nothing major and more or less throughout the season played like a tank in Tiananmen Square, stopping only once or twice to minor teams. We got 6 out of 6 against the top 4, most goals scored by any club in a season ever, highest ever goal difference, topped off by an emphatic 8-0 win on the last day of the season. Which also included a Drogba hat-trick to give him the Golden boot for the season. The Premiership returns to Stamford Bridge.
It is the FA Cup final tomorrow and in true cup final fashion it is an underdog challenge. Botom side Portsmouth against League winners Chelsea, now despite my love for Chelsea and how I’d love us to pull off our first ever League and Cup double, I cant help but have this hope that Pompy do the impossible tomorrow, not just because I have a respect for the town of Portsmouth as it has been good to me over the years and is the home to some of my friends and is supported by my mentor. But because I feel that the fans deserve it more then any other. The way that that club has been allowed to be run into the ground by an owner who obviously didn’t have a clue has been absolutely sickening. A guestermat to the high courts and customs said that Portsmouth owed around 60 millions pounds in bills, it now turns out that they owe nearly 130 million and then the bills were released to the public. Ridiculous amounts owed to ridiculous people. 500 pounds owed to the milkman, 700 pounds owed to the local florist, 13,000 pounds owed to Chichester college, and I’d like to know what dealing they did with Qatar airways because they owe them 20 pence. This has been a harsh reminder that corporate bastards are being allowed quite happily to use our football clubs as toys without having any knowledge what so ever about running a football club, or having any respect for the fans that devote their lives to it. So tommorow at 3 o’clock when two 2 blue sides go out onto that pitch at Wembley I will have this slight support for the underdog. If we snatch an early goal, it’ll be a repeat of last week, but if Portsmouth play with the attitude that they have nothing to lose, then considering this is the oldest and greatest domestic cup competition in all of sport where anything can happen I turley believe that Pompy could do it.
Sorry this is brief and rather rushed I wanted to complete it before tommorows game and I’m currently getting ready to go to an Alabama 3 gig…here is a brief list of awards for the season
Player of the year – James Milner: Did he have a bad game for Villa? An absolutely certainty for Capello’s 11 in South Africa surely.
Best goal – Danny Rose: Spurs V Arsenal: your 19 years old, its your premier league debut and you score a 30 yard volley in a north London derby that you then go on to win for the first time since you was born. An absolute dream come true and a cracking goal.
Manager of the year: a toss between Harry Redknapp and Roy Hodgson: Premier League I’d give it to Harry for his achievement with Spurs, but nothing can be taken away from the spirit that Fuhlam have played with this season.

Signing of the season: Adam Johnson, Middlesborough – City: He might of come in January but young Adam Johnson has impressed amongst a team full of over payed pre madonna’s. good on him

Football

Now I know I’ve been a bit absent with my blog posting recently. To be honest the only reason I haven’t written one over the past few months is because I’ve been busy pretending I have better things to do. However its been an eventful summer so far, I’m moving out on the 12th of September, I attended my personal best Glastonbury yet, successfully broke into the Glade festival, paid off a huge fine that has been haunting me for almost a year, as well as general dicking about. But I’d thought I’d get back to writing today to touch on some issues that I feel I have to touch on, after being inspired to do so throughout the summer by certain events that I attended. So as another typical English summer ticks away we draw closer to one of mine, and probably over half the population of the country’s favourite time of year… The start of the new football league.
Now those of you who know me won’t be surprised to know that I love football. It is joint top of my passion’s list along with music and film. Like my other passions I love everything about it, I love playing it, watching it, talking deeply about it, studying it, using up general memory space remembering facts about it, but most of all just like my latter passions I love attending it. But unfortunately also like my other passions, there are elements I hate about it and that is the fact just like all other things pure, great and innocent that I love it has been destroyed by big corporations, advertising, investors and an influx of yuppie scumbags.
The first football match I went to was a Chelsea V Wimbledon match at Selhurst Park, a few years before Wimbledon became the victims of franchising in football and probably because of their careless owners, started a trend where the passion that owner once had for their club, could be bought off them with a series of figures with a pound sign in front of them…Anyway the score of the game finished 2-0 to Chelsea thanks to a stunning 25 yard free kick by Gianfranco Zola, and an early second half strike by Mark Hughes I think it was. But one thing that stands out for me was the atmosphere. The true working class of Britain coming together in their thousands to watch their football team, friends, families, people who had travelled for hours to get to the ground. The songs, the taunting of the opposing fans, the general protocol of different chants and when to stand up and sit down, and the delight of seeing tens of thousands of people burst into a supernova of joy when Chelsea scored twice, nothing to this day has matched it.
Although I missed the Chelsea of the 80’s when opposing fans would literally be scared the opposing Chelsea fans, and violence marred it a little bit (until ecstasy whipped it out in the late 80’s, another part of football history I regret missing) I’ve been told that going to football was made less enjoyable after the Hillsborough disaster, when terraces were banned and all league clubs had to have seating areas, I can imagine this is true, but nothing could beat them matches I went to in the 90’s. More recently though however after even Chelsea were eventually bought out by a big money investor, which in hindsight was the most amazing thing ever. 5 days from administration and a Russian billionaire saves us and ploughs money into the club until we win trophies. But with selling your soul in exchange for glory comes an even bigger fate. That thing that I loved, the pure element of football being the ultimate working class game, being able to go every other week to support my team was stopped, when football became a trend for the rich and yuppie. Because of Chelsea’s success and having the misfortune of being in the Kings road area of west London, yuppies come in their droves to watch football, because of this the price became unaffordable and I haven’t been to a game at the Bridge for over a year. The noise from stands has faded, standing throughout games is near enough banned, and swearing and chanting could face you with evection from the ground. These days having to pay over 3 times the original price for a seat, to sit next to a bunch of yuppie families talking amongst themselves, complaining when someone stands up and occasionally getting a tap on the shoulder saying “excuse me, could you mind the language…I have kids with me”. In ways I think it started with the original “Kick racism out of football” campaign, which don’t get me wrong was a good campaign but it did inflict the first rules for the terrace protocol and then acted as a catalyst for other rules. I think that football itself is the main reason for racial harmony in the working classes. It didn’t matter what colour you were, you supported the same team, the fact that your clubs top goal scorer was a black bloke, he was scoring for your team. Although racism was heavily featured in chants on the terraces, I’ve been told that this just simply faded out after societies views changed.
I appear to be digressing a bit…Anyway back in June I worked at Royal Ascot, which I soon found out was a big week long piss up for posh people and yuppies. Possibly their biggest in their calendar. They all dress up, blow loads of money on horses, frolic around and at the end of the day have a sing song of traditional English pop music and songs by the bandstand. Its quite possibly the greatest display of Englishness that I’ve seen, and in a way I really enjoyed it. But one thing I did notice was the amount of “lamb dressed as mutton”. Parties of Tarts and Geezers from Essex, Slags and Blokes from London and Whores and Bastards from up north also coming down to enjoy the party, luckily I was one of the very few people attending that was sober, but this helped me see that we the working class scum were doing to the rich what they had been doing to us, crashing their favriote sporting event. Although seeing people who are all peoples parents frolicking about pissed, committing acts of debauchery and acting like the kids they read about in the Daily Mail a little piece of me leapt for joy as I knew some of these upper people who invaded our terraces and implied new rules to our game, were now having their party crashed by a bunch of louts dressed up.

So as another Premiership season starts after a break of record breaking signings for amounts of money we can only dream of seeing, for players getting a wage that we will never make, playing a standard of football which seems to be losing its manly image, for a club whose owners probably can’t even speak English, I thank Sky Sports for giving me Jeff Stelling and Chris Kamara on a Saturday afternoon, John Motson in the evening and Andy Graye on a Sunday, so I can watch my football from the best seat in the house. I can swear, smoke, drink, stand up when I want, cheer as loud as I want, even scream brutal racial based obscenities to Didier Drogba when he wont get off the floor if I want, because I have admitted defeat to the other lot. Back in the 80’s Ken Bates the Chelsea chairman considered putting in a 12 foot high electric fence to separate away supporters from the Chelsea supporters, and to stop fans getting on the pitch. 20 odd years later Bruce Buck the Chelsea Chairman has introduced “family stands” and suggested that “those fans who wish to make noise please sit….” Although fans of smaller clubs will probably read this and wonder how it must be so shit to be a Chelsea fan when we break records and win trophies every year now, but to me the Club is buying these trophies for their clientele. It’s strange that about 14 years ago I was watching the now defunct Wimbledon play and now I’m thinking of abandoning my team (a sin which is absolutely unforgivable in every way) to support the new AFC Wimbledon of the Conference. Until then I’ll shut up and enjoy my teams’ success.