Mark here.
So, an eventful weekend saw United champions, Charlton relegated and West Ham take a huge step towards survival.
United are expected to field a relatively fringe team tomorrow vs Chelsea, so I think it will be quite amusing to see Terry, Lampard et al forming a guard of honour for the likes of Richardson, Dong and O'Shea. I think we could all guess their thoughts. To the weekend - United deservedly beat a terrible Man City side, though they had VDS to thank for his lucky peno save. City are now the worst home scorers ever - since the leagues began over 120 years ago. On Sunday, Chelsea had the hapless Boulharouz to thank for providing an impression of Traore. Khalid was out of position, making poorly timed challenges and finally gave away a penalty and was sent off. To those slagging off Mourinho for playing Essien at centre back, they got their riposte that afternoon. Overall, Chelsea did well to come back into the game with ten men, though they were helped by the profligacy of Adebayor - a skillful player who needs to step up his scoring to be 1st choice at the Arse next season. Ultimately, Chelsea's endeavour wasn't enough and United took the title.
At the start of the season, there was much talk about United's squad weaknesses, but this was overcome by the 19 different players who scored in the league, and a ruthlessness at putting teams away, while their contenders stumbled (example: United scored 4 home and 4 away to Bolton, Chelsea 1-0 away and 2-2 at home). I'll expand more in the podcast this week.
Charlton are down, and I can't say I'm disappointed. I'm a fan of Pardew and I do not believe another manager could have done much better in keeping them up. Their squad is paper thin, and plainly not good enough. I would like to see Wigan relegated, as they add nothing to the Premiership - atmosphere, fans, history, players (Heskey). However, it will be a disgrace if West Ham stay up. The Premier league think they are on safe ground because the precedent of points deductions to other clubs occurred because of incorrect registrations - Tevez and Masch's registrations were fine - other rules were broken. This is, obviously, complete bollox, a way to deflect attention. Also, the wording of the outcome was strange to say the least - they didn't want the West Ham fans to suffer, etc.
I haven't enough time to go into all the other news from the weekend, but briefly:
- Roeder had to go
- Interesting to see how Big Sam gets on at Newcastle
- Will Paul Allen buy Southampton?
- Congrats to Sunderland & Keane for winning the Championship
- I agree with Jorge Valdano (http://www.football365.com/story/0,17033,8652_2113453,00.html)
- The intrigue at Chelsea
As usual, we'll take the pick of the stories from football for our pub talk section on the podcast. Feel free to leave comments below or email comments@okeydokefootball.com
Cheers,
Mark
