CHELSEA ARE SIMPLY TOO GOOD FOR THE REST OF THE LEAGUE
José Mourinho made a valiant effort in an easy win over Manchester United to stoke up some much-needed beef with a sly dig about having United “in our pockets” for the whole game, but if we’re being honest now, even that couldn’t stir up any legitimate aggro. The game here simply confirmed the easy dominance Chelsea have had this season, as they sat back and watched as United walked straight into the trap.
The reaction has been kinder to United than they perhaps deserve, as though nobody’s seen Mourinho in a big game before. Van Gaal’s men were praised for their ‘dominance’ against a side that was happy to sit in their own half and kick anything that came near them, in a performance that starkly illuminated United’s main deficiencies – namely that they didn’t look remotely like scoring, and are still somehow are quite hilariously reliant on the form of Ashley Young.
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Van Gaal was provoked into a hostile post-match interview, but it was childish stuff, meaningless belligerence to go down the memory-hole along with most of this season. United will probably challenge next year, but if title wins are about guts and know-how, they looked like they had a long way to go. Imagine any other side having the confidence or ability to park the bus for a 1-0 home win in a big game like this. The fact that Chelsea are still the only side who can rely on themselves to not endure a catastrophic fuck-up in the league is a reason why they’re at the top, and unless anything drastic changes, probably why they’ll stay there.
TIM SHERWOOD IS THE MAN TO REVIVE THE FA CUP
At last, for the first time since people legitimately took those spinny clacker things to football matches, it looks like we’ll be getting an interesting FA Cup final. The big-team-vs-plucky-upstarts is a combination which only really bore fruit with Wigan’s doomed win-then-relegation success in 2013, and usually just results in tedious Chelsea victories, but this year will be different: the big team is Arsenal, who never met a big game they didn’t try to fuck up as best they could, and the small team is on-fire Tim Sherwood vehicle Aston Villa.
It has all the ingredients of a classic. Tim showing Spurs what they were missing out on by achieving the one thing they couldn’t and usurping Arsenal; Wenger trying to prove he’s still got it; the wrestling of the narrative from ‘maligned professor’ Wenger to ‘grizzled bloke who is somehow at your stag do’ Sherwood. Last year the story was just about falling Arsene’s way as he spent some fucking money and finally ended the long silverware drought, but this year it’s all Timmy.
It’s fitting that the FA Cup can be revived like this. At times it seems an anachronism, not really making sense now nobody takes it as seriously as once they did. So let’s go full throwback when it comes to it – ban all teams from taking part that aren’t managed by Tim Sherwood, or other managers who only know a big-man-little-man 4-4-2 and can tell you the best English pub in Zante. If nothing else, it’ll provide a fine breeding ground for Spurs to pick their next manager from when they get bored of their continental tomboys.
HULL ARE FUCKED
The blueprint of what to buy when you first come up to the Premier League is at this point well-established: a couple of former United youngsters, a few old hands in defence, and a reliable goalscorer or two. What you’re supposed to do the year after is a lot less clear, and while it’s good to see teams battling relegation thinking outside the box, Abel Hernandez and Gaston Ramirez are going to join Nicola Zigic and Bryan Ruiz in the long list of gambles that tragically backfired.
Despite being a Geordie, it made the ultimate sense for Steve Bruce to have been appointed Sunderland manager a few years ago, because he’s been doing the same thing they have every year: turn around a disastrous situation, make a couple of inspired signings, stay up impressively, then try to change too much of the team and end up being hopeless again. Rinse and repeat.
With a nightmare run-in and all the teams below them on the up, Hull’s chances of survival are looking remote. Bruce is probably going to go down, get the sack, get another reasonably big Championship team and immediately get promoted and do exactly the same again. It’s the life that he, Allardyce, and all the other old veterans with the proverbial faces like blind cobblers’ thumbs can look forward to in the future.
That might sound sad, but at least, in the pursuit of all that TV money, clubs have retained a degree of madness from their decisions on how to spend it. The reaction to getting tens of millions of pounds of free money should be to sign Bojan for Stoke, or appoint your oldest player as manager for a laugh. Steve Bruce, presumably not for the first time, is a man whose face doesn’t fit.
READ MORE: The Ballad of Steve Bruce: Premier League Punching Bag
THE RACE FOR FOURTH SUMS UP THIS SEASON
A City win – combined with Southampton probably pissing away their last chance to make the top four – seems to have put the potentially hilarious sight of Abu Dhabi’s finest falling out of the Champions League qualifications for now, but it’s not over yet. City’s run-in includes an in-form Villa, the aforementioned Southampton then Spurs, and an away trip to Swansea and relegation-battling QPR. There’s still a chance for Liverpool and Spurs to do this, right?
Well, not entirely. For you see, City are terrible, but Liverpool and Spurs have been bottling their chance at the top four all season, and probably won’t stop now. It’s pretty much emblematic of everything at every level – a huge opportunity has emerged, and nobody has been good enough to take advantage. United are going to finish second, City are going to finish fourth, Newcastle are going to stay up and Alan Pardew is going to break the top half. None of these things should have happened. None of these teams, and none of these men, deserve this. This is the year of being rewarded for being the least shit.
LIFE HAS BEGUN TO IMITATE ART
Celtic’s mystifying failure to win a treble despite the playing field being about as level as Charlie Adam’s abdomen has been one of the few sources of amusement for Rangers fans in an era more depressing than any other. This season looked like it would finally be the one, with realistically only Inverness, a team from a town with a population smaller than Old Trafford’s capacity, standing in their way.
Obviously, the neutral is going for the Highland underdogs here, and – with Celtic fans being famously the most prone to conspiracy theories now Liverpool have settled down a bit – preferably one that involves a massive decision going against them. So it proved, as Inverness won in extra-time in the Scottish Cup, a large part thanks to a handball on the line somehow going unnoticed when both referee and linesman were staring straight at it.
So, lovely stuff. But that’s not all. In the images capturing this, there was something strange in the background. The advert shown on the boards at the time. Specsavers. TheLadBible and their like have now become so intrinsic to the game that football has decided to pre-empt them. We have just witnessed the first Cup semi-final with the memes pre-added. This is surely the future of the game.
