Premier League

[realjd]

Any other Premier League fans here? I know we have a few Brits on the forum, but I can't be the only American fan here!

It's shaping up to be an interesting end to the season, particularly the fight for 4th place. How on earth did Newcastle end up there? I'm also surprised that Arsenal (my team) managed to pull themselves up to 3rd considering how crappy they were for much of the season.

[english si]

Both Spurs and Chelsea have had manager issues, helping both Newcastle and Arsenal.

Newcastle spent their big-bag-o-cash for Carroll very very well, getting 2 fantastic strikers for one only half-decent one.

Liverpool's big spending hasn't paid off in the league, so Newcastle (and Everton), who were chasing the big-6 last season anyway, are able to make it a top-8 (just as Chelsea's failings let Spurs back in to make it a top-5 chasing the CL - though Newcastle are now in on the action!) chasing Europe.

Predictions:

• Man U champions (though City will win the derby), City second, Arsenal third.
• 4th is hard to tell - Spurs out of form, Chelsea in form, Newcastle complicating it, though all three of those teams will get to Europe (due to the FA cup finalists being who they are). Chelsea and Spurs would be gutted without CL football, but Chelsea's best hope still seems to be winning this year.
• Everton ahead of Liverpool, though still 7th and without European football.Mid-table is wide open who's where. QPR, Blackburn and Wolves will go down - Bolton's games in hand will help them.
• Reading (certain now anyway) and Southampton get automatic promotion from the Championship, with Reading winning it
• Play-offs are always tricky to predict as so much relies on the last two games, even if the 4 teams remains the same as now (form is a big factor). West Ham losing out of automatic promotion will hit them, a team that sneaks in to 6th place on the last day of the season will have momentum - and there's lots of potential for teams to do that. Still, my money is on a team that starts with B (hopefully Blackpool, rather than Birmingham - fun vs boring) to win the play-off final and the £100 million+ that winning that one game gives over it's loser (it's the single game with the most money riding on it for the competitors in world sports).

[realjd]

I don't follow the Champtionship much. The EPL is gaining in popularity over here but it's rare that Championship games are available on TV.

I agree with your predictions for 1-3. United would have to really self destruct at this point to let City pass them, and Arsenal's only tough game remaining is tomorrow morning against Chelsea.

For 4th, I predict Tottenham over Newcastle or Chelsea simply due to schedule. Tottenham's only moderately tough game left is against Fullham, but Newcastle has to play Chelsea, City, and Wigan with their string of upsets.

As for 5th, that one's tougher. I think the upcoming Newcastle/Chelsea match will end up determining 5th.

Of course if Chelsea beats Arsenal tomorrow, I may have to reevaluate thing.

I feel bad for the Wolves. Ever since I started following English soccer a few years ago, I've had a soft spot for them. It's mainly because a cashier at one of the grocery stores here in town is from Wolverhampton and is a big Wolves fan.

[english si]

I don't follow the Champtionship much. The EPL is gaining in popularity over here but it's rare that Championship games are available on TV.

In England, there has never been a Premier League match on free-to-view TV. You have to specifically subscribe to Sky Sports (though some other brands have some games - including a channel I get, though they scrambled it when I turned to it during the game) or watch it in a pub that has it. The Championship has about a game a month on BBC (though other games are on Sky Sports, etc).

That said the BBC's highlights programmes are comprehensive with the Premier League - 90 minutes Saturday night (rpt Sunday morning), 60 Sunday night (which includes a recap of Saturday's games). The Championship, however, gets rammed into a 60 minute show covering the whole Football League, on late Saturday night - all 3 divisions. It gets the lion's share, naturally, but you have a lot of games to cover in the time. I often watch the first 25 minutes to get the Championship stuff, due to my team Southampton being in the division.

Also, in Britain, a lot more people care about the Championship because they've followed the top flight for years: the championship is full of ex-Premier League teams, so clubs like West Ham, Birmingham, Blackpool, Leicester, Reading, the mighty Southampton, Watford, Derby, Middlesbrough are clubs we sort of know (plus we 'know' Cardiff from their run to the FA Cup final, etc, etc). There's also a much bigger collective memory, and a lot more punditry than in the states so football-following people know things about most of the 92 clubs in the Football League - including how they play.

People who are nowhere near Wycombe can still recall the name of the striker that they found after putting an ad on Ceefax (TV based text information service - finally shut down this week) that scored for this lower-division club against (then-decent) Leicester in the FA Cup quarter-final 11 years ago - there's a hold, they are slightly interested in the scores (a bit like you and Wolves) to see these (recent-ish) FA Cup giant killers. They probably couldn't tell you that to get to play Leicester they only just beat Wimbledon on penalities - everyone on the field kicked one before the deadlock was broken by one being saved (22 penalties is certainly an English football record), or that Martin O'Neill managed them in the early 90s. I, myself, couldn't have told you (despite growing up with Wycombe as my nearest league team) that they got to the League Cup semi 6 years ago, knocking out Fulham in the quarters.

[realjd]

How about the Champions League yesterday? I'm not a Chelsea fan myself but am good friends with a few. Mainly though I was happy to see Barca get knocked out. And for it to happen with Chelsea playing a man down, it was awesome.

Who would have thought that Messi would flat-out miss a penalty shot?

[mgk920]

Anyone catch the Queens Park Rangers @ Manchester City game live on Sunday morning?  I was seeing highlight reels of that game with the reel switching back and forth to the Manchester United-Sunderland game and the looks on those United players, coaches and fans after City scored that final goal is one for the ages!





Mike

[realjd]

I watched the Arsenal game live then caught replays of the others. What a horrible end of the season for everyone associated with United. City definitely earned the title though.

I'm just relieved that Arsenal finished third, so we made it to the Champions League next year regardless of the outcome of next weekend's final.

[english si]

As live games are only for pub/premium TV, I didn't. But I avoided the scores and watched the highlights where they interleaved the two matches involving Manchester clubs - making it more nail-biting (and due to the Bolton game not being interleaved in, that added the doubt about City's winning, because it meant that QPR were indeed staying up - something they could only guarantee with a draw or better).

I may have woken the neighbours up at 11pm, as that's when those matches ended (as I saw them). The look on Fergie's face almost cancels out all the times I've had to see him smile as they have won the league (especially horrible was after Tottenham played poorly in the second half of the last game to let Man U beat them and deny Arsenal the title). His post-match comment about 5 minutes of added time was a bit cheeky - the game needed 5 minutes after the delay that Barton caused and Sir Alex has controversially had the 4th official add an extra minute before, only for Man U to win the match in that last minute to give them vital points.

I thought '89 was close (pre-Premier League, a week after everyone else had stopped playing, thanks to the Hillsborough disaster postponing the match and there not being a slot until after the season had finished. Arsenal, under the new goal difference system, needed to win by two clear goals at Anfield (who were ahead) and were 1-0 up entering the penultimate minute. They won the league by scoring a second and just beating Liverpool on goal difference. They wouldn't have won on the old system of goal average).

I feel sorry for Bolton, getting relegated via a goal that blatantly shouldn't have stood and a penalty that was a close call. QPR didn't really deserve to go down and for them to go down with two injury-time goals from City would have been horrible. Villa, however, won less games than anyone but Wolves, and scored less than anyone but Stoke - this time the boring Brummie team under McClesh stayed up - grr - hopefully next year!

Highlights of yesterday's results include Everton making sure they finished above Liverpool and West Brom giving Roy Hodgson a good farewell.

Don't forget, as well as the Champions League final, there's the Play-off Final between West Ham and Blackpool to come - the highest stakes (for the clubs) single match in world sport. Both sides would be worthy and entertaining additions to the Premier League (joining Reading and the mighty Southampton!), though I'd like Blackpool to win because Ian Holloway's post-match interviews are pure gold.

[realjd]

As live games are only for pub/premium TV, I didn't.

I've heard we have better (more extensive) TV coverage of the Premier League over here than you do. We usually get most (all) of the games live on Fox Soccer, Fox Soccer+, ESPN, and occasionally regular, free over-the-air Fox, and last weekend they showed every game live simultaneously across the entire Fox family of channels. I believe the Champions League final next weekend is also on Fox.

Why is goal differential the tie breaker and not head-to-head? It doesn't seem right to me that Liverpool and Fulham tied on points, yet Liverpool ended up above Fulham on the table due to goal differential while at the same time Fulham beat Liverpool twice.

[english si]

We have every match televised, just that they are on Sky Sports (a premium subscription-based set of channels) and occasionally ESPN (they scramble the standard channel and have it as pay-per-view occasionally). I'd imagine that the Fox family of channels aren't all going to be free or basic subscription.

We get European football on free channels, though not all games - Wednesday nights in the Champions League (and the final) and normally only two games on the free-to-air channels (we're  if there's two English clubs playing, or it's the quarter finals. The Europa league has Thursday night games too. It's just the Premier League that is only highlights on free-to-air channels, though highlights programmes for other competitions (even for games that have only just finished like Madrid-Bayern - which as it went to penalties meant that there was only time for 10 minutes of news, rather than 45 minutes, before the highlights programme started on the same channel, with Barca-Chelsea highlights first) are popular, being on at times that don't clash with the popular programmes in prime-time.

--

Goal difference is the way we have done it since 1989. In many ways it is a good idea - the aim is to thus to win big in every match. None of this score a goal and then defend type play. Having goals scored next (why West Brom finished above Swansea) also encourages teams to attack. Not sure where West Brom, Swansea and Norwich would come if it was head-to-head - they were all on the same points.

Fulham beating Liverpool twice is taken into account as Fulham would get 6 points to Liverpool's zero and Liverpool's goal difference would go down, with Fulham's going up.

[english si]

While not premier League, I enjoyed following the Arsenal-Norwich score last night - what a game!

And having a game like that was well timed to give the pundits and press something other than the Chelsea-Man U game and the refereeing controversy.