The English football season winds up in traditional fashion today at Wembley with the FA Cup final, although there is nothing traditional about the 5.30pm kick-off time in London, a bit on the late side (11.30pm) for football fans in Asia.
As usual at this time of the year, Wembley has been working overtime, having hosted four play-off finals in the past fortnight.
Earlier this week Norwich City, who were relegated last season, bounced straight back into the Premier League with a comfortable 2-0 victory over a disappointing Middlesbrough. The fact that ‘Boro’s name was spelt wrong on the Wembley tickets was seen as not the best of omens.
It was quite an achievement for 33-year-old Canaries manager Alex Neil who only a year ago was player-manager with Hamilton Academicals in Scotland. Celebrity chef Delia Smith, co-owner of Norwich, praised Neil who is already being called “Sir Alex” by Norwich fans. “He’s incredible — and doesn’t have an ego. That’s hard to find,” the TV chef said.
In the other play-off finals, Preston, thanks to a hat-trick from Jermaine Beckford, romped past Swindon Town 4-0 to win promotion to the Championship, while in League Two, Southend needed a penalty shoot-out to dispose of Wycombe Wanderers.
The Conference play-off saw Bristol Rovers, who were relegated last year after 94 years in the Football league, return at the first time of asking, through another penalty shoot-out before a record 47,000 crowd for a Conference final.
In fact it was a good year for the city of Bristol, with Bristol City gaining promotion to the Championship after running away with the League One title.
It was frankly not the most gripping season for the Premier League, during which Chelsea rarely looked like losing their stranglehold. By contrast, the Championship held the interest throughout the season. It was no surprise the Manager of the Year award for the entire Football League went to Eddie Howe for his remarkable achievement with Bournemouth.
The competitiveness of the Championship took its toll however, with a staggering 20 managers biting the dust during the course of the season (and a couple more since). The Premier League had a relatively respectable seven managerial casualties.
Jose Mourinho was named Premier League Manager of the year, despite suggestions that the Blues were “boring” towards the end of their campaign, scraping home by the odd goal. In fact, through the entire season Chelsea won five games 1-0, which is hardly a crime and Jose would be quick to point out a 6-3 demolition of Everton at Goodison Park..
Mourinho was his usual mixture of arrogance and charm. When asked why Chelsea didn’t play more attractively he responded, “It’s the football they play on the moon.” He also provided some light entertainment when he was involved in a slapstick shoving match on the touchline with Arsene Wenger. The only thing missing were the handbags.
Arsenal, strong favourites for the FA Cup, were probably happy with their third place behind Manchester City, a side which at times looked really good but too often appeared rather jaded
Manchester United will settle for fourth place. Their big test comes next season to see if manager Louis van Gaal is the real deal. His press conferences can be bit of a struggle for all concerned, and one wonders if he really is on the same wavelength as Ryan Giggs.
United also suffered two of the biggest flops of the season, in Angel de Maria and Radamel Falcao. The most puzzling was Di Maria who looked extremely promising in his early games, but then seemed to totally lose confidence.
At Liverpool it was not exactly accurate to call Mario Balotelli a flop as nobody expected much from him in the first place. He didn’t let anybody down in that respect, scoring just the one league goal. As an Italian sportswriter remarked: “Balotelli has the strange talent of making everyone happy when he arrives and even happier when he leaves.”
Steven Gerrard’s farewell did not quite go according to plan with Liverpool’s last two games ending in embarrassing defeats at the hand of Crystal Palace and Stoke.
Alan Pardew must be commended for turning around Palace’s fortunes and Ronald Koeman deserves recognition for transforming the Saints from relegation prospects to surprise challengers.
Sam Allardyce’s reward for earning West Ham a creditable 12th place in the league, was the sack. Apparently the fans and the board were not too keen on his style of football. Maybe it wasn’t prudent for Sam to comment: “All this tippy tappy stuff everybody keeps going on about as the right way to play football is all a load of bollocks.”
It was sad, but hardly surprising, that two of last season’s promoted clubs, Burnley and Queen’s Park Rangers were both relegated.
The exception was Leicester City and they survived in style too. Bottom at Christmas after suffering a 15-match winless streak, they finished in 14th place following a remarkable run which saw them pick up 22 points out of 27 in their last nine games.
Mind you it took its toll on manager Nigel Pearson, who showed increasing strain as the season went on and in one memorable meltdown ended up calling a journalist an “ostrich”.
Leicester were also the surprising stars in what must rank the outstanding game of the season when they came back from 2-0 down at home to beat Manchester United 5-3 in a thriller.
As for the off-season, why not simply sit back and watch Fifa implode — it could be quite entertaining.