Written by Russell Berrisford on May 16, 2012 | 56 Comments »
Posted in English Premier League, General

A long time ago on a blog far, far away I wrote this post detailing which players I thought would be up for the English Premier League Player of the Season award if the campaign had ended in January.

So now seems a good time to take a look at how each of them fared as the rest of the season unfolded.

David Silva- Back in January I noted that his form had dipped in recent games and that dip didn’t really reverse until the final few weeks of the season.

Manchester City would never have won the title without his contribution and although his goal tally faltered he continued to provide some crucial assists in vital games.

Hard to see him as the best player in the Premier League but he will continue to give City a touch of guile in a team that uses strength and power as their most effective weapons.

Robin van Persie - Van Persie had already scored twenty goals by January and despite him only (only!) adding ten more for the rest of the season there can be little doubt that without him Arsenal would have been looking up at the Champions League places with envy.

Keeping his best player at the Emirates for at least another season is Arsene Wenger’s most important task in the coming weeks and one that he must be becoming uncomfortably familiar with.

Michael Vorm- The fact that Arsenal are rumoured to be interested in signing the Dutch goalkeeper is an indication of how effective he was for a Swansea side never looked in danger of being relegated.

Now we are at the end of the season it’s hard to make the case for Vorm as even the best goalkeeper in the League let alone the best player (Hart and Krul probably  beat him to that spot) but Vorm did win a place in the hearts of many a fantasy soccer fan as the bargain buy of the season.

Juan Mata- Back in January I wrote that the challenge for Andres Villas-Boas was to find a system that best suited the Spaniard.

He never did do that and when Roberto Di Matteo took over he moved Mata to a more central position that allowed him to influence games far more.

Similar to his compatriot Silva though he never quite produced the consistency that was needed and Chelsea fans will be hoping that next season Mata can grow to be the creative force that he is capable of being on a weekly basis.

Vincent Kompany- The Manchester City captain was named Player of the Year by Barclays, the Premier League’s sponsors, so there is little doubt that he continued to perform in the latter half of the season.

He scored the winner in the crucial game against Manchester United and was the most solid of a City back line that, at times, could look less than convincing.

Aged just twenty-six Kompany could be around for a few years yet to give City a defensive foundation that is the envy of most clubs.

Demba Ba- Back in January it seemed that only the Newcastle striker could stop Robin van Persie from walking off with the award but then Ba went to the Africa Cup of Nations and Newcastle signed Papiss Demba Cisse whose arrival forced Ba to play on the left and cut his goal scoring rate dramatically.

Newcastle didn’t suffer because Cisse scored goals at a rate, and of a quality, that were more than the equal of what Ba had done in the first half of the season but it will be interesting to see if Ba opts to stay with the club or moves to one of the number teams who didn’t take a chance on him last season because of his injury record.

The comments from that piece back in January focused on the lack of Spurs players in the top six (would any make that list now I wonder?) as well as shout outs for Yaya Toure and Cheick Tiote and neither of those two would be far away from anybody’s team of the season now that it is all over.

Pretty hard to look passed van Persie for the overall award but is there anybody not listed that you think deserves a mention?   

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Written by Russell Berrisford on May 9, 2012 | 12 Comments »
Posted in English Premier League

There are many aspects of Aston Villa that make them an iconic team in the history of the English game.

They were one of the founder members of the League back in 1888; their home ground of Villa Park is one of the great traditional stadiums that (before Wembley became the de facto venue for any game of import) was a regular host of FA Cup semi-finals; they have a European Cup trophy to their name and even their claret and blue colours can’t help but bring to mind a simpler, more noble, era.

How different from what we see today.

Barely scraping away from the relegation zone (with a somewhat fitting backs-to-the-wall home draw against ten man Tottenham) Villa fans must be wondering if another season in the Premier League is less a reprieve and more an extended stay in purgatory.

Manager Alex McLeish wasn’t the most popular appointment given his previous tenure at local rivals Birmingham City but he has somehow managed to allow that popularity to fade even further by consistently putting out a team that appears solely concerned with stifling the game and incapable of providing anything that resembles entertainment in any shape or form.

Yet McLeish has already indicated that he expects to be back next season leaving owner Randy Lerner with the unenviable task of choosing between sticking with an experienced, yet incredibly unpopular, manager or taking a chance on bringing in somebody new with no guarantee that things will turn around for the better.

Indeed Lerner is not the first American to discover that the secret to success in top flight soccer is not the prudent financial restraint that can be used to build a team in North America but rather the kind of “live for today and damn the consequences” style of splurging that is the hallmark of oil billionaires who hail from countries unfettered by the nuisances of human rights and workplace health and safety regulations.  

Whatever Lerner’s financial plans the supporters will be hoping that McLeish is dispatched with haste and that a new appointee (Roberto Martinez will no doubt be mentioned) can make use of the talented youth at his disposal and, with perhaps just a few judicious signings help the club to “do a Newcastle”, although one suspects that the phrase “do a Newcastle” will begin to feel like a lifelong curse to many an owner and coach in the coming seasons.

The more plausible scenario is that Villa will embark on the  kind of slow decline that has become the signature of so many of the once mighty teams of the English game who find that the revenue from attendance figures alone is no longer enough to allow to them to compete in the modern era.

Villa then are more likely to “do a Sheffield Wednesday” (another team with a storied stadium) than a Newcastle and, like Wednesday, may soon find themselves rooting for promotion rather than worrying over the possibility of relegation.

If that decline means that going to Villa Park eventually becomes more fun that it has been of late then that may be no bad thing, but the current incarnation of the club makes it hard to believe that only three other English teams have won more trophies than the men in Claret and Blue.

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Written by Russell Berrisford on May 5, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Posted in English Premier League, General

There are many things wrong with modern football.

The huge disparity in wealth between the big clubs and the small, the way that players will bend and break the rules to their own advantage and the feeling that those at the very head of the game have little interest in the welfare of the supporters that comprise the grass roots of the game.

Yet every once in a while the sport produces a moment that is so unique to itself that we can’t help but remember why it remains the most popular on the planet.

It happened again when Newcastle’s Papiss Cisse scored his sensational goal against Chelsea. 

If Cisse had been an NFL quarterback throwing a touchdown or an MLB outfielder nailing a runner at home plate we would have marveled at the accuracy but Cisse had the added disadvantage of having to use his feet and not his hands.

If he had been a golfer who had played a nine iron to the green with that degree of height and fade the gallery would have risen as one to greet his arrival, but Cisse didn’t have the advantage of a caddy telling him the yardage and the wind speed.

And neither did he have the advantage of time to weigh up his options.

In a single moment he chose a path that many of us would not have seen if we had studied the angles for hours.

Over on BBC radio the analyst Steve Claridge seemed initially to be terrified by what he had seen.

Steve Claridge reacts to Cisse goal

Maybe Claridge’s reaction isn’t too far off the mark because when a player produces a moment like that we should be enthralled not just by the athletic skill on display, but more by the sheer abundance of imagination that allows such a moment to spark into creation.

What Cisse did wasn’t just to take a chance on a long shot that may or may not have paid off.

It was the sporting equivalent of a leap of faith. 

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