If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
Only three months to go to the new season. And we really can believe, again, that QPR are in the Premier League.
Most of us lower division football fans can now relax and start thinking about next season. Start hoping. And planning. We're mostly aware of which players are leaving our club and everyone is after a solid centre half and 20 goals-a-season forward we all think we need to be a decent side next year.
In 2004 a bronze statue of Jack Walker was unveiled outside Ewood Park in tribute to the man who transformed the fortunes of his team.
It's hard to think of an instance in Premier League history of a team's season being composed of two such contrasting halves, but Tottenham Hotspur have a knack of being unpredictable. After an all-conquering first half of the year the wheels didn't so much fall off Tottenham's season but were smashed and burnt.
The assumption with Rooney is that he has to do something special to remind people of his talent - the overhead kick against City or a hat-trick at Bolton for example. Has he truly fulfilled the potential he once showed? Potentially, but not necessarily in the way people expected.
Clint Dempsey is having a remarkable season. The American international is the fourth-highest goalscorer in the Premier League in 2011-12, with 16 goals (so far) for Fulham, and he has scored a further six in cup competitions.
The growth in live broadcasting of British football has brought increased financial rewards for the elite clubs, but has also resulted in a host of ridiculous kick-off times that have left match-going fans in the lurch.
For fans of Manchester United, last night's 2-0 win away at Blackburn was a cause for delirious joy, taking their team five points clear at the top of the table. For everyone else it was a cause for grudging admiration and jealousy of a side that, despite being incredibly average at points this season has an unparalleled ability to produce results.
The Premier League would be a much lesser place without the maverick. From the kung fu kicking of Cantona and hoarding bashing of Temuri Ketsbaia, to the loveable madness of Di Canio and Ravanelli, English football has always been peppered with players who will either leave you in the lurch or fire you to a glorious victory.
Yes, it's time to say good-bye to another Chelsea manager. AVB's departure means it's now mathematically easier to list who hasn't managed Chelsea under Abramovich than who has. So what went wrong?
For the past 12 months being an Arsenal fan hasn't been particularly fun. This, I fear, is what mediocrity feels like. And I think we may have to get used to it.
Brits - including our political leaders - prefer to sit around moaning. Our best days are behind us, they say. 'Little Britain syndrome' has taken ahold throughout the nation. I tell you what will get rid of it: a dose of British optimism to snap us out of our funk. We need that half-time ad, reminding us that we too are a great country capable of digging ourselves out of a hole.
Thierry Henry has returned to Arsenal, where he was rightly recognised in his eight-year stay as one of the finest strikers ever to have plied his craft in the English leagues. This has - for enthusiasts of the round-ball game - engendered the same sort of excitement grandees of the Conservative Party must have felt when Winston Churchill returned to Number Ten in 1951 at the age of 76.
St James' Park sits at the top of Newcastle like a colossus. I can see it from my window as I type. To a football-mad region, it is reassuring presence - a 52,409 seat monument that stands strong in the whirlwind of madness and mismanagement that has engulfed the club for decades.
The 13-goal mauling dished out by both Manchester sides to their north London opponents on Sunday raises an intriguing question: is this the future of English football?
Few things have the status of a national event in Britain these days. Christmas is one, a Royal Wedding is another, but the altogether more surprising event that has captured the attention of the nation occurs but twice a year.
