Super Heroes

Not wanting to be left out, Columnist Randy checks in with some final thoughts on the BPL and the Champions League:

With the Premier and Champions League seasons over and now the summer transfer season upon us, I thought it time to chime in with some random musings:

• How appropriate are QPR’s court jester jersey’s considering they have the biggest clown in the Premier League as their captain: Joey Barton (yes Correspondent Ed, I’m piling on). Barton really has no place in the BPL and as long as QPR keeps him they get what they deserve.

• Now that Chelsea in looking to sign the Hulk, Roman Abramovic has to go after Thor, Iron Man and Captain America. We here at farlieonfootie will keep Black Widow (aka Scarlett Johansson).

• While Didier Drogba was definitely a star in Chelsea’s miraculous Champions League win, the real MVP of their run in my book was Ashley Cole. His play was absolutely brilliant.

• Tottenham Coldspur's stumble into the finish cost them a coveted Champions League spot. It will be interesting to see how many players this will cost them, as players look for Champions League teams (Modric to Man United, anyone?!).

• Arsenal can thank Coldspurs for their Champions League spot. Now they need to get a real defense if they want to compete. Oh, yeah, they also better re-sign RVP. Without him, they will be battling to avoid relegation.

Crunch Time in the BPL

Columnist Randy only gets going when the going gets tough:

With three weeks remaining, its crunch time in the BPL. With the Manchester derby coming Monday, the race for the Premiership, Champions and Europa League spots and relegation avoidance is full on. Every point is critical and no team can afford to drop any more, so we should expect some exciting football this weekend.

Clash for the Silverware

Manchester United had a great chance to put City away with a win against Everton at Old Trafford. Offensively the Red Devils had an excellent game, netting four goals. Unfortunately their defense was exposed again. Rafael of the Wonder Twins made an excellent spectator on two costly Everton goals, the last putting Everton level at four. Now only three points clear instead of five, the Monday clash with City is for all intents and purposes a winner take all championship game. The one thing in United’s favor going forward is they have an easier final two games, with fixtures against Swansea and Sunderland, both of whom have nothing to play for. City, meanwhile, have tough matches against Newcastle, who is trying to hold on the final Champions league spot, and QPR -- who are fighting, almost literally, to stave off relegation.

League Battles

With the top two spots locked up by United and City, the fight is on for the remaining two Champions League spots. Problem is, it seems like no one besides Newcastle wants them. Arsenal, after getting beaten by Wigan last week, came back with a very poor performance against Chelsea’s backups. The Gunners are only three points clear of Newcastle, who have a game in hand. Arsenal also gave away needless points with their bruising loss to QPR, a game they should have won.  Arsenal needs to solidify their defense and regain their form and close out the season strong, with Newcastle only three behind and Tottenham six behind. Losing Mikel Arteta and the injury to Theo Walcott will not help.

With three straight loses, the Tottenham Coldspurs are fading and barely hanging on the Europa League spot. They are still within striking distance of a weakened Arsenal with a game in hand. With games against relegation-fighting Bolton and Blackburn this week,  Spurs need to quickly regain their form if they wish to catch Newcastle or Arsenal. They also must be wary of a strong-closing Chelsea.

Observations from BPL Round 28

photo by C.P.Storm	via PhotoRee

Columnist Randy is back with some random musings from the latest round of fixtures:

Tottenham to be renamed ColdSpurs

Tottenham again lost to a club they should have defeated, in a 1-nil loss at Everton. This marked the first time Spurs have lost three consecutive Premier League games under Harry Redknapp. Over this losing streak, Gareth Bale has all but disappeared and has looked uncomfortable on the right side. Spurs have taken a meager seven of the last possible 21 points, while Arsenal has taken 16 to climb to within one point of third in the table.  Spurs' upcoming games, while mostly winnable, are against teams that are tough to play and could easily see Arsenal pass them by.

Chelsea has petitioned the FA to play only against 10 man squads

Chelsea got their first post-AVB win in the League against Stoke this weekend. While playing fairly poorly, they were able to hang on to beat a 10-man Stoke team after an incredibly stupid red card by Stoke’s Ricardo Fuller. Winning 1-nil against 10 men for 75 minutes is not very confidence inspiring for the future.  Chelsea have taken only nine out of the last 21 possible points while dropping to 5^th in the table, and are only five points clear of Newcastle for the Europa League spot. Unless they turn things around they could be on the outside looking in very soon.

Man United in the driver's seat

While United has had a pretty dismal record in European play, they have taken care of business in the BPL when they've needed to. With this weekend's win against West Brom, coupled with Man City’s loss to Swansea, the Red Devils are back on top of the table, one point clear of City. With players starting to return from injury (Valencia, Cleverly, etc.) look for United to keep the lead heading into their April 30^th clash with City at The Etihad. That fixture will most likely decide the Premiership.

Some Observations From This Past Weekend

Randy took a break from his beer for just long enough to deliver the following:

With the beer still flowing (this week it’s Magic Hat #9), I take note of a few observations from this past weekend's matches:

Dea Gea Finally Looked Worth the Money

For a least one game David De Gea looked like the future goalkeeper of Manchester United. De Gea had several strong saves on Sunday, including a brilliant stop on Anthony Pilkington and another strong save on Grant Holt.  The United defense, and Rio Ferdinand in particular, did a solid job of keeping De Gea clean and giving him room to operate. While he can still look tentative at times, De Gea was much more aggressive then he has been in past matches. While only one game, this could be a springboard for De Gea and a performance he and the United defenders can build upon.

De Gea Looking Good

Paul Lambert for Manager of the Year

While Norwich went down to defeat against Manchester United this weekend, they did give the Red Devils a good run. Lambert’s managing has been impressive this season with his ability to effectively change systems based on the game situation. He is the first manager since 2000 to have back-to-back promotions, League One to Championship in 2009/2010 and Championship to Premier League this past year. Norwich are safely sitting in the top half of the table, currently eight, and can easily make a run at Chelsea for fifth and a place in the Europa League next season.

The Europa All-Stars

Columnist Randy returns with a proposition:

Here in America, every major sport has an All-Star game: the NFL (Pro Bowl), NBA, NHL, Major League Baseball (MLB) and even the MLS all have All-Star games. These games are somewhat entertaining, but in general are just glorified exhibitions games. Some notable exceptions are the MLB All-Star game, which decides home field advantage for the World Series, and the MLS All-Stars that get the honor of being trounced by Manchester United.

This got me thinking. Europe has plenty of trophies to play for, the FA Cup in England, the Europa League and, of course, the Champions League amongst others. The one thing missing, of course, is a European-wide All-Star tournament. Image the best from the Barclay’s Premier League, La Liga, Serie A and the Bundesliga all battling it out for the crown of “Best Football League in the World”.  It would be glorious. The tournament would be played the first two weeks of June, giving the players some time to rest and practice. The locations for the first round would be determined by coin flip, with the championship game rotated among the major cities in England, Italy, Spain and Germany like the Super Bowl. Imagine 90,000 screaming fans in Wembley, or close to 100,000 in Camp Nou in Barcelona, watching the best of the best in the world.

Now you might ask, “Why not other leagues? “ Well, that one’s easy: at the end of the day you want the biggest draw (read: money) for the games, so it would naturally involve the biggest leagues. Plus, historically these have been the strongest leagues. Sorry France, maybe next time.

To pick the best players we could borrow from how several sports leagues do it here in America: one-third fan vote, one-third player vote and one-third manager vote. This way a player that is immensely popular but having a bad year will not necessarily take a spot away from a more deserving player.

Since we still have a good way to go in the BPL season I’ll take a first look at deserving All-Stars so far, and then come back towards the end and update the list for our final All-Star team. Let the controversy begin!

Forwards

Robin Van Persie* (Arsenal) – Leading the league in goals, enough said.
Sergio Aguero* (Man City) – Seemingly always involved in the scoring.
Demba Ba (Newcastle) – A goal scoring machine. He plays, he scores.
Wayne Rooney (Man United) – Second in goals to RVP.

What We Learned This Past Weekend in the BPL

Columnist Randy Lecturing on the BPL to a Class of Highly Interested Students
photo by Shaylor	via PhotoRee

Columnist Randy appears to like the beer he's receiving:

With my first payment from Farlie on Footie in hand (Dogfish Head 90 Minute Imperial IPA), I decided to chronicle a few interesting things we learned in the BPL this week.

1.  Landon Who?

While the American press heaps loads of praise on Landon Donovan, the best American in the BPL, by far, is Clint Dempsey. Dempsey, Fulham’s all-time leading scorer, this weekend became the first American to register a Premier League hat trick with his stellar performance against Newcastle (he also had a hat trick in his last outing against Charlton in the FA Cup). Dempsey is in the League's top five goal scorers this season, and is now the top goal-scoring midfielder (he was previously tied with Farlie on Footie favorite Frank Lampard).  Dempsey’s all around play has greatly improved this year and hopefully will translate into transfer interest from one of the League's top teams so he can get a chance to play in the Champions League next year. Now, let's just hope USA Soccer coach Jurgen Klinsmann uses Dempsey to his full potential leading up the 2014 World Cup.

2. Wolves are absolute rubbish

Coming off an embarrassing mid-week loss to Championship side Birmingham City, Wolves followed up with a home defeat to Aston Villa. To add insult to injury, former Wolves' star Robbie Keane scored the leveling and winning goals, the last on a beautiful strike from 20 yards that went in off the underside of the crossbar. Wolves haven’t kept a clean sheet at home in 10 games this season, and are winless in their last eight fixtures. The only thing keeping them off the bottom of the table is a more inept Wigan squad, but at this point they seem destined for relegation. The only question that seems remaining is when manager Mick McCarthy will get the sack.

The Transfer Market Hall of Shame, Class of 2011

farlieonfootie's newest hire has demanded that his wages be paid entirely in craft beer.  Herewith, Columnist Randy:

With a new year comes a new transfer window and the excitement is building. Rumors are flying fast and furiously as fans anxiously wait to see if their favorite team has upgraded their talent or lost what talent they had (stay tuned, Blackburn fans). With all the transfer excitement building, we thought it a good idea to look back on last year's transfers to see which have been the worst so far. While there have been some great ones --  Demba Ba to Newcastle, Juan Mata to Chelsea and, of course, Sergio Aguero to Manchester City spring to mind -- we’re going to look at the five worst transfers of 2011. My criterion, while very subjective, basically takes into account two things: 1) How expensive was the player in question; and 2) have they produced and lived up to expectations. With that said, on to our top, er, bottom 5.

5 – David De Gea  - Manchester United

Transfer - £18 million from Atletico Madrid

De Gea arrived at Old Trafford as the heir apparent to the legendary Edwin Van der Sar . Coming off a successful U-21 European Championship he initially seemed up to the task. Alas, De Gea has been tentative in the box of late, and susceptible to costly mistakes all season long. His play so far has earned him time on the bench, and it appears as if he has been replaced by Anders Lindegaard for now. Since De Gea is only 21 there's still plenty of time for him to turn it around and become United’s goalkeeper for the future.

4 – Stewart Downing – Liverpool

Transfer - £20 million from Aston Villa

After 20 games in the League this season, Stewart Downing has produced absolutely nothing, save an arrest for allegedly punching his ex-girlfriend. He has zero assists and zero goals in Premier League play, but finally managed a point with a goal against Oldham in the FA Cup. Anyone who has watched Liverpool this season has seen Downing has had more than his fair share of opportunities to tuck away goals. At least now he has the same amount of goals as he has arrests.

3 – Samir Nasri – Manchester City

Transfer - £22 million from Arsenal

Nasri has appeared in only 12 league games, while making the starting XI only nine times. In those games, while he has netted two goals and seven assists, he has often seemed lost and out of place. With David Silva and Yaya Toure anchoring the City midfield it has been hard for Nasri to get on the pitch, especially as he has also been outplayed by James Milner. With Yaya Toure off the African Cup of Nations, thoughm Nasri should have a chance to play and show his worth.