EPL 2022 / 2023

@MajorRage said in EPL 2022 / 2023:

@mariner4life said in EPL 2022 / 2023:

Almost all of us are basically jealous of Guardiola. He's clearly the difference between the clubs to have such continual success. Perhaps Liverpool fans less so, as they've had a pretty good time under Klopp, but certainly the rest of us tend to look on in awe of Pep.

Pep obviously but the decision making on players coming in to the club is outstanding. They always upgrade. Get the best striker in Haarland. Offloading Jesus and Zhinchenko to Arsenal was brilliant. Did Arsenal overpay? Yes. May have helped in the short term but these players are not the basis of challenging City. Builds squad depth which Arsenal need and you can tell because Saka has had to play every game and looks tired. Whole Arsenal team looks tired for that matter. City are an amazing team and you know that if they want to they can put 3 goals on any side any day.

@bayimports Probably the biggest spenders of any promoted club. Basically they had to buy almost a full squad and then bought a few more for good luck. Lingard sitting there on 200K per week and has hardly kicked a ball.

Absolute disgusting performance by Arsenal. No urgency. No quick transitions which has been a hallmark on their game and has helped create scoring. Their stars look boring and lacking creativity. Because Forest was able to get behind the ball it was White to Partay to Saka, cuts back in, to Odegaard, Partay, White and repeat at nauseam in an umbrella. Arteta should worry less about the "Arsenal family" and their new chocolate lab and feelings and book them into the roach motel to develop some anger and get them out of their comfort zone. Kliewer at left back was a failure or he is learning to play without penetration? Tierney should have started. At least he showed some willingness to get to the byline. Jesus can not play as a point man with 2 men marking him. Just no movement and so predictable. Worried if Edu brings in more pretty players like Fabio Viera.

Spurs put in a similarly limp display after a solid first half. They have massive problems laid at the feet of the chairman Daniel Levy

Gutted to concede so late at anfield but a great performance all the same for Villa. Watkins missing the penalty in the first could have put the game to bed early but wasn't to be.

Funny what a new manager has done at Villa. Mings would have to be pushing for a spot back in the England squad. He was near unbeatable today. A complete contrast from when Gerrard was in charge and tried to force him out the door. McGinn also put in a massive shift at bothe ends of the field.

Need to beat Brighton at home next week to confirm European qualification.

@KiwiPie that table illustrates how FFP is supposed to work

Fulham did the original doing aFulham and basically had no room to spend anything until this year when the initial 133 dropped off the FFP calcs

@broughie A lot of Arsenal's problems today have to be down to Arteta and the formation he chose. Without Martinelli, everything went down the right and there was no space there. Forest got their early goal and basically camped out at the edge of their area and Arsenal played so slowly, they struggled to fashion any good chances, just passed the ball across the front of the Forest defence. Jesus showed something of why City let him go, he started playing like the talented little kid and whining when it didn't go his way. Saka has looked exhausted for a while which is unsurprising given the season he has had with no rotation and a World Cup.

@KiwiPie said in EPL 2022 / 2023:

@broughie A lot of Arsenal's problems today have to be down to Arteta and the formation he chose. Without Martinelli, everything went down the right and there was no space there. Forest got their early goal and basically camped out at the edge of their area and Arsenal played so slowly, they struggled to fashion any good chances, just passed the ball across the front of the Forest defence. Jesus showed something of why City let him go, he started playing like the talented little kid and whining when it didn't go his way. Saka has looked exhausted for a while which is unsurprising given the season he has had with no rotation and a World Cup.

Totally agree with this and kind of baffled at Arteta's adaptation to Martinelli's absence. He could have left Kliewer in the middle with Gabriel, Tierney left and White right, then the rest as is. It is hard to believe Arteta would tolerate the slow pace of play. But there was no change after halftime so perhaps he is too stubborn to change.

I have posted before that we got Man City's sloppy seconds in Jesus and Zinchenko as Pepe knew their ceiling. Jesus likes to complain, as does Zinchenko, and they are not character type players Arsenal needs. Arsenal are lacking these types.

West Ham also now mathematically safe, so 2 out of Tigers, Leeds and Everton for relegation with Southampton already locked in.. Assuming Newcastle beat Leicester today as expected then current bottom three most likely.

I'm cheering for Luton Town - K Road almost makes Traf Park look good!!!

@bayimports said in EPL 2022 / 2023:

West Ham also now mathematically safe, so 2 out of Tigers Foxes, Leeds and Everton for relegation

ahem

@dogmeat lol good spotting..cross sport habit

Also Brighton will finish 6th and make the Europa League - fantastic achievement. Unless City beat Brighton by 5 and Villa beat Brighton by 6 on the final day. Villa need to beat Brighton to take 7th and the Conference spot leaving Spurs out of Europe altogether.

Was listening to a pod that had supporters of Coventry and Luton previewing the play-off game. Interesting. Plenty of good-natured banter, but where it got interesting is their predictions for life in the EPL if they go up.

Coventry - we will be the worst team ever to be promoted. We only have two good players and they will be off in the summer. We have a lot of loan players too so would basically have to recruit a squad as Forest did but our owners don't invest. It will be torture for the fans and we will come straight back down

Luton. We will 'beat' Derby's record. We are totally unprepared and ill equipped for the Prem. We don't have good players but we have a great team ethic and work really hard, but that will get found out. We don't care. We will only last 12 months, but we aren't going to splurge on players we will stay within our salary cap and use the money a stay of even one year will generate to secure the clubs future for the next 100 years. TV and parachute payments will get us our new ground and we will settle comfortably back into the Championship.

Leicester get a point at Newcastle who confirm Champions League footy next season as a result.

2 points separate Everton, Leicester Leeds

All are at home in the final round hosting Bournemouth, West Ham and Spurs
Leicester has by far the best goal diff.

If I had to pick I would have Leeds and then.....Leicester for the drop but really it could be any combination that gets relegated.

@dogmeat said in EPL 2022 / 2023:

Was listening to a pod that had supporters of Coventry and Luton previewing the play-off game. Interesting. Plenty of good-natured banter, but where it got interesting is their predictions for life in the EPL if they go up.

Coventry - we will be the worst team ever to be promoted. We only have two good players and they will be off in the summer. We have a lot of loan players too so would basically have to recruit a squad as Forest did but our owners don't invest. It will be torture for the fans and we will come straight back down

Luton. We will 'beat' Derby's record. We are totally unprepared and ill equipped for the Prem. We don't have good players but we have a great team ethic and work really hard, but that will get found out. We don't care. We will only last 12 months, but we aren't going to splurge on players we will stay within our salary cap and use the money a stay of even one year will generate to secure the clubs future for the next 100 years. TV and parachute payments will get us our new ground and we will settle comfortably back into the Championship.

It's interesting - a club really could just keep the squad they have, pocket the cash and go back down with a huge profit. And even use the spare cash to get promoted again the year after.

@dogmeat said in EPL 2022 / 2023:

Leicester get a point at Newcastle who confirm Champions League footy next season as a result.

2 points separate Everton, Leicester Leeds

All are at home in the final round hosting Bournemouth, West Ham and Spurs
Leicester has by far the best goal diff.

If I had to pick I would have Leeds and then.....Leicester for the drop but really it could be any combination that gets relegated.

I think Bournemouth are already preparing for their Vegas party.. cant see Everton dropping, but you never know

@bayimports BAH HUMBUG There's only one game that matters on the final Sunday.

Mitro will score a brace as Fulham go to Old Trafford and win 3-1 Redemption time baby

A draw should be enough for Everton but they cannot really play for it in case Leicester beats West Ham. Leeds are relying on the others to lose unless Leeds can beat Spurs by 3. Could be dramatic as only Spurs are playing for something and that something is the Euro-Conference - an early goal for Bournemouth or Leeds or Leicester and it is all on. Looking at the stats, Leicester went to Newcastle playing to not lose.

@dogmeat

Leicester reminded me of the all whites vs a decent team. A team with little genuine talent who park the bus and hope to nick a goal. Which Leicester almost did.

The Champions League and Europa League places are confirmed now with ManU's win over Chelsea. Just the Europa Conference League place is up for grabs on the final day.

Only Leeds and Leicester have a worse record over the last 6 games than Chelsea

Good luck managing that rabble. Like cleaning out the Augean Stables

Conference place runners and riders

Villa on 58. Home to Brighton. Tough opponent with nothing to play for. Win to guarantee it, draw and both Spurs and Brentford can go past them.

Spurs on 57. Away at Leeds. Shit opponent with everything to play for. Spurs might not even be desperate to qualify. Win and if Villa don't win then Spurs get it. Draw and need Villa to lose to finish above them.

Brentford on 56. Home to Man City. Best opponent with nothing to play for. Have to win and if both Villa and Spurs don't win then they get into Europe for the first time ever.

Ha - Luton Town make it to the EPL.

If I were them, I wouldn't spend much of the 10 million pounds they're planning to spend on facilities in the visitors dressing rooms!

It looks like Luton's transfer record is 2 million euro for Carlton Morris - suspect they will need to increase that just a little. Or maybe not, just pocket the cash and prepare for the future. Considering Forest spent 200m on transfer fees and that was just enough to stay up - not to mention their wage bill of close to 70m. Luton's total wage bill was apparently 10m this season - Forest spent that on Lingard alone.

Everton survive!

Sad to see Leicester go down though.

Annual horribilus for the famous CFC. Flush the dunny, move on

Wow, Leicester were champs not so long ago. Shows what can happen if you stop investing in your squad

Big Sam was an inspired signing at Leeds - not. Villa takes the last European spot.

Expect to see Leicester's best players picked over.

Leicester were 5th, 5th and 8th in the past 3 seasons and started the season with no new signings and some players who expected not to be there. Tielemans was one of those and he hasn't been on it all season - a lot of their success was based on he and Ndidi shielding the defence. Expect to see both of those plus Madison and Barnes leave plus possibly a couple more if Leicester need to shake off some high earners.

Leeds were just shambolic and I'm pleased the Big Sam gamble failed. If they can keep most of that squad together they will surely be promotion candidates next season - if they can find a manager to wrangle them into a formation.

@KiwiPie said in EPL 2022 / 2023:

I'm pleased the Big Sam gamble failed

oh shit me too

His opening press conference was total cringe. The shit he spouts about how good he is, and the only reason he's not managing real madrid is he's English is fucking awful.

Bye Sam

So Leicester joins Blackburn Rovers in the exclusive club of 'EPL champions to have been relegated'.

I wonder how many times two former champions have been relegated is the same season.

@Cyclops Not about to do the research on that one sorry - must have happened before though with so many regularly relegated teams like Sunderland, Newcastle, Sheffield Wednesday, Burnley, Wolves, Huddersfield etc.

Hard to beat Man City though - champions in 36/37, relegated in 37/38.

Top effort by Sean Dyche to save Everton.

Everton vs Burnley next season could be spicy if Dyche remains in charge.

Great day. Villa back playing European football. Didn't think I'd see the day after we've had some awful seasons over the last 13 years and even the start of this season. Really exciting to be there.

@Cyclops said in EPL 2022 / 2023:

So Leicester joins Blackburn Rovers in the exclusive club of 'EPL champions to have been relegated'.

I wonder how many times two former champions have been relegated is the same season.

Since KP is too lazy here's a couple of Wiki sites that show it's happened quite frequently even since the EPL existed.

At a glance, I think 96-97, 98-99, 01-02, 02-03, 03-04......

It is indeed very frequent. Special mention to 01/02 and 03/04 where all three relegated teams were champions (although both years one of the relegated teams were Leicester who hadn't won one yet).

I only looked back to the start of the EPL, but it's actually more common to have former champions relegated than not! In 31 seasons only 6 years have no champions relegated. 13 seasons have one relegated 10 have 2 and as mentioned above in two years all three were champions.

Leicester have been a pretty good club to support this century
Won EPL title.
Won FA Cup
Won League Cup
Won Community Shield
Quarter finals of Champions League
Semi finals of Conference League
Twice promoted to the EPL
Once promoted from League 1
Relegated 3 times from the EPL
Relegated once from the championship.

Perfect. Have to have the bad times to appreciate the good times.

I see Sevilla bet AS Roma in the Europa League final. Remarkable record they have there - they've made the final 7 times since 2006 and won all of them. Are they the best not-quite-good club in Europe?

Remarkable record for Sevilla - 5 of the last 10 Europa Leagues won by them in a competition you have to qualify for by being good but not too good. In 3 of those 10 seasons they were in the last 16 of the UCL instead.

Before this season, Sevilla have finished between 4th and 7th in La Liga for 9 consecutive seasons.

Counting next season 46 teams have appeared in the EPL. That's pretty good going as it's almost half the top 4 Divisions. Only 4 teams will have spent a single season in the PL and two of them will be Luton and Coventry.

For all their successes and failures (noted by @Kiwipie above) Leicester have only spent 14 seasons at the top level which places them 14th equal on the appearances table.