EPL 2022 / 2023

@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.

Bordeaux-Rodez play-off in France called off after fan attacks player.

Two down, one to go for Man City. And that's the big prize!

@dogmeat said in EPL 2022 / 2023:

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.

Coventry were in the EPL for the first few years.

@sparky said in EPL 2022 / 2023:

Bordeaux-Rodez play-off in France called off after fan attacks player.

View embedded content

They abandoned the match because a player got concussed?

@KiwiPie sorry i meant to say this century.

I don't count LBF (League Before Fulham)

@dogmeat said in EPL 2022 / 2023:

@KiwiPie sorry i meant to say this century.

I don't count LBF (League Before Fulham)

Is that 46 this century? How many in total?

@KiwiPie OK I have updated my spreadsheet to include the seasons prior to 2000

There are now 51 teams that have featured in the EPL since its inception in 1992.

The five additions are
Barnsley (1 season)
Blackpool (1)
Bradford (2)
Sheffield Wednesday (8)
Swindon (1)

Here they all are with my arbitrary classification into bands

Ange Postecoglou seems to be firming as the new Spurs manager. It's quite the journey from the A-League.

He has a pretty impressive record, will be interesting to see how he does. Wonder if he can do anything to keep Kane on board.

@Cyclops Are Spurs better off cashing in Kane for the rebuild project? FWIW that's Micah Richards opinion. I can see the logic.

Surely Kane has to go. What's in it for him staying at Spurs? Surely the best he could hope for is a Cup run? Kane should go somewhere he can win trophies.

@dogmeat said in EPL 2022 / 2023:

@Cyclops Are Spurs better off cashing in Kane for the rebuild project? FWIW that's Micah Richards opinion. I can see the logic.

Surely Kane has to go. What's in it for him staying at Spurs? Surely the best he could hope for is a Cup run? Kane should go somewhere he can win trophies.

As a supporter I couldn't begrudge him wanting to leave to chase pots. But I'd prefer to send him to Real Madrid than for him to stay in the UK

@Cyclops said in EPL 2022 / 2023:

He has a pretty impressive record, will be interesting to see how he does. Wonder if he can do anything to keep Kane on board.

He has a job to repair the morale and culture after the end of the Conte era. We have some good players who underachieved this year, so he needs to get them playing better. But Levy will need to give him some pieces, we need at least one CB and some FBs because last year we couldn't stop anyone

@canefan The only place he could go for trophies in England is Citeh and they already have their unstoppable goal-scoring cyborg. He goes to Man U and he gets a League or FA Cup each season - hardly a guarantee of "trophies". He couldn't possibly go to Arsenal and 'Pool don't play with a striker.

His only option has to be overseas - BM or RM surely?

@junior said in EPL 2022 / 2023:

@canefan The only place he could go for trophies in England is Citeh and they already have their unstoppable goal-scoring cyborg. He goes to Man U and he gets a League or FA Cup each season - hardly a guarantee of "trophies". He couldn't possibly go to Arsenal and 'Pool don't play with a striker.

His only option has to be overseas - BM or RM surely?

That's my feeling. RM love buying our best players

RM and Ancelotti want Kane so that's where he'll end up if Levy has his way.

Kane wants Man U so he can break the EPL goal-scoring record.