Sunday, 20 December 2009

Manager of the Season!


Yet another week when football, and the Premier league in particular threw up a whole load of headlines. From weather based cancellations, more injuries to David Moyes' Everton, Lionel Messi picking up yet another award after winning the World Club Cup for Barcelona, 3 time taken penalty, the Spurs' players 'golfing' trip to Dublin and of course unpredictable results by the bucket load.

Ok granted the bucket maybe wasn't as deep as in past weeks but there was still losses for Liverpool, Manchester United, and Celtic whilst Chelsea dropped points at could be relegation fodder West Ham.

Chelsea were looking invincible just a few weeks ago and suddenly, having lost to Blackburn on penalties in the League cup, they seem anything but. Petr Cech would find it difficult to get into the England squad on current Chelsea form, if England had any goalkeeper they could rely on, and John Terry is playing at his worst for some time. Tony Cascarino said on Sky Sports News today that he couldn't see Chelsea playing worse than they currently are but he seems to forget that in January some of there most influential of players will be jetting off to Angola to take part in the African Cup of Nations. It may of course have little effect on the Blues but it will leave Carlo Ancelotti looking over his shoulder at United and Arsenal.

Talking of the champions, that's United of course and not Arsenal, their title defence is starting to look a little nervy to say the least. When Sir Alex says "there's no light at the end of the tunnel" you can't help but listen. Of course just a day or so later the Glaswegian was stating that many of his defensive injuries were nearly back and he wouldn't be swooping into the market to pluck out and defensive cover come January.

The fact is thought that whilst United lost for the 2nd time in 3 league games they once again lost to an in form side. Fulham are transformed under Roy Hodgson, from a team who would have been relegated had it not been for Rafa Benitez resting all is players in a match against them a couple of years ago (don't remember Arsene Wenger complaining then), into a side who look at home in Europe and are easily disposing of the champions. At this point you'll all be looking at the title and thinking something along the lines of "Oh he's going to say Roy Hodgson is manager of the season. Bit premmature but fair enough." You're wrong of course, the Premier league 2009/2010 Manager of the season goes to either....

Roberto Mancini- Manchester City's new manager is going to have an incredible season, winning the Carling Cup having beaten city rivals United in the semi final and then going onto finish 4th in the league. Oh no the future's not been decided yet?!? I thought it had, I thought that's why City sacked Mark Hughes. Wait so Mancini hasn't already won the league cup and got to 4th? He's done nothing in English football so far you say? Well I am mistaken. So Mark Hughes leads his side to 6th in the Premier league, a good position to find yourself in just before Christmas, and a league cup semi final and still gets sacked! He wasn't managing United or Chelsea, teams who would frown on being 6th at any time of the season passed the third game, he was managing at City, a side who have never finished inside the top 6 in Premier league history.

For those of you who didn't work out the last paragraph was written slightly tongue in cheek. I'm also not a big fan in the way Manchester City have gone about sacking a manager who, though he hasn't blown the Premier league away, has done little wrong to get sacked. I'm especially not a fan of Garry Cook, who is chief executive down at the City of Manchester Stadium. In the past he has been referred to as the David Brent of football, watching him in Monday's press conference acting arrogant and passive aggressive towards journalists you can see why. Cook was unflappable in suggesting the club were right to sack Sparky and did nothing wrong with the way they went about it. For me though deciding you're going to sack a manager three weeks before you actually sack him and then doing it after a victory is almost definitely the wrong way to go about it! I'm not saying that sacking a manager needs to be an impulse decision but that victory over Sunderland should at least have bought him some time and having the new guy in place almost by the time Hughes had left the changing rooms for one last time must have been a kick in the nads for the Welshman. In the end though it will be City who may well regret Hughes' sacking most, if rumours are to be believed then should Mancini fail to make the top four he'll be sacked and the Blues of Manchester and their fans will once again be green with envy over the stability just a few miles away.

But why stop there! We have another nomination to come....

Ladies and Gents I give you, Rafa! Well what a season, back in November they were knocked out of the Champions League and found themselves in near disarray in the Premier league. Then came wins against Arsenal, Wigan and Portsmouth in a week and the whole season turned around. They surged up the table into fourth place and won the FA Cup and Europa League double. Ok so granted just like the Mancini hypothetical situation it could end up not being so hypothetical, but again like with Mancini I can't see it happening.

The reason I'm picking on Benitez, other than it being fun, is he just makes it too easy. About 10 days ago the Scouse Spaniard said "the season starts here", in which case he's started with 3 points from a possible 9 with a goal difference of minus 1, and judging on how badly the real seasons gone so far he may just take that.

We were led to believe at the beginning of the season that if Torres and Gerrard were fit then it would be extremely difficult to stop Liverpool finally winning the league, they haven't stayed fit and it has exposed the holes in the squad and specifically the Rafa made problem of having few strikers after selling Robbie Keane, Peter Crouch and Craig Bellamy in the last couple of seasons. Indeed even with El Nino and Stevie G fit they have been anything but firing, as on Saturday when they were well out played and out gunned by south coast strugglers Portsmouth. I know only a few short weeks ago I said Liverpool were dangerous in the race to the top four as a wounded, out of Champions League, animal type way but having seen them continue to struggle and Spurs and Villa looking just as strong or stronger I'm starting to believe they'll be lucky to finish ahead of City, Birmingham or Manchester.

With the end of the year and in fact end of the decade approaching it's only inevitable we start to reminisce over the last 10 years of football. Personally I'll be blogging about it next week but for now with the exciting Christmas schedule to come over the next week or so I'd like to look forward, after all the season truly starts here!

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