This meant Mark Hughes, who was appointed manager in place of Neil Warnock back in January, completed his mission of keeping Queens Park Rangers in the top flight of English football. This morning, Rangers’ owner Tony Fernandes said that we can expect a big announcement from the club in the coming days. This coupled with Hughes’ defiant post-match interview promising the club won’t be fighting relegation under his watch again leads us to assume that they’ll be a busy club in the transfer market this summer.
The other triumphant teams on grand slam Sunday were Arsenal and Tottenham, who secured vital top four finishes. Arsenal finished third which means they qualify automatically for the Champions League, bypassing a qualifying trip to Poland in mid-August. It was a perfect send-off for Pat Rice who leaves Arsenal’s coaching staff having been involved since 1984 and given the turbulent start to the campaign which saw 72% of fans calling for Arsene Wenger to be sacked; it’s not turned out to be a bad campaign at all for the Frenchman. He’s already signalled his intent for next season by signing Lukas Podolski from Cologne as well as being in talks with a handful of other big names, but the true test for him will be getting their talismanic leader, Robin Van Persie, to sign a new contract at the club. After receiving the golden boot award for an incredible 37 goals this year, he hinted that a move was likely, stating,
"I have been playing here for eight years and I love this club. Whatever happens that will never change."
If they can acquire the services of some of the big names, it will show the ambition that Arsenal have been lacking in the transfer window for the past few years. This may encourage the Dutchman to put pen to paper, but with every club in Europe willing to offer him a contract, you couldn’t begrudge him a move elsewhere.
Their North London rivals have a very different situation and they must play the waiting game to find out their fate. Harry Redknapp has already expressed where his allegiances lie and he’ll be hoping that Byern Munich can confirm their position as favourites and beat Chelsea in the Champions League final next week. If Chelsea manage to defy the odds again in the final and win, they earn the right to defend their title, which would mean Spurs drop into the Europa League.
Liverpool finished the season in a familiarly unremarkable fashion as they failed to score away at Swansea to finish 8th in the Premier League. A word of congratulations must be in order for Brendan Rogers’ men who treated 12,000 Elvis look-a-likes to a 1-0 over the Merseyside team. The reason for the mass fancy dress was a quote by the bookmakers at the start of the season who gave better odds for Elvis to play another live gig than for Swansea to be playing in the premier league next season. They’ve finished 11th and have played some wonderful football claiming the scalp champions Manchester City along the way. Kenny Dalglish may have all Liverpool fans under a spell, but the rest of us know he’s got so much work to do and at the moment, he’s simply not coming up with the goods. His recruitment has been diabolical and he’s got into a terrible habit of paying over the odds for distinctly average footballers. Rumours in Merseyside are that he’s in talks with West Brom for a potential £18m move for their reserve keeper Marton Fulop who endured the most torturous afternoon a professional sportsman can experience. He was completely to blame for all three of Arsenal’s goals and if ever there was a man who needed a hug, it was the Hungarian and it’s safe to say that everyone watching would have happily provided a shoulder for the keeper to cry on.
With all these winners, it means of course that there must be losers and no-one lost more this weekend than Bolton Wanderers who took the plunge in the most desperate fashion. They could only manage a 2-2 draw at the Britannia Stadium but both Stoke goals came directly from shocking decisions from Chris Foy. The first goal was nothing short of a farce, Adam Bodgan had the ball firmly in to hands about two yards from goal when Jonathan Walters bundled into him and the impact was such that the keeper and the ball ended up in the back of the net. Foy deemed this to be a perfectly legal act and despite the Stoke striker never making contact with the ball, he was on the score-sheet. The referee’s second blunder came with the score at 2-1 to the visitors when he deemed that Peter Crouch had been brought down by the man Bogdan again. In Foy’s defence, from his angle it looked like there might have been contact, but on closer inspection, Crouch merely fell over leaving who else but Walters to drill home the penalty. Owen Coyle was very gracious in defeat considering the rough ride his team had with the officials and although he explained that the decisions didn’t help, many managers would have been much more forthright in voicing their disapproval of the officiating. He expressed his belief that the side could bounce straight back up given the calibre of the Bolton squad, although, holding onto players such as Martin Petrov may prove a stiff challenge.
The other losers on the day were Manchester United and Newcastle United, though comparable to Bolton’s loss, theirs is like Chris Moyles losing two pounds. Newcastle have had an unbelievable season considering they were promoted last year and Alan Pardew has done remarkably well in sustaining such a consistent season. He’s made two of the best signings of the season by some way in Papiss Cisse and Demba Ba’a and if he can fend off the circling vultures in the summer, it’s a strike-force that can only go from strength to strength. If the Toon Army were offered 5th place at the start of the season, they’d have snapped it up but the way the faded away in the last couple of weeks was a shame, though 5th is the least they deserve.
Manchester United missed out on their 20th title by goal difference and five minutes of injury time. Sir Alex Ferguson was as bullish as ever in his post-match interview as he welcomed the challenge of Manchester City in the years to come and that they’d have to wait 100 years until they reached United’s level of 19 titles. Love him or hate him, you must respect Fergie’s Olympic stamina to keep gong year on year and producing the goods. If there’s one thing the Scotsman knows, it’s winning titles. Fergie said in his bebrief that there’s one thing about the Premier League, if you finish at the top come the end of it, you deserve to lift the trophy.
Whether you agree or not with how Manchester City have won the league given their multi-millionaire investors; they undoubtedly deserve it. They beat their nearest rivals twice including the 6-1 demolition job at Old Trafford and despite being without Carlos Tevez for much of the year; they scored more goals than anyone else in the league and conceded fewer. The weekend, rightfully, belongs to them.
In the euphoria of Sunday’s football, the rest of the weekend’s action was somewhat swept aside. In Swansea on Friday night, we were treated to one of the best Celtic League matches ever to have been played when the Ospreys trounced Munster 45-10 in a game of outstanding quality. On Saturday the Aviva Premiership final was decided as Leicester triumphed at home to Saracens and the Harlequins came out on top against Northampton at the Stoop. Sunday was an epic day, but behind all the football there was an unlikely first-place finish for the Williams team out in Barcelona at the Spanish Grand Prix in F1. Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado registered his first ever F1 win as he took the chequered flag from pole despite heavy competition by runner-up, Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso. This had the lot, with Lewis Hamilton being dropped from pole to back of the grid for running out of fuel in qualifying, Michael Schumacher and Bruno Senna crashing and blaming each other for their early retirements, a malfunctioning pit stop where a driver had to drive over a spare tyre and a raging garage fire in the Williams paddock where thankfully no-one was severely injured. On top of all that, Roger Federer won the Spanish Open tennis on the hotly debated blue clay of Madrid, Matt Kuchar won the Players Championship golf and Penarth CC beat Abergavenny CC in their first league match of the season.
Of course, in every pantomime there is a villain and this week it’s been duly accepted by Joey Barton. His embarrassing antics on the field were laughable and his ongoing feuds on twitter reflect him not only as a sportsman, but a man. The reason for the red card may be questionable as it seemed both he and Carlos Tevez were in the wrong, however, his actions after being shown the red card are completely indefensible. He’s publicly admitted on twitter that as soon as he knew he was sent off, he deliberately tried to get a reaction from one of the Manchester Ctiy players so that they would be walking down the tunnel with him. After striking out at Sergio Aguero, he then attempted a feeble head-butt on Vincent Kompany before being escorted from the putch by none other than opposition fullback Micah Richards. This was only the beginning of the fracas as he became entangled in a war of words on twitter with Robbie Savage and Gary Linekar regarding the BBC broadcast of Match of the Day, claiming he was being personally victimised. Mark Hughes is a good manager and seems like a good bloke, the best thing he could do for football and for humanity is sack Joey Barton and send him to the streets where he’ll inevitably end up where he belongs; prison.
All in all, it was a pretty good weekend. All that’s left to do now is keep an eye out Mario Balotteli’s picture on the front of the tabloid papers, because surely his celebration antics are going to be deliciously entertaining.
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