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Winners
Manchester United
According to The Sunday Times' strangely-subdued account of events at Ewood Park, Carlos Tevez's equaliser against Blackburn 'spared the champions' blushes'. It was rather more significant than that. Tevez's 88th-minute header - the product, by the way, if Sir Alex is to be believed, of that thing termed 'character' - was probably the goal that secured United a tenth Premier League crown. Had ManYoo lost, three wins for Chelsea would have secured them the title. Instead, such is the superiority of United's goal difference, the point Tevez saved means that United can still retain their title by beating West Ham and Wigan even if they lose next weekend at Stamford Bridge.
Critically, the avoidance of defeat also ensures their confidence will remain undiminished ahead of the Champions League meeting with Barcelona, although Sir Alex must be concerned at his side's form in their last three matches. Even his mammoth squad may not be immune from fatigue and Paul Scholes' troubling regression continued this weekend. It will be a considerable surprise if he plays ahead of either Anderson or Owen Hargreaves in the Nou Camp.
At least United will not be playing in England's north-east. In the not-so-distant past, it was said that teams in that region had a critical advantage over their southern title rivals due to the number of troublesome London derbies that the latter had to endure. The geographical composition of the top flight is very different now, however, and it's been noticeable this term how United's struggles have tended to occur in opposition to feisty local neighbours - losing twice to Manchester's other team, being mugged at Bolton in November and coming within two minutes of losing 31 miles away from Old Trafford this weekend. With those local difficulties in mind, perhaps United's final-day trip to Wigan will not be quite the formality it is being depicted.
Well, just perhaps.
ManYoo's Regular Single-Goal Saviour
Considering the service provided by Old Trafford, Carlos Tevez's haul of 18 goals this term isn't particularly remarkable. Moreover, the Argentine was arguably the worst player on view at Ewood Park. Yet he does possess a marvellous knack of scoring critical goals (including one at Old Trafford last May which may have clinched his summer move to the champions) - aside from scoring the equaliser at Blackburn, Tevez previously salvaged draws at Tottenham and Lyon with equally-late goals and was United's match-winner in single-goal victories against Liverpool, Birmingham and Roma.
Sicknotes, Old And New
Having suffered a hamstring injury against Bolton on March 19 barely one month into his umpteenth comeback from injury, Louis Saha was scheduled to make an appearance at Blackburn before signing off sick with a knee injury. On a not entirely incidental note, Darren Anderton, the original 'sicknote' who is now finishing his career at Bournemouth, this weekend completed the third match of his latest comeback from yet another hamstring strain.
Michael Owen
Two more goals, a lucrative new contract in the offing, and, if the Sunday Times' rich-list is to be believed, £41m in the bank as the 12th-richest man in Britain under the age of 30.
Newcastle United
With so much focus on Keegan's deployment of Mark Viduka, Oba Martins and Michael Owen in a clever version of a three-pronged strikeforce, it's been largely ignored that the Toon have also kept three successive clean sheets. With four wins in their last five matches, they are also in fourth place in the Form Table.
The Messiah hasn't quite produced a miracle but he has pulled the club back from the brink and inspired Michael Owen's best run of form in many a year. Good management is generally a matter of common sense but Keegan's deployment of Owen as a sort of roaming midfielder was a stroke of genius.
Liverpool
There are two differences between last spring when Rafa Benitez selected a weakened team at Fulham and this weekend when he rested Steven Gerrard, Fernando Torres, Jamie Carragher and Xabi Alonso from another inconvenient encounter at Craven Cottage. The first, of course, is that those absences mattered not a jot as Liverpool still prevailed over a Fulham side whose fate is now sealed. The second is that, with just two days of rest available between Saturday's fixture and a Champions League semi-final against opponents enjoying the luxury of five days between matches, the Spaniard had valid cause to ignore demands from elsewhere that he "maintain the integrity of the Premier League" by picking his strongest available line-up
Benitez's actions last year, however, were less defensible - Fulham's victory on May 5 occurred eight days before Pool's next fixture, with the Champions League final a further ten days hence. Although Pool had beaten Chelsea on May 1, it was difficult to appreciate Benitez's bloody-minded refusal not to insure himself against the inevitable accusation that he had handed Fulham a fraudulent lifeline by putting some of his regular first-teamers, such as Steven Gerrard, on the bench (which is where Fernando Torres was this weekend). As a result of their undeserved and unearned good fortune against such household names as Gabriel Paletta, Emiliano Insúa and Nabil El Zhar, Fulham were able to avoid relegation by a solitary point.
Twelve months later, Liverpool have righted that wrong.
Bolton Wanderers
The perceived 'irony' of Gary Megson calling for Benitez to protect the integrity of the Premier League wasn't that the Bolton manager effectively withdrew the club from the UEFA Cup by himself selecting a weakened team (an action which hurt the club more than the competition) but the likelihood of Bolton facing a weakened Chelsea team on May 11 if - as is distinctly probable - the Londoners only have the Champions League to play for on the final weekend of the season.
Aston Villa
To the best of F365's knowledge, Villa's run of 15 goals in three consecutive matches is the most prolific in the Premier League since Manchester United scored the same amount in back-to-back-to-back matches against Bradford, West Ham and Middlesbrough in April 2000. They then whacked four more past Sunderland five days later. Villa, on the other hand, travel to Everton next weekend where they will face the fifth-best defence in the country rather than one of the three worst teams in the top flight.
Arsenal
Rejecting the argument advocating a host of new additions, Arsene Wenger says that his priority this summer will be keeping his current squad together. One interpretation of Cesc Fabregas' post-match comment after the defeat of Reading that he "hopes" to stay at Arsenal is that Wenger will only achieve his primary objective by recruiting first. While his defiance is unwavering, it has been noticeable that Wenger's tune has changed this week - on Friday, he mused on "a question of one or two quality, real quality, players", whereas just seven days previously he had declared: "I will buy but not too much in the summer...If we can add one player we will do it, not one in each department just one experienced player."
In any case, Fabregas later reiterated his commitment to Arsenal, and that is only likely to be shaken if Mathieu Flamini and Alex Hleb, his two closest friends in the squad, depart. As Flamini should sign a new deal this week and Hleb remains under contract, it is reasonable to assume that Fabregas will start 2008/09 at the Emirates, most probably as captain.
In previous summers, Wenger has successfully sought to retain first Thierry Henry and then William Gallas by dangling the captain's armband before them, and he is bound to repeat the trick during the next three months because the writing is on the wall for Gallas' tenure after Wenger pointedly refused to endorse his captaincy. "At the moment he will be my captain until the end of the season," is an utterance of non-commitment straight out of the "right now, I am a player for so-and-so-football club and it would be disrespectful to say anything else" school of vagueness. It remainsto be seen how Gallas would respond to such demotion but were it to be with a transfer request then it would only prove his unsuitability for the role of team leader in the first place.
West Ham
It is a measure of both the inadequacy of Derby at this level and the disdain Upton Park supporters have for the management of Alan Curbishley that the Hammers were booed off even after winning 2-1 on Saturday. Not even Avram Grant's many detractors at Stamford Bridge are moved to complain vociferously after victories.
Curbishley's faults are too obvious to require reiteration here, but it would perhaps improve his standing with the club's supporters if he began to refer to West Ham as 'us' and 'we' rather than 'them' and 'they'.
Losers
Wayne Rooney
What is worse - the player who dives or the pundits who refuse to acknowledge the subterfuge, let alone condone it? As some F365ers complained during the week, there was remarkably little media condemnation of Steven Gerrard's antics against Blackburn, and the response of MOTD this weekend to Wayne Rooney's behaviour against the same opponents was even more craven. Even when acknowledging that there was 'a delay' in his 'fall' after a challenge by Steven Reid, neither Lawrenson nor Shearer were prepared to admit that the Manchester United striker had taken a dive. Far better to bury their heads in the sand throwing out meaningless platitudes than acknowledge any English wrongdoing.
There has always been an ugly inconsistency in the media's outlook to such incidents. As this column noted in December in a segment on Aston Villa winger Ashley Young after he was booked for diving, 'Despite highlighting the youngster's performance, Match of the Day neglected to feature Young's cheating, let alone pass commentary on it. It was another depressing reminder of the programme's shallowness and the type of reverse xenophobia that has enabled Joe Cole to become an embarrassment to the nation. Had a Ronaldo or a Pires committed such a piece of shameless subterfuge then the debate about immigration would probably have been re-opened.'
Perhaps the myopia is a consequence of the Beeb's policy of appointing former players and the 'jobs for the boys' pact that underpins the insidious relationship. Or perhaps it stems from a reluctance on the corporation's behalf to make powerful enemies - broadcasters need clubs' co-operation as much as clubs need their matches to be broadcast and yet boycotts only work one way. Whatever the reason, television companies are as guilty for the spread of cheating in the English game as the perceived prime suspect, those bloody foreigners.
Rooney thus escaped with censure, and the comment, following his hack at Christopher Samba, of how "he took on someone bigger than him" sounded approving. Never mind that he had lost control of his emotions, it's an Englishman fighting back so that makes it alright then. Worse was to follow. That Rooney spent most of the second half subjecting both a linesman and referee Robert Styles to his full range of invective was neither approved of nor disapproved. It was simply omitted from the MOTD coverage altogether.
The crusade for greater respect to be shown towards officialdom lasted just as long as it took to replace an Argentine with an Englishman in the firing line.
Roy Keane
The 2-0 reverse at St James' was the first derby defeat Keane has endured in his career as either a professional footballer or manager.
Sunderland and Middlesbrough
Steve Stone will never have a career in sales. The former England winger began his punditry stint on Radio Five Live by bemoaning that recent events had made the Tyne-Wear derby "a non-event". If only Sunderland could treat their predicament so lightly.
At the start of the month, their survival seemed all-but guaranteed. But all that has suddenly changed. While Roy Keane's troops remain three places above the relegation zone, they boast just five more points than Birmingham following defeat at Newcastle. "People were telling me a couple of weeks ago we were safe and I kept insisting we weren't," Keane reminded reporters at St James'.
Victory next Sunday against Middlesbrough has become imperative and only after the result of that game will the real loser of this week's game at the Riverside be identified. Every year in the Premier League a team comes back from the dead and Bolton's surprise victory confers on them the tag of Lazarus. And it is to Bolton where Sunderland travel on the penultimate weekend of the season. On the final day, they face an equally-daunting task: hosting Arsenal.
This season's relegation fight has become a bewildering tale of the unexpected, in which the formbook has been ripped up on almost every weekend since late February. Middlesbrough, who also have 36 points, have an easier run-in than their north-east rivals - Portsmouth and Manchester City at home - but their survival is not yet secure either.
Next weekend's derby is anything but a non-event.
Birmingham City
Even if Brum stay up, this humiliation will still be difficult to bear throughout the summer. Alex McLeish called it "bruising". 'Humiliating' and 'embarrassing' would have been more appropriate. Yet McLeish was correct in asserting that Brum's position is far from hopeless. With Everton struggling to keep hold of fifth position let alone maintain a challenge for fourth, Benitez is certain to send another weakened Liverpool team to St Andrews' next weekend. Birmingham's final two matches, against Fulham and Blackburn, can also be filed in the 'winnable' category.
Portsmouth
Pompey ought to be careful. If a study of FA Cup shocks was undertaken it would probably discover that they tend to occur when a side either struggling for form or in the wrong half of their league table takes on opponents who, although in a lower-ranking league, are riding high. So Harry Redknapp be warned: his side have won just two of their last five league fixtures - their worst run since beginning the season with successive matches against Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea - while Cardiff, their Wembley opponents, have lost only once since March.
Tottenham Hotspur
With Dimi Berbatov's agent adamant that his client needs to move on, the Bulgarian's goal at Wigan was a sweet and sour affair. Finding a replacement for the 23-goal striker will be Juande Ramos' greatest challenge this summer.
Pete Gill
http://football365.com/story/0,17033,8742_3454316,00.html
Manchester United
According to The Sunday Times' strangely-subdued account of events at Ewood Park, Carlos Tevez's equaliser against Blackburn 'spared the champions' blushes'. It was rather more significant than that. Tevez's 88th-minute header - the product, by the way, if Sir Alex is to be believed, of that thing termed 'character' - was probably the goal that secured United a tenth Premier League crown. Had ManYoo lost, three wins for Chelsea would have secured them the title. Instead, such is the superiority of United's goal difference, the point Tevez saved means that United can still retain their title by beating West Ham and Wigan even if they lose next weekend at Stamford Bridge.
Critically, the avoidance of defeat also ensures their confidence will remain undiminished ahead of the Champions League meeting with Barcelona, although Sir Alex must be concerned at his side's form in their last three matches. Even his mammoth squad may not be immune from fatigue and Paul Scholes' troubling regression continued this weekend. It will be a considerable surprise if he plays ahead of either Anderson or Owen Hargreaves in the Nou Camp.
At least United will not be playing in England's north-east. In the not-so-distant past, it was said that teams in that region had a critical advantage over their southern title rivals due to the number of troublesome London derbies that the latter had to endure. The geographical composition of the top flight is very different now, however, and it's been noticeable this term how United's struggles have tended to occur in opposition to feisty local neighbours - losing twice to Manchester's other team, being mugged at Bolton in November and coming within two minutes of losing 31 miles away from Old Trafford this weekend. With those local difficulties in mind, perhaps United's final-day trip to Wigan will not be quite the formality it is being depicted.
Well, just perhaps.
ManYoo's Regular Single-Goal Saviour
Considering the service provided by Old Trafford, Carlos Tevez's haul of 18 goals this term isn't particularly remarkable. Moreover, the Argentine was arguably the worst player on view at Ewood Park. Yet he does possess a marvellous knack of scoring critical goals (including one at Old Trafford last May which may have clinched his summer move to the champions) - aside from scoring the equaliser at Blackburn, Tevez previously salvaged draws at Tottenham and Lyon with equally-late goals and was United's match-winner in single-goal victories against Liverpool, Birmingham and Roma.
Sicknotes, Old And New
Having suffered a hamstring injury against Bolton on March 19 barely one month into his umpteenth comeback from injury, Louis Saha was scheduled to make an appearance at Blackburn before signing off sick with a knee injury. On a not entirely incidental note, Darren Anderton, the original 'sicknote' who is now finishing his career at Bournemouth, this weekend completed the third match of his latest comeback from yet another hamstring strain.
Michael Owen
Two more goals, a lucrative new contract in the offing, and, if the Sunday Times' rich-list is to be believed, £41m in the bank as the 12th-richest man in Britain under the age of 30.
Newcastle United
With so much focus on Keegan's deployment of Mark Viduka, Oba Martins and Michael Owen in a clever version of a three-pronged strikeforce, it's been largely ignored that the Toon have also kept three successive clean sheets. With four wins in their last five matches, they are also in fourth place in the Form Table.
The Messiah hasn't quite produced a miracle but he has pulled the club back from the brink and inspired Michael Owen's best run of form in many a year. Good management is generally a matter of common sense but Keegan's deployment of Owen as a sort of roaming midfielder was a stroke of genius.
Liverpool
There are two differences between last spring when Rafa Benitez selected a weakened team at Fulham and this weekend when he rested Steven Gerrard, Fernando Torres, Jamie Carragher and Xabi Alonso from another inconvenient encounter at Craven Cottage. The first, of course, is that those absences mattered not a jot as Liverpool still prevailed over a Fulham side whose fate is now sealed. The second is that, with just two days of rest available between Saturday's fixture and a Champions League semi-final against opponents enjoying the luxury of five days between matches, the Spaniard had valid cause to ignore demands from elsewhere that he "maintain the integrity of the Premier League" by picking his strongest available line-up
Benitez's actions last year, however, were less defensible - Fulham's victory on May 5 occurred eight days before Pool's next fixture, with the Champions League final a further ten days hence. Although Pool had beaten Chelsea on May 1, it was difficult to appreciate Benitez's bloody-minded refusal not to insure himself against the inevitable accusation that he had handed Fulham a fraudulent lifeline by putting some of his regular first-teamers, such as Steven Gerrard, on the bench (which is where Fernando Torres was this weekend). As a result of their undeserved and unearned good fortune against such household names as Gabriel Paletta, Emiliano Insúa and Nabil El Zhar, Fulham were able to avoid relegation by a solitary point.
Twelve months later, Liverpool have righted that wrong.
Bolton Wanderers
The perceived 'irony' of Gary Megson calling for Benitez to protect the integrity of the Premier League wasn't that the Bolton manager effectively withdrew the club from the UEFA Cup by himself selecting a weakened team (an action which hurt the club more than the competition) but the likelihood of Bolton facing a weakened Chelsea team on May 11 if - as is distinctly probable - the Londoners only have the Champions League to play for on the final weekend of the season.
Aston Villa
To the best of F365's knowledge, Villa's run of 15 goals in three consecutive matches is the most prolific in the Premier League since Manchester United scored the same amount in back-to-back-to-back matches against Bradford, West Ham and Middlesbrough in April 2000. They then whacked four more past Sunderland five days later. Villa, on the other hand, travel to Everton next weekend where they will face the fifth-best defence in the country rather than one of the three worst teams in the top flight.
Arsenal
Rejecting the argument advocating a host of new additions, Arsene Wenger says that his priority this summer will be keeping his current squad together. One interpretation of Cesc Fabregas' post-match comment after the defeat of Reading that he "hopes" to stay at Arsenal is that Wenger will only achieve his primary objective by recruiting first. While his defiance is unwavering, it has been noticeable that Wenger's tune has changed this week - on Friday, he mused on "a question of one or two quality, real quality, players", whereas just seven days previously he had declared: "I will buy but not too much in the summer...If we can add one player we will do it, not one in each department just one experienced player."
In any case, Fabregas later reiterated his commitment to Arsenal, and that is only likely to be shaken if Mathieu Flamini and Alex Hleb, his two closest friends in the squad, depart. As Flamini should sign a new deal this week and Hleb remains under contract, it is reasonable to assume that Fabregas will start 2008/09 at the Emirates, most probably as captain.
In previous summers, Wenger has successfully sought to retain first Thierry Henry and then William Gallas by dangling the captain's armband before them, and he is bound to repeat the trick during the next three months because the writing is on the wall for Gallas' tenure after Wenger pointedly refused to endorse his captaincy. "At the moment he will be my captain until the end of the season," is an utterance of non-commitment straight out of the "right now, I am a player for so-and-so-football club and it would be disrespectful to say anything else" school of vagueness. It remainsto be seen how Gallas would respond to such demotion but were it to be with a transfer request then it would only prove his unsuitability for the role of team leader in the first place.
West Ham
It is a measure of both the inadequacy of Derby at this level and the disdain Upton Park supporters have for the management of Alan Curbishley that the Hammers were booed off even after winning 2-1 on Saturday. Not even Avram Grant's many detractors at Stamford Bridge are moved to complain vociferously after victories.
Curbishley's faults are too obvious to require reiteration here, but it would perhaps improve his standing with the club's supporters if he began to refer to West Ham as 'us' and 'we' rather than 'them' and 'they'.
Losers
Wayne Rooney
What is worse - the player who dives or the pundits who refuse to acknowledge the subterfuge, let alone condone it? As some F365ers complained during the week, there was remarkably little media condemnation of Steven Gerrard's antics against Blackburn, and the response of MOTD this weekend to Wayne Rooney's behaviour against the same opponents was even more craven. Even when acknowledging that there was 'a delay' in his 'fall' after a challenge by Steven Reid, neither Lawrenson nor Shearer were prepared to admit that the Manchester United striker had taken a dive. Far better to bury their heads in the sand throwing out meaningless platitudes than acknowledge any English wrongdoing.
There has always been an ugly inconsistency in the media's outlook to such incidents. As this column noted in December in a segment on Aston Villa winger Ashley Young after he was booked for diving, 'Despite highlighting the youngster's performance, Match of the Day neglected to feature Young's cheating, let alone pass commentary on it. It was another depressing reminder of the programme's shallowness and the type of reverse xenophobia that has enabled Joe Cole to become an embarrassment to the nation. Had a Ronaldo or a Pires committed such a piece of shameless subterfuge then the debate about immigration would probably have been re-opened.'
Perhaps the myopia is a consequence of the Beeb's policy of appointing former players and the 'jobs for the boys' pact that underpins the insidious relationship. Or perhaps it stems from a reluctance on the corporation's behalf to make powerful enemies - broadcasters need clubs' co-operation as much as clubs need their matches to be broadcast and yet boycotts only work one way. Whatever the reason, television companies are as guilty for the spread of cheating in the English game as the perceived prime suspect, those bloody foreigners.
Rooney thus escaped with censure, and the comment, following his hack at Christopher Samba, of how "he took on someone bigger than him" sounded approving. Never mind that he had lost control of his emotions, it's an Englishman fighting back so that makes it alright then. Worse was to follow. That Rooney spent most of the second half subjecting both a linesman and referee Robert Styles to his full range of invective was neither approved of nor disapproved. It was simply omitted from the MOTD coverage altogether.
The crusade for greater respect to be shown towards officialdom lasted just as long as it took to replace an Argentine with an Englishman in the firing line.
Roy Keane
The 2-0 reverse at St James' was the first derby defeat Keane has endured in his career as either a professional footballer or manager.
Sunderland and Middlesbrough
Steve Stone will never have a career in sales. The former England winger began his punditry stint on Radio Five Live by bemoaning that recent events had made the Tyne-Wear derby "a non-event". If only Sunderland could treat their predicament so lightly.
At the start of the month, their survival seemed all-but guaranteed. But all that has suddenly changed. While Roy Keane's troops remain three places above the relegation zone, they boast just five more points than Birmingham following defeat at Newcastle. "People were telling me a couple of weeks ago we were safe and I kept insisting we weren't," Keane reminded reporters at St James'.
Victory next Sunday against Middlesbrough has become imperative and only after the result of that game will the real loser of this week's game at the Riverside be identified. Every year in the Premier League a team comes back from the dead and Bolton's surprise victory confers on them the tag of Lazarus. And it is to Bolton where Sunderland travel on the penultimate weekend of the season. On the final day, they face an equally-daunting task: hosting Arsenal.
This season's relegation fight has become a bewildering tale of the unexpected, in which the formbook has been ripped up on almost every weekend since late February. Middlesbrough, who also have 36 points, have an easier run-in than their north-east rivals - Portsmouth and Manchester City at home - but their survival is not yet secure either.
Next weekend's derby is anything but a non-event.
Birmingham City
Even if Brum stay up, this humiliation will still be difficult to bear throughout the summer. Alex McLeish called it "bruising". 'Humiliating' and 'embarrassing' would have been more appropriate. Yet McLeish was correct in asserting that Brum's position is far from hopeless. With Everton struggling to keep hold of fifth position let alone maintain a challenge for fourth, Benitez is certain to send another weakened Liverpool team to St Andrews' next weekend. Birmingham's final two matches, against Fulham and Blackburn, can also be filed in the 'winnable' category.
Portsmouth
Pompey ought to be careful. If a study of FA Cup shocks was undertaken it would probably discover that they tend to occur when a side either struggling for form or in the wrong half of their league table takes on opponents who, although in a lower-ranking league, are riding high. So Harry Redknapp be warned: his side have won just two of their last five league fixtures - their worst run since beginning the season with successive matches against Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea - while Cardiff, their Wembley opponents, have lost only once since March.
Tottenham Hotspur
With Dimi Berbatov's agent adamant that his client needs to move on, the Bulgarian's goal at Wigan was a sweet and sour affair. Finding a replacement for the 23-goal striker will be Juande Ramos' greatest challenge this summer.
Pete Gill
http://football365.com/story/0,17033,8742_3454316,00.html
another blind scouser
