Premier League football is back. 100 days after the last match prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the league returned to finish it’s season.
And what an end to the season it is already proving to be. Games are being played in empty stadiums, while being broadcast on a range of streaming services and channels including some matches on free-to-air TV. Marcus Rashford’s campaign to force the government into a U-turn on free school meal vouchers saw Manchester City and Liverpool fans praising him and defending him against online trolls like Katie Hopkins. The league as a whole took a stance to support the Black Lives Matter movement with everybody taking a knee for the opening seconds of each match, while matchday kits also had the players’ surnames replaced with “Black Lives Matter” for the early matches after the return. We had our usual dose of thrilling football, beautiful goals and controversies… Oh and Liverpool finally won the Premier League, their first top flight league title in 30 years!
Premier League Round-up
- August 2019
- September 2019
- October 2019
- November 2019
- December 2019
- January 2020
- February 2020
- March 2020
- June 2020
Champions
At one point, it looked like they may be denied or have an asterisk next to their name on a technicality, but thankfully the season was able to return and Liverpool were able to win the title that they had thoroughly earned this season. Their last top flight league title was back in the 1989/90 season, back before the Premier League existed. Since then, they have come close on occasion, most notably when Steven Gerrard’s slip against Chelsea proving costly in the 2013/14 season.
The Reds were fully deserving of the title this season. Yes, they have had limited injuries to their key players and certainly benefited from all of their title rivals having a down year, with City not suitably having suitable options at centreback to cope with the injury of Aymeric Laporte and most of the other “Big 6” going through rebuilds, but the Reds can only play the teams that are put in front of them and did so with aplomb, with just 7 points dropped over their first 31 matches meaning that Manchester City’s 2-1 loss at Chelsea on 25ᵗʰ June secured their 19ᵗʰ league title. They have an incredible front 3 in Sadio Mané, Roberto Firmino and Mohamed Salah, who have contributed 40 league goals to date this season, while the rest of the squad has supplied a further 28 goals spread between 13 players, as well as benefiting from 2 own goals. Meanwhile at the other end of the pitch, the acquisitions of Virgil van Dyke and Alisson in recent seasons have solidified a defence that used to be called porous by people who were being polite!
But how will they do defending the title next year? You have to imagine that many of their rivals will be more competitive and, as defending champions, Liverpool will have a target on their backs. But as long as they can continue to score with regularity and stay tight at the back, they will be hard to beat. Young players like Trent Alexander-Arnold will have another season of experience under their belt and probably be an even better player for it, while if you look at the goal tallies for the team, there is room for someone beyond the front 3 to stand out from the crowd with a higher goal tally, much like Steven Gerrard back in the day. Don’t rule out a 20ᵗʰ league title for the Reds next season.
Sad end to special season
While the return to action has been great for Liverpool, another team in the top half of the table has not had it so well. Nobody would have thought at the star of the season that newly-promoted Sheffield United would be pushing for European qualification, but the Blades were having a sensational season, finding themselves in 7ᵗʰ when the league stopped – which in terms of European qualification was actually 6ᵗʰ due to Manchester City’s European ban.
Unfortunately, things haven’t gone so well since the return. In the opening match, they were denied a clear goal by a freak failure of Hawk-Eye’s goal-line tech and a failure of VAR (more on that soon) and had to settle for a 0-0 draw at Aston Villa. In their next match at Newcastle, a questionable yellow card for John Egan proved costly as he later received a second yellow, with the game going from 0-0 to a 3-0 loss following his dismissal. And then finally so far, a trip to face a resurgent Manchester United at Old Trafford.
3 away matches in a role is a far-from-ideal way to start off a run of games, and they certainly had some bad luck with some questionable (or just downright wrong) decisions going against them, but it is clear that the break has robbed them of any momentum that they had. What also really hurts them is that they have nowhere near the same strength in depth of the teams around them, which is going to really hurt them now as the remaining games are jammed into the shortest amount of time possible.
While this season can still be considered a resounding success, I think fans will have a legitimate excuse to wonder what might have been had we not had to cope with a pandemic.
Tech troubles… again
Warning: Rant incoming – including some bad language
VAR is an absolute fucking mess! The technology itself is sound and has been shown to work in other tournaments around the world, but in the Premier League it is an absolute shambles.We didn’t even have a full month of matches and yet the amount of errors were staggering…
In the opening game after the return, Villa keeper Ørjan Nyland clearly carried a Oliver Norwood cross from a free kick over his own line, but in a freak situation, the position of the ball, keeper, post and nearby players meant that Hawk-Eye were in a position where the goal-line technology could 100% confirm the goal. Luckily, TV crews had an angle that clearly showed the ball fully over the line, but for some unbelievable reason, VAR never intervened, costing Sheffield United the win.
Arsenal’s midfield moron Mattéo Guendouzi looked certain to face a ban after grabbing Brighton striker Neal Maupay by the throat following Arsenal’s 2-1 loss at Brighton. It was a clear red card, but he escaped a ban after it was revealed that VAR had reviewed the incident and determined that it was not sufficient to deserve a red card… I give up!
Sticking with red cards not being given, VAR also decided that Jordan Ayew did not deserve a red after his forearm made contact with Josh Brownhill’s face. VAR took about a thousand looks and, despite Ayew clearly taking a look to see Brownhill was and raising his arm into an unnatural position, ruled that Ayew was not deserving of a red card.
I am a big supporter of VAR and technology being brought into football to help the officials get the right decisions, but the Premier League will just become a farce. As one of my close friends said to me when we were discussing VAR earlier, “there’s a lot of things they could improve if the FA just stopped being assholes.” I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Sounds like a waste of money
While we may be watching games being played in empty stadiums, the broadcasters have tried to make the experience seem as close to normal as possible buy including artificial crowd noise. I really hope they didn’t spend too much money on this because it’s completely unnecessary and in my opinion actually harms the spectacle.
Though you are focusing on the football, you can still see that the stands are empty, which means that something just feels off as you’re watching. The other problem is that the broadcasters are limited to certain soundbites, so it will never feel as natural as a real crowd, while there is also the issue of this relying on Joe Bloggs in the studio pressing the right button on his soundboard at the right point. It all just becomes a distraction. And it’s not even necessary!
You’re not trying to create an atmosphere for people living at home, so the crowd noise isn’t needed. Instead, it is a chance for us to take advantage of the situation to hear how a pair of professional football teams sound in a live match. Thanks to the “crowd” noise though, my mute button has been getting a lot of work.
Eyes on the Ball 