Reflections on a Turbulent Season.

I just watched Arsenal defeat Chelsea in this year’s FA Cup Final. Champions Chelsea looked tired and jaded while Arsenal appeared to be rejuvenated winning the Cup for the third time in the past four seasons. Why didn’t Arsenal play like this during the season? This is the same team that was annihilated 0-5 at home by Bayern Munich  in the Champions League only a couple of months ago. Based on this result Wenger, Arsenal’s beleaguered manager, has probably saved his job for yet another season or two. Nevertheless, they did miss qualifying for the Champions League for the first time in twenty years.

Ironically, it was Chelsea’s 0-3 defeat to Arsenal earlier in the season that prompted new manager Conte to introduce his system of three central defenders which he had successfully implemented in his time as manager of Juventus and latterly Italy. Chelsea reeled off 13 successive wins which propelled them to the title.

Speaking of which, normal service was restored in the Premiership with little chance of another minnow doing a Leicester City by snatching the title from under the noses of the elite teams. Chelsea deservedly won the title with an ever improving Tottenham Hotspur runners up. Manchester City finished third which prompted their manager Pep Guardiola to quote: “If I had finished 3rd at Barcelona or Bayern Munich (his previous two clubs) I would have been sacked!” Liverpool squeezed into the top four at the expense of Arsenal and will be playing Champions League football for the first time in a number of years.

Chelsea won the title from Spurs by a comfortable seven points, but more significantly was the 15 point gap between the seventh placed team, Everton and the rest of the division. Prior to this season the consensus leaned towards the premise that the Premier League comprised three layers; the top six, the middle tier who don’t usually contend for the title, but are safe from relegation struggles, and a bottom six or seven proverbial relegation contenders. Now, any team from 8th position downwards should fear the drop.

England will have five representatives this year because Manchester United also qualified by winning the Europa Cup in benign fashion. It is rumored that United will have a transfer fund of 300 million pounds to spend on new players in the summer. Manchester City has kick started the off season crazy spending spree by paying  Monaco 43 million pounds for their playmaker Bernard Silva.

My home town team, Swansea City (yes, it’s a euphemism) gave me some sleepless nights. They had a meager total of 12 points and bottom of the table on New Year’s Day with half the season over. Paul Clement became the fourth man to manage the team since last August (Alan Curtis was caretaker manager for two spells.)

He obviously got many things right to muster 29 points from the second half of the season, but the key decision for me was to play Mawson and Fernandez as the two central defenders for the remainder of the season. Bob Bradley had chopped and changed his defensive pairing continuously throughout his brief reign and the Swans were conceding goals at nearly two per game. Fernandez and Mawson brought stability to the back four, and it was no coincidence they only conceded two goals during the last five games of the season, winning four and drawing the other away to Manchester United.

What was incomprehensible was the six game stretch in the middle of Clement’s tenure where they only managed to pick up one measly point. Clement’s hiring had initially galvanized the team to the extent they were four points clear of the relegation zone until they hit a six game brick wall.

Fortunately Clement turned to thirty four year old Leon Britton in their hour of need. Britton has been a first team fixture for fourteen years, having played in all four divisions of the Football League with the Club, helping them rise from near extinction to the promised land of the Premiership. Britton is the epitome of the” Swansea Way” of playing football, retaining possession and passing, and his influence on the strong finish to the season should not be under estimated.

 

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