The National's English football correspondent Richard Jolly gives his 10 biggest conclusions to be drawn from the 2015/16 Premier League season.
LEICESTER’S SEASON WAS A COMPLETE ONE-OFF
And it will be even if Claudio Ranieri’s team retain the title. Factor in all the unlikely elements – a manager tipped to the first coach sacked, a team of 5,000-1 outsiders widely predicted to go down, a forward with only five previous top-flight goals who sets a Premier League scoring record, that same striker, signed from non-league, winning the Footballer of the Year award, a £450,000 buy from the French lower leagues being named PFA Player of the Year – and the scale of their triumph is underlined. Leicester had only 44 percent of possession and a 70 percent passing accuracy. They ripped up the rulebook.
LEICESTER WERE AN INDICTMENT OF ALMOST EVERYONE ELSE
But particularly Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and Manchester United, the four teams expected to contest the title. Each posted a lower points tally than last season. Each scored considerably fewer goals. None won more than five consecutive league games – indeed, neither Chelsea nor United even won four in a row – or showed anything like the consistency of champions. Man for man, their teams were far more talented than Leicester’s. Their squads were deeper, their players more expensive and much better paid. Yet they lacked the cohesion, the unity, the spirit and the work ethic that propelled Leicester to glory. They exposed the complacency in the ranks elsewhere.
ARSENAL MISSED THEIR GREAT CHANCE
Officially, it is Arsenal’s most successful league season in 11 years. After a decade of finishes in the second two in the standings, they returned to the top two. In the process, they made it 21 consecutive seasons when they have topped Tottenham in the table. And yet the way they slipped from first to fourth in the space of two weeks and the fact they only won two of nine league games in a New Year run are both damning. Chelsea, Liverpool and the Manchester clubs will not all under-perform again. Familiar flaws – inconsistency, defensive issues, a lack of ruthlessness in attack – prevented Arsenal from capitalising.
TOTTENHAM ARE A RISING FORCE
Leicester are champions because they sustained title-winning form for 38 games. Tottenham mustered it for 30, taking 65 points from 30 after their season started slowly and before it finished early, denying them a top-two finish. Their August draws, when Christian Eriksen was injured, Dele Alli a substitute and Mauricio Pochettino yet to find his strongest team, came at a cost. Yet the speed of their improvement since then has been startling. Their title challenge came out of the blue but, with the division’s youngest team, they are well positioned for the future. Harry Kane was the best all-round striker in the division this season, Toby Alderweireld its finest centre-back, Alli its brightest young player.
UNITED REGRESSED, EXPENSIVELY
For 37 games, Louis van Gaal could sustain the illusion that Manchester United had not regressed. When Manchester City drew on Sunday – and United’s game was abandoned – the facts proved otherwise. United spent a further £130 million last summer and failed to secure a top-four finish. They did so with much their lowest goals tally in the Premier League era and when they had produced some of the dullest football at Old Trafford in decades. They may yet win the FA Cup, but the league table does not lie. Van Gaal’s United have been both sterile and unsuccessful.
LIVERPOOL SHOULD HAVE SACKED BRENDAN RODGERS LAST SUMMER
Liverpool secured their 54th consecutive top-eight finish but it was nonetheless a season of transition in the league. Jurgen Klopp camouflaged that by reaching the Capital One Cup and Europa League finals, obscuring the poor decision-making at the club. Liverpool gave Brendan Rodgers £88 million to spend last summer and then dismissed him in early October, leaving Klopp with a newly-acquired £32.5 million striker, in Christian Benteke, that he certainly would not have bought. Far better to have brought the German in earlier, let him sign his players and spare Liverpool a slow start to the season.
CHELSEA’S DECLINE WAS ASTONISHING
Chelsea ended up with 37 fewer points than last season. Just as Leicester’s improvement was unprecedented in the modern era, so was their decline. Jose Mourinho, who had never finished lower than third, was sacked with them in 16th. A manager who had lost one of his first 99 home league games as Blues manager then lost four of the next five. Chelsea’s failures and frustrations in last summer’s transfer market were a major reason but most remarkable element was the way that, with the notable exception of Willian, last season’s star performers all underachieved under Mourinho (and, in Eden Hazard’s case, after him).
NEWCASTLE’S DECISION-MAKING WAS AWFUL
It is quite a feat to spend £82 million on new players, appoint a Champions League-winning manager and still get relegated. That Newcastle went down is an indictment of managing director Lee Charnley. He was wrong to appoint Steve McClaren and wrong to persevere with him for so long, giving Rafa Benitez a very difficult salvage job. Newcastle were wrong to spend £15 million on winger Florian Thauvin, who was so bad he was loaned back to Marseille, and wrong to buy the £5 million midfielder Henri Saivet, who vanished from contention after only two starts. They were wrong to spend too little on defenders and too much on midfielders.
NORWICH WERE NOT REALLY READY FOR THE PREMIER LEAGUE
When the team with probably the smallest wage bill goes down, it may not count as failure. Yet Norwich were among the biggest spenders in the January window and the fallout of relegation began before it was ratified, with chief executive David McNally resigning. Perhaps manager Alex Neil rose too far, too fast: he arrived in the Premier League at 34 and an inexperience in scouting abroad was shown as their summer dealings were almost exclusively British and ultimately inadequate. Norwich seemed to underestimate the top flight with their personnel choices in three key positions – goalkeeper, centre-back and centre-forward – and lost too many games because of errors at one end and impotence at the other.
ASTON VILLA HAD THE WORST EVER PREMIER LEAGUE SEASON
Others have got fewer points. Derby mustered a mere 11 points in 2007-08 and Sunderland only 15 in 2005-06. Yet they were promoted clubs who could be excused for having lesser players. Villa, in contrast, had been in the top flight for 27 years. They spent £52 million last summer and, while they lost key players such as Christian Benteke, Fabian Delph and Ron Vlaar, they should not have been anything like as inept. It is an indictment of managers Tim Sherwood and Remi Garde, the club’s powerbrokers and the squad. Normally when big clubs or expensively-assembled teams go down – Newcastle, Leeds, West Ham, Blackburn in 1998-99 – they take at least 30 points. Villa only got 17.
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