Johnny Nicholson: Man City's success is inspiring little more than apathy
ANOTHER TITLE: Manchester City fans invade the pitch as they celebrate their Premier League title win. Pic: Martin Rickett/PA Wire
The surprising thing about City’s performance against Real Madrid and Sunday’s dead rubber win against Frank Lampard's mid-table mediocre Chelsea, played with £475 million worth of players on the bench, wasn’t the quality of their football, it was the widespread indifference to their brilliance expressed by the wider football public. There’s been a tangible shrug of indifference as they picked up their fifth title in six years, Pep Guardiola’s eighth in 11 campaigns across three clubs.
There are complex and layered reasons for this, both structural and metaphysical. There is a feeling that they have gamed the system in quite obvious ways, have been charged with over 100 breaches of financial regulations and have benefitted from the financial largesse of an oppressive regime keen to get a place at the top table of international politics. That can’t be ignored. It hangs over proceedings like a curse.
They have bought the best manager, the best players and have infinite money with which to keep doing this, time after time. But what’s in it for the rest of us? For the neutral? Nothing. And there are more neutrals than fans of City. Too often there is little jeopardy in their games - and football’s great selling point in a low scoring sport is jeopardy - that for anyone other than their own fans, it isn’t engaging enough. There’s no story arc. No vulnerability. Nothing heroic. The one with the most money wins is simply one-dimensional and boring.
Football as an exhibition rather than as competition is very easily resisted. I turned off the Madrid game to watch Annan Athletic play Clyde and Middlesbrough play Coventry. Both were much better games. This should worry the Premier League and the Champions League. The financial model they have facilitated has led to this disinterest in admittedly brilliant football. People respect the high skill and performance of players and managers but that is only one strand in football’s story, not everything.
Football isn’t a normal leisure purchase. Bad football can make good games. Brilliant can be boring. I’ve never known an obviously fantastic team greeted with less enthusiasm by the paying public than this City side.
For the league, now would be a very good time to find City guilty of financial impropriety and kick them out as punishment and in doing so, make the league a little bit more competitive, because right now the best team we’ve ever seen in the Premier League are reducing the interest in the competition by winning a fifth title in six seasons.
Normally Spurs play a rotten first half and a better second but for their last home game of the season they changed it up against Brentford, did quite well in the first half, then threw it all away with a clumsy, aimless and impotent second half. Harry Kane scored his 28th goal and has now scored in 25 different Premier League games this season: a new record. But conceding three in the second half meant it was five defeats in the last seven games for Spurs.
They were twice cut apart by Bryan Mbeumo who was inexplicably allowed to cut in from the right on his left foot and bury it in the corner. Brentford had actually played a poor first half and Spurs should’ve scored more than once. They had gone to a back four rather than their usual five and it seemed to disrupt their normal rhythm, which returned when they went to a five and brought on the excellent Mikkel Damsgaard.
They mugged Oliver Skipp for a third and keeper David Raya made two fantastic saves from Richarlison, whose resting expression suggests he is the most miserable man in football. Spurs simply can’t put together two 45 minutes of good football and are playing without any sort of plan. Since the summer of 2018 Tottenham have had the fourth highest net spend in world football!! Quite how Levy stays in his job remains a mystery.
Carlos Casemiro isn’t really in the Manchester United team to score goals with overhead kicks like the spectacular one he netted against Bournemouth. It was a high point in a rather drab game. United have a poor away record having only earned eight points from nine top-flight away matches in 2023. They have equalled the club record for most Premier League away defeats in a season: eight. At the Vitality they lacked sparkle despite having 20 shots at goal, with five on target. They did dominate but lacked a cutting edge without Marcus Rashford.
However, Jadon Sancho played well throughout for the first time in a long time with 86% pass accuracy, 24 final third passes, 9 ball recoveries, five out of five ground duels won, four out of four dribbles completed and two key passes. Everyone knows he is very talented and was tremendous at Dortmund. That player can’t have gone away forever, though as Dele Alli has well illustrated, it is possible for your talent to somehow evaporate. The question is whether Erik Ten Hag is prepared to give him time to find his form again, or will look to move him on.
It was like the end of a soap opera as Roberto Firmino scored Liverpool’s equaliser in the final minute of his final game for the club. Unai Emery's Aston Villa are tough opponents and possibly should’ve won this considering Ollie Watkins missed a penalty. In some ways it was the summation of Liverpool’s season, good in parts but prone to defensive lapses and too inconsistent in front of goal to challenge for honours.
Aston Villa are in the Europa Conference League position, which considering they were in the lower third when Emery took over, is quite the achievement. Summer recruitment will be super important if they are to cement a top seven position as a base camp to develop a push to the snowier peaks. With Emery in charge, much is possible.
Because Wolves came into the game as the lowest scoring side in the league with just 30, if Everton could score, there was a good chance they might get something out of the game. Wolves play a solid, sometimes too rigid 4-4-2 but are hard to break down. Eight of their 11 wins had been by 1-0 and they had not conceded a goal in over six hours at home, their best record since 1969. When Adama Traore picked up the ball just outside his own box and put the afterburners on, he flew up the pitch like a greased pig fired out of a bazooka, took six players out of the game, had his shot well-saved by Jordan Pickford but turned in by Hwang to give them the lead.
Everton had won just once, drawn four and lost 15 of the last 20 when conceding the first goal and when Dominic Calvert-Lewin followed Nathan Patterson and went off injured, it was an uphill struggle for the Toffees. Wolves missed several good chances to win it. It was still 1-0 going into injury time but Everton never quite looked out of it and never gave up. And it was that sheer determination that led to their equaliser in the final seconds. Their football wasn’t pretty and they were outplayed for large parts of the game but they had enough grit about them to win a single point. They’re not dead yet.
And so this was how the league title was won; by Arsenal losing. And let’s face it, who actually expected Arsenal to beat Nottingham Forest? Somehow it all seemed inevitable. Forest are quite good at home, needed to win to stay up and their fans created a febrile atmosphere. Arsenal just couldn’t compete with those factors. They had 80% possession but only got three shots on Forest’s goal. They have picked up just nine points in the last eight games, running out of steam in the final weeks.
Still, second place would’ve seemed like a huge leap forward in August for this young side and they can take pride in the fact they have played some wonderful football along the way. For Forest, staying up is a triumph. That said, after signing 30 players across the season they must develop a proper coherent recruitment strategy, and they must stick with Steve Cooper, or next year it’ll be more of the same and perhaps they won’t be so lucky. Their players give everything in the home games, roared on by a partisan crowd. They need to take that intensity and commitment to the away fixtures.
With a 3-1 win over relegated Southampton the Seagulls secured sixth and a well-deserved Europa League place. They have a good claim to have played the best football of any team this season and Roberto De Zerbi to be the best manager. Evan Ferguson scored twice, is one of the hottest young players in the league and if they keep hold of him, you wouldn’t bet against them doing very well in Europe next season.
It was the 29th time a David Moyes team had played a Sam Allardyce team. They have 1,997 games as manager between them. Some might say that is quite enough, thank you very much after this 3-1 defeat for Leeds at West Ham. Along with Dean Smith, Steve Cooper, Sean Dyche and Gary O’Neil, six of the bottom seven Premier League’s clubs currently have British managers, which must tell us something. Leeds’ opening goal was as old school as any scored this season. Long throw, volley, goal. Proof that football can be a very simple game.
That said, West Ham’s defence were so dozy, they didn’t even challenge for the ball, but from there Leeds gave up. Much has been said (largely by his media pals) about Allardyce’s man-management and motivation skills. If they exist at all (and I don’t believe they do), they absolutely don’t work. In the second half, Leeds turned in a gutless performance and didn’t look like they cared that much. Most of them will be out of there if they’re relegated anyway. One point out of nine is disastrous and like Frank Lampard, if the manager was hoping a brief rescue act might advertise or show off his talents, he was absolutely delusional. Dreadful stuff from Leeds. Declan Rice almost certainly said goodbye to Hammers fans with another imperious performance.
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