Football Season 2023.

[Chippy_Tea]

City 2 - 1 WHU

Arsenal 1 - 1 Everton.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Half time -

 

[Chippy_Tea]

58:46

City 3 - 1 WHU

 

[matt.]

Tottenham in Europe; my pain will continue......

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Imperious Manchester City beat West Ham 3-1 at Etihad Stadium to become the first team to win the English league title four seasons in a row.

With City needing a win to be sure of holding off Arsenal, who started the final day two points behind but with a better goal difference, Phil Foden put Pep Guardiola’s side ahead after just two minutes.

The England star added another before the break and although Mohammed Kudus pulled one back, midfielder Rodri restored the home side's two-goal cushion with a shot from the edge of the area after 59 minutes.

City survived a late scare when West Ham had a second goal ruled out by VAR for handball.

However, their victory was never seriously in doubt

The win completed a staggering run of 19 wins and four draws since their last defeat in the league, at Aston Villa on 6 December.

City have now won six out of the past seven Premier League titles. Last term, they joined Huddersfield, Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United, twice, in winning the top flight three years in a row.

Now Guardiola’s team have achieved something no other side has managed since the English league was formed in 1888, 136 years ago.

On 25 May they will aim to become the first side to complete the domestic Double in successive seasons when they face Manchester United in the FA Cup final at Wembley.


BBC Sport.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

 

[JockyBrewer]

My (late) preview of the season - I'm interested to see where people disagree with this!


At the top of the table it's hard to look past Man City, they're probably stronger than last season.
Arsenal are likely to follow them, although their strength in depth is a concern which is what ultimately cost them last season.

Liverpool should be the other good team. I'd have them better than Arsenal, but they have let go some senior players that played a lot of minutes for them last year and I'm not sure about the replacements.

The 4th Champions League place will be an interesting race, although Man Utd should squeak it. They're likely to be in a fight with Newcastle and Tottenham. I think Newcastle might be a bit distracted by the Champions League this year. Tottenham look good even without Kane.

Aston Villa did extremely well once binning Gerrard last year, and look stronger again. They're going to have an issue in a year or two with a team full of peak age players, but that's not this season's problem. They could even be up in the fight for 4th.

Bookies favour Chelsea to be up there, but while I think Pochettino should be able to do something with some of the thousand players they have, who really knows what. Losing Nkunku in the close season was a blow.

Brighton will be up in the top half but I think the loss of some key players will be hard on them, especially while also playing in Europe.

Palace finished strongly last season, and despite the loss of talisman Zaha will likely be solid this season, but not strong enough to pick apart the top teams.

Brentford were good last season, and have strengthened, so I like them. I think West Ham will do better in the league than last season, but may still be distracted by Europe again so not finish as high as they could.

Bournemouth look like they've taken last season's near miss to heart and have strengthened, although losing their player of the season Lerma will be a problem for them.

Everton are bad, but Dyche will make them effective enough with lump and squish tactics to stay out of a terrible bottom group. Fulham are the same - although they did well last season, virtually every roll of the dice went their way and now Mitrovic has buggered off, so I don't see it happening again.

Out of the relegation contenders Forest should stay up again because there are teams worse than them and they've strengthened, but some bad luck (and good luck for others) might change that.

Burnley seem the most likely of the three promoted teams to stay up. They seem to be doing good things, sustainably.

Wolves have huge ownership issues and have sold a bunch of big players as well as losing their manager. They're my unfortunate team to go down in lieu of Burnley.

Which leaves Sheffield Utd and Luton at the bottom, both of which look so far away from this league. Of course you never really know but I think they'll need to be busy before the end of the month to build something with a chance of staying up.

Winners: Man City
2: Arsenal
3: Liverpool
4: Man Utd
5: Tottenham
6: Newcastle
7: Aston Villa
8: Chelsea
9: Brighton
10: Crystal Palace
11: Brentford
12: West Ham
13: Bournemouth
14: Everton
15: Fulham
16: Nottingham Forest
17: Burnley
18: Wolves
19: Sheffield Utd
20: Luton

I think I did pretty well on this.

Man Utd and Brentford were a lot worse than I expected, meanwhile Wolves were considerably better (although the last two months were more the Wolves I expected).

Will be interesting next season to see if the promoted teams do better next season than this. Forest and Brentford may need to be considerably better.