Rarely is there a big surprise in a 38-game domestic schedule. The best teams rise, the worst get relegated, and order prevails. Most teams in the Premier League have 10 games remaining, so it’s as good a time as any to revisit what each club’s expectations were before the season. That’s a good judge of success near the end of the campaign.
This year’s Premier League is mediocre. Deeply, deeply mediocre. La Liga has the best players. The Bundesliga is the most equal and probably has the best quality soccer. The Premier League has its furious pace and its drama and its full stadiums and its big U.S. TV deal. So, in honor of the middling Premier League, I gave each club a "Crap Level" ranking, which loosely means how well that team did according to its preseason rankings. Again, that’s what it means…some of the time.
Chelsea
Here’s the proof that you can buy the title as long as Angel di Maria isn’t on your scout list and as long as your manager hasn’t (completely) lost his mind. Jose Mourinho isn’t eligible to register on the van Gaal mental maniac scale. United’s manager is an imposter in Mourinho’s highly entertaining psych ward. LVG comes off like he’s trying to be an evil genius. Mourinho actually is one.
Chelsea were always destined to win this league; that much was obvious even before the lines were erased from the country’s pitches before the end of last season. They bought the right players. They brought the correct ones back from loan deals. They have the right manager and goalkeeper and striker and back-four. That five-point league lead could easily be 10 or 11 by May.
But it all goes downhill from here. Chelsea’s the only team in the table that’s been worth a damn for the whole season.
Crap level: Not crap, not crap at all.
Manchester City
The defending champs ran into an unstoppable Chelsea buzzsaw. Vincent Kompany’s decline is worrying, but Sergio Aguero makes up for that by being (now indefinitely) a top-five scorer in the world. City are one of a handful of teams that wouldn’t be anywhere at all without their best player - and that’s not an effective way to beat a juggernaut like Chelsea. This, also, is right on par with external expectations for the season. City are slotted in just right.
Crap level: Unfortunate, like having an IBS flare-up on a Megabus
Arsenal
Ever known someone who’s lived alone for too long and doesn’t quite know how to exist around other people? Arsenal is that introspective, sex-deprived, rarely-interesting human who is reaching, yelling, screaming out for help. Mostly because of its manager, the club perpetually plays soccer like it’s trying to manufacture a working Ollivanders wand.
Being third, in reality, is the best-case scenario for the torso-suffocated Wengers. I heard one person - Michael Davies of the fellow nipple-tingling Men In Blazers - picked Arsenal higher than third before the season, and that’s only because he couldn’t pick Chelsea to win the whole thing and risk laying his Twitter mentions to rest.
My largely kind thoughts on United, which will answer any inevitable “BUT THEY BEAT UNITED IN THE FA CUP” declarations, are a few paragraphs down.
Crap level: With the door open, because no one’s home.
Manchester United
There once was a really crap team
Who faked us all out with their sheen
They leaked five at King Power
They're out of FA
Now everyone sees they're unclean.
See? I put it in poetry form to make it nicer when I say this is the most insufferable team in the league.
Crap level: African Elephant.
Liverpool
Here lies one of the only two teams who’ve been worth a good g** d*** for any stretch of the season. Liverpool should probably be a spot or two higher. Even the most batshit crazy fans would have admitted this team had no chance of winning the title this year, which is why the Stevie Slip was so brutal. Even by the high magic standards set by sports - the kind that produce Steph Curry Vines every other night - last season felt surreal. It was too good to be true.
This year, with injury, and insult (0-1 to Aston Villa in September), and Luis Suarez to Barcelona, and Balotelli, and drawing Real Madrid in Europe, fifth place feels like a real achievement. They’ll likely take Manchester United’s place in the UCL spots by season’s end.
Oh, one more thing, because I enjoy a good conspiracy: It’s no secret that Suarez was somewhat unhappy at Liverpool. He was playing with a good team, but not with top caliber individual players, in a country with dreary weather. Let’s say he knew Barcelona were interested in buying him, and let’s say he knew Liverpool wouldn’t let him go after his terrific domestic year, where he made not a single bad headline and scored more than 30 times...
...What if he bit Giorgio Chiellini on purpose? He might have known that the bad press would effectively force Liverpool to sell him to the best team on the planet, where he could play with the best player ever, right? It’s not that crazy.
Crap Level: Rebecca Black, growing up to be Taylor Swift.
Tottenham
Harry Kane Harry Kane Harry Kaaaaane / Harry Kane Harry Kane Harry KAAAAAANE.
Crap Level: HARRY KANE.
Southampton
The dream season isn’t totally finished, but it’s close. With ten games to go, the Saints are sliding fast. But look back at the beginning of the season when everyone’s relegation predictions started with the word “Southampton,” like it was the obvious choice of the three. There you’ll see that even though this season might not climax with European qualification, it has already been a wild success. It’s been a pleasant campaign from the start, and we might have already located the next big European scorer - Graziano Pelle - when he plays for Roma in a year or two.
Crap Level: Warm rain in the summer.
Stoke City
I’m unsure, always, about whether I should feel anything at all about Stoke City. Their expectations, each year, are 10th place. Stay up, get money from new TV deal, love Peter Crouch, employ a team of bar brawlers and truck drivers, repeat as necessary. Is that brilliant or completely offensive? I have no idea.
I drank a beer once at a New York bar that claimed it was the home of the Stoke City Supporters Club. I just scratched my head.
Crap Level: Solid.
Swansea City
I’ve written about my love for Swansea before, and since then I’ve determined that Jonjo Shelvey is the most lovable alien ever to visit Earth. Things I imagine Jonjo does or can do:
- Bend it like Beckham, but only once in a while when the music’s right
- Speak Vulcan
- Enjoy a meal made entirely of SPAM
- Laugh at the Big Bang Theory
- Fix a broken Xbox
They’re too far out of sixth to make a run at the Europa League, but this has been Swansea’s finest season in the top flight. They get better every year. They’ll challenge for those top spots soon - perhaps next season.
Crap Level: Your new puppy peeing on the carpet, but you love him so much that your immediate response is “d’awwww!"
West Ham
Sam Allardyce, everyone’s favorite pleasant, loose-tie, possibly drunk uncle, said before the season that he was hoping for a finish in the top half of the Premier League. I thought that was complete insanity. Sam must have been drunk that day when he talked to that reporter. He was drunk. He had too much to drink.
But the Hammers have been a nice surprise, had some good wins, and are generally fun to watch weekly. I’d love to see them sneak into that last European spot, even though Sam getting fired is a more likely outcome.
Crap Level: Not crap, Sam’s the man:
Newcastle
It’s an odd paradox that these reviews become more difficult farther down the table. Where would Newcastle have even been predicted to finish? I wrote early on that they wouldn’t be a top-10 team, and that’s probably going to be right, but they're one of two sides to beat Chelsea and they're mid-table despite an absurd amount of turmoil. That they survived all the “Fire Alan Pardew” junk - and only once seemed at risk of going down - is miraculous.
Crap Level: Luke-warm office coffee.
Crystal Palace
The Pardew exit from Newcastle to Crystal Palace is one of my favorite events of the season in the EPL. It's up there with Alexis Sanchez's shirtless celebration, Russell Brand kissing Big Sam, di Maria's classic Card-Argue-Tug Ref's Shirt-Card-Bye red card, and Jonas Gutierrez coming on for Newcastle as moments of the year.
Pardew was loathed at Newcastle for most of the past two years, then was in real danger of getting the boot early this season. But he persevered, winning a handful of games in row to regain the trust of a suddenly adoring public! What a tremendous story!
...then he threw up the Richard Nixon peace signs and got the hell out of there. Classic.
Crap Level: As big and wide as their manager's CEG (Crap-Eating Grin).
West Bromwich Albien
"Don’t get relegated, don’t get relegated, please don’t get relegated, oh no we’re terrible we’re going to get relegated, WAIT LET’S GET TONY PULIS AND THEN WE WILL BE FINE!” - eight different teams in the next 20 years. All will stay up successfully.
Nickname idea for Pulis: The Polisher
Crap Level: Norm MacDonald as Burt Reynolds as Turd Ferguson.
Everton
What’s the point of this Everton season? To make the Champions League? Can you imagine Everton in the Champions League, playing against Bayern Munich? What a disaster. Hey, on the bright side, Everton has a lot more money to spend next season when Premier League television cash rolls in. That is, if they don’t pull a Roberto Martinez - win a trophy and get relegated in the same season.
Crap Level: Caroline.
Hull City
I’m not even sure I’ve watched a minute of Hull City soccer since the 2014 FA Cup final. Oh, don’t look at me like that, you haven’t either. This seems about right…I think?
Crap Level: Meatloaf, the singer.
Sunderland
This is another team whose entire goal before the season was to get to 38 points (the staying-up threshold). Sunderland did some math and came up with this:
- Need 38 points
- Play 38 games
- A draw is 1 point
- 38 draws x 1 point per draw = 38 points!
Crap Level: Meatloaf, the food
Aston Villa
No team in the modern game deserves to get relegated from a top flight more than Aston Villa. Well, except Parma. Poor, poor Parma. Villa scored twice in mid-week last week and I thought I read the score wrong.
The highlight of Villa’s season - aside from…well…LOOKIN’ AT YOU, LIVERPOOL - was this video commemorating the 140th anniversary of the club. It stars the actor who played the — erm — lovable janitor from the Harry Potter movies. At times in the great video even he, David Bradley, while talking about his beloved club, seems like he’d rather be somewhere else. Actually, now that I’m watching the video again, it sounds and reads like a fitting eulogy.
The expectations weren’t high to start the season, but Aston Villa have been the most offensively horrible team in Europe’s top five leagues.
Crap Level: Bad Grandpa.
QPR
Dear QPR,
Just go down already why don’t you? God, you’re the worst. Why did you even come up? I don’t care about your playoff-winning goal, which produced a terrific, terrific BBC Radio call. I know you’ve heard the call, QPR, I’m sure you listen to it daily. But you should have stayed where you were. Ten games from now, don’t make a fuss, just go back down.
Best Wishes,
Everyone
Crap Level: Britta Perry.
Burnley
This is a Premier League neutral’s worst nightmare. Burnley, who’ve played soccer well enough to be demeaned - “they play hard” and other versions of that phrase - by every pundit this side of Mars, might be relegated. Maybe that’s been Burnley’s destiny all along.
Crap Level: Small-budget and endearing, like a Syfy movie.
Leicester City
Perhaps my Golden Ageism, yearning for this past fall, is clouding my judgment. I remember when Leicester put up five on the crappiest team in the table. I remember when Leicester drew with Arsenal. I remember the team that got at least a point from five of its first seven games of the year. It’s been a long while since then, but Leicester doesn’t deserve this spot in the table. Aston Villa does. Aston Villa deserves to be last to the buffet line. Aston Villa deserves to be last in every table. Leicester’s goal differential would put them 13th to 15th in any other table in Europe. They’ve lost nine games by one goal. They've not been beaten by more than two. They’re bad, but they’re not this bad. There’s still some King Power in the tank, and the remaining fixtures are friendly.
I love Leicester City. I love their jerseys and their stadium and their Bond Villain-looking manager and I want them to go down fighting so I’m going to give them the highest compliment I can give an endearingly bad thing...
Crap Level: The Fast & Furious series.
