Wonder if Ralph loses his job at Southampton this Summer or if he decides on his own to step away. Reading their season postmortem I’m left with the perception many of their supporters are not at all enamored by the job he’s doing. Ralph himself seems ambivalent about it all. Of course it’s a club with not large resources but the overwhelming sentiment is they should be doing better than they’ve been.
I see that said a lot, but they also are a remarkably unimpressive group of players. Since Poch replaced Adkins, what was now nearly 10 years ago, I don’t think they have ever had a group with fewer legitimate targets for bigger clubs.
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Let’s have a season review.
Which team (aside Liverpool) was the most impressive?
Which team was the underachiever (Everton doesn’t count)?
Best young talent (aside Trent).
Biggest flop (Maguire doesn’t count)?
Best manager (aside Klopp)
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Brighton (assuming that impressive does not mean best)
Utd
Foden
Varane? Snacho?
Conte
Brentford
Leicester (their final finishing place belies how uninspired they really were, with the quality they have in the squad)
Connor Gallagher
Jadon Bumcho (but there were others)
Thomas Frank or Patrick Viera
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West Ham
Leeds or United
Foden
Sancho
Conte
Was thinking about this yesterday. Did we ever finish a match week at the top (with no games in hand)? I ask because it feels lie Chelsea were ahead of us by a point for most of the season prior to December.
Related: Even given our results against United and Arsenal, we didn’t beat any of the top 4 sides home or away in the League — even if all the results were draws, you can’t expect to win the title with 0 wins in 6 against the top 4. Obviously, City lost to Spurs in both games and drew with us, so they didn’t run the table, but beat Chelsea in both games — out of those 18 points, they got 8 and we got 6. Obviously there were numerous other frustrating dropped points — Brentford, Brighton, West Ham, Leicester — but as much as Tuchel and Conte are f**ks who park the bus at Anfield and Pep has a blank check, it’s staggering that we couldn’t get one win out of six.
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The Chelsea draw was the one. How long did they play with ten men for? Without checking it felt like an hour.
Edit. The whole 2nd half.
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Liverpool.
Everton.
Trent.
Maguire.
Klopp.
Nobody tell me what the fuck to do.
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Which team (aside Liverpool) was the most impressive? Either West Ham or Brentford for me. West Ham whilst in Europa League held 4th place for a large part of the season, which is no mean feat. Brentford cause I expected them to challange Derby County’s record for least points in a season.
Which team was the underachiever (Everton doesn’t count)? Utd - no explenation needed
Best young talent (aside Trent)? Toss up between Curtis Jones and Elliot 
Biggest flop (Maguire doesn’t count)? Easy. With the wankfest that came from his signing, CR7
Best manager (aside Klopp)? Rafa - that job he did across Stanley Park was magnificent 
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The return game frustrated me more. I think Chelsea’s commitment to sit in and give nothing away coupled with it being the beginning of the season before we had developed rhythm made it frustrating but understandable. Going 2-0 and being so much on top in the return and not getting the win was literally throwing 2 points away.
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I think I’m right that the first game Thiago came on at half time (debut?) and immediately set a new PL record for completed passes in one half, was it over 100? We were all over them but frustratingly couldn’t find that final pass.
The return fixture was annoying too though, definitely. Missed Thiago for that one.
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Get set for all the pundits to predict us 1 or 2 next year.
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Nah. The geniuses at the BBC will have us fourth, as we are getting older, Chelsea under Tuchel are well organised and hard to beat, and Ten Hag will get the best out of all the megastars at Man U.
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And don’t forget that Fat Fwank will stop the rot that Rafa let in at Neverton, so that will drop us down to 5th
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Which team (aside Liverpool) was the most impressive?
Brentford, rode the period of poor results and came back to get some good results at the end, be interesting what they can do.
Which team was the underachiever (Everton doesn’t count)?
Everton sorry but they should count all the money they spent And they are 4 points from being relegated. With what Man Utd spent they also deserve to be there.
Best young talent (aside Trent).
Generally impressed with Gallagher at Palace, hopefully gets a permanent move away from Chelsea as he seems a nice lad.
Biggest flop (Maguire doesn’t count)?
Sancho, I wouldn’t say he flopped but you kind of expected more. Lukaku I expected to show up as his Man Utd version and he mostly did, it’s not any different from Italy just the league is.
Best manager (aside Klopp)
Probably Thomas Frank at Brentford
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That was last season, but you are correct. This year we had 11 men against 10 for a half and yet they looked more likely to smash and grab on the counter.
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Between 1992-93 and 2002-03 seasons the average points of champion team (first three seasons adjusted for 38 games) were 81.36. Between 2003-04 and 2015-16 seasons the average points of the champion team were 87.69. This includes the Ruski takeover of Chelsea (2003) and the Sheikh takeover of Cheaty. During Pep regime in the next six seasons the average points of the champion team were 94.83. Only 10 times a champion team finished with 90 or more points (adjusted for 38 games), five of those came during Pep era.
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Most impressive? Brighton or Wolves
Underachiever? Leicester
Best young talent? Certainly a few shouts…had injuries not played a part probably would’ve been Neto or Lamptey…but has to be Saka.
Biggest flop? Weghorst
Best manager? Gotta be Conte hasnt it.
To be honest I expected Weghorst to be a bit meh and he was.
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