That’s it then. Its over. Football’s finished for another ‘year’. Manchester City won the league. In case you missed that. Happened (really) in November but to please the statisticians they weren’t awarded the title officially til last month. There was no question in anyone’s mind.

Lots of questions about neighbouring Manchester United though. Like ‘how the fuck could they come second when they played shit all year, scraped past a few unworthies and struggled with form, with players, certainly with their manager, all season?’ But that’s how it goes.

The battle for fourth and with it the final Champions League place went to… Liverpool!!!! (Cheers, applause, whooping and shouting but probably not in West London). So Chelsea missed out and landed in 5th. No cups, no champions league slot, probably no manager (again). Shame.

Arsenal don’t get a mention because I’m only discussing the top teams.

And then there’s third place. Secured yesterday with a ridiculous, if not to say ‘thrilling’ win over Leicester at Wembley. 5-4 was the final score after being 3-1 down then settling at 4-all before Harry Kane (who else??) hit the winner. Brilliant end to the season, yippee-yi-yaay.

And Leicester are making those noises about managerial change. Again. Because they finished 9th in the league and that is, quite frankly, awful. Apparently.

So everyone wants to win the league but it is, in case you missed that too, rather difficult since funding changed to allow laundered money from overseas gangsters to flood into our national game. So most teams are happy/content to finish ‘top half’ or even to just survive another year to enjoy the riches of Premiership tv money. Not Leicester.

They came up just a few years ago. They had such a poor first season that they were the bookies favourites to get relegated in the next, their second year. But instead they won the title. Which was brilliant, which was inspiring, which was simply magnificent and was a totally freak event. It was a flash of lightening lighting your barbecue. It was a lottery win. It was spinning ‘heads’ 100 times in a row. But win the league they did. And were so pleased that early the next season they sacked the manager responsible for that victory (though I think God played possibly a bigger part than Claudio Ranieri). Because they weren’t by then playing well ‘enough’. They’d slipped to shoddy mid-table and going nowhere. The next manager was sacked after a few months as the team still hadn’t won any more silverware, even though it was only March.

And now after a very up-and-down season they finished 9th and there’s talk of sacking another manager.

Because for some reason, no-one at Leicester views their immense achievement as the weird oddity that it was. They see it as their place in the grand scheme. No-one there seems to accept the reality that even with a few exceptionally gifted players Leicester are a very mediocre team. Yet the powers there keep measuring things against their league win. As if it is now their right. And their rightful place. It can only end in tears. Probably Gary Linneker’s.

Happy Monday

A xxxx