Ten things that have shaped the season

From Chelsea spending £45m on two players in the summer to Sunderland sticking with Mick when all around them was crumbling - Football365 picks the ten things that have shaped this Premiership season...

1) Arsenal's Defensive Crisis
At one juncture in February Arsenal had Lauren, Sol Campbell, Ashley Cole, Gael Clichy, Pascal Cygan, Kerrea Gilbert, Kolo Toure and Emmanuel Eboue all unavailable through injury or African Nations duty. For the Highbury clash with Bolton, the defence was Mathieu Flamini, Johan Djourou, Philippe Senderos and Sebastian Larsson. The amazing thing is that they only conceded one goal that day.

That was the low point, but throughout the season Arsenal have been plagued with injuries to their first-choice right-back and their two leading left-backs, as well as one half of their central defensive pairing. Even the staunchest anti-Gunner would struggle to argue that, with a fully-fit squad, Arsenal would not be chasing second rather than fourth.


2) Chelsea's Summer Business
In July and August of 2005, Chelsea spent over £45m on two players, and in those two deals, they ensured that they would retain the Premiership title. Not because Michael Essien and Shaun Wright-Phillips have made such massive contributions to the Blues' title assault, but because with those piles of money they ensured that nobody else could get close.

Essien could have been a ManYoo player at two-thirds of the price, while SWP would have been in the red shirt of Arsenal or Liverpool at a fraction of his exorbitant fee. But Chelsea employed classic spoiling tactics and ensured that any top-class player with the desire to play in the Premiership would have to eschew massive sums of money to turn down Chelsea and go somewhere else instead. Unlikely.


3) Toffees Stick With Moyes
By October 26 2005 Everton were already out of three cup competitions and had amassed just one win (and two goals) from their first nine Premiership games of the season - a start guaranteed to make the most cautious chairman reach for his manager's P45. But not Bill Kenwright, who believed that the manager who took them to fourth in the Premiership the year before could not become a bad boss overnight.

Kenwright said this week: "I never thought it wouldn't be okay because of what David is like. He did predict a top-ten finish when the soothsayers were saying relegation. I never thought it was optimistic because I know the man." He knew and he was right - the Scot is now on course to steer Everton to a top-ten finish.


4) Liverpool Don't Pay For Owen
Newcastle did make it pretty damned impossible by offering Real Madrid £16m for Little Mickey, which was far too rich for the Reds' blood. They instead opted for the cheaper, taller, less potent Peter Crouch to form a three-man strikeforce along with Fernando Morientes and Djibril Cisse.

We don't know whether Owen would have stayed injury-free at Liverpool, but what we do know is that Premiership tallies for Crouch (4) Cisse (4) and Morientes (3) mean that the Reds are woefully short of goals and are likely to lose the battle for second as well as the already-lost battle for a European quarter-final place. What if...


5) Newcastle Shunting Souness
Not before time, Newcastle chairman Freddie Shepherd (the antithesis to Kenwright) lost patience with Graeme Souness - the man who spent £8m on Jean-Alain Boumsong, the man who fell out with two of his star players (one of whom cost £10m, was released on a free and is now preparing for a Champions League quarter-final with Barcelona), the man who blamed every single defeat on Lady Luck.

Sunday's mauling by ManYoo aside, Souness' sacking has saved the Toon season, with Glenn Roeder's side unbeaten in six games before that clash. Newcastle are now in a battle for a top-half finish rather than a fight against relegation. Shepherd does not always get decisions right, but this move was the right move at the right time.


6) Keane Leaving ManYoo
Talk at the beginning of the season was of ManYoo's lack of a natural successor to Roy Keane. Little did we all know that the vacuum would be created sooner rather than later after the Irishman's (completely understandable) comments about his poor teammates' performance during their 4-1 capitulation to Middlesbrough would make a stay at Old Trafford untenable.

So since then ManYoo fans have been treated to the sight of Alan Smith, Darren Fletcher, Kieran Richardson, Rio Ferdinand and Ryan Giggs playing in the centre of their midfield. We're not saying Keane's presence would have seen them mount a title challenge, or even stay in Europe, but as 'things that shaped the season' go, it doesn't get much bigger than the acrimonious departure of your captain.


7) Wigan And West Ham's Fearlessness
If anyone wants to claim that they predicted that the newly-promoted Hammers and Latics would both be in the top ten at this point in the season, F365 will show you a bare-faced liar. One of them maybe, but both? Never. What do they have in common? Fearlessness and forward-thinking, that's what.

Both teams have gone into every game believing that victory was possible, and refusing to resort to the damage-limitation tactics of other potential strugglers. They both have inventive young managers who know that the best form of defence is attack, who both invested in pace during the summer while Sunderland opted for the safe and the slow.

And thus a blueprint for survival was born.


8) Sunderland Stick With Mick
At what point did you know that Sunderland would not survive this season? After the first game? After the first month? After the first dozen defeats? So when did Sunderland sack their manager? In March, after they had won just ten points from 28 games, of course.

The timing was odd to say the least. Why not get rid of him at Christmas to give the mew manager half a chance of a survival battle? McCarthy is no Moyes - he has no track record in Premiership management, there's no reason to trust that he had a grand plan that was not reflected in results. As Mick himself would say, it was p***-poor.


9) Spurs Scattergun Transfer Policy
The tactic: Buy every young player (preferably English) who's not ridiculously over-priced and hope that roughly half of them will be ready now, while the rest are shipped out on loan. So for every Aaron Lennon, there's a Wayne Routledge, and for every Michael Dawson there's a Tom Huddlestone. Mix in some serious experience in the form of Edgar Davids and Danny Murphy, and you have a recipe for a possible top-four finish.

Martin Jol has a very clear idea in his head about the direction in which Tottenham should move, with the emphasis firmly on young and British. Of course, we still can't explain Jermaine Jenas, but then we fear that question may trouble us until the day we die...


10) The Pompey Farce
By bringing back the loathsome Harry Redknapp, Milan Mandaric has achieved two things - Pompey have become the neutrals' favourite for relegation and they now have one of the most bloated squads in the Premiership. What he is unlikely to achieve is survival.

However farcical Redknapp's defection to Southampton was ('would I ever go down the road? Never'), it was beaten by his return to Fratton Park, with him and Mandaric putting their public slanging match behind them to unite for the Portsmouth cause. And then they bought Benjani for £4.1m and the rest of us laughed.

By Sarah Winterburn