The final day of the season was overwhelming: 10 games going on at once, each with its own rhythm and storyline. But from the mass of narratives, one key theme emerged, one that the Guardian’s Jonathan Wilson says has lurked in the background all season: that this is a brutally hard, extremely competitive league in which any slip-up is punished.
Wilson, writing in his Soccer with Jonathan Wilson column, argues that while there have been complaints about the style of many games, the complaints tend to correlate quite strongly with how well a fan’s team has done. This season, however, was different. Arsenal became champions, but not the most thrilling. “It is good that the prevailing model of football has been challenged,” Wilson writes. “It is good that the Premier League has a champion who seemed constantly to be battling their own doubts, who did not bludgeon the league into submission with their wage bill.”
“Jonathan Wilson examines a Premier League season where any slip is punished, as champions Arsenal battled doubts and Tottenham survived.”
The table bunched significantly: the days when champions gathered points tallies in the high 90s seem over, and so too do the days when mid-30s points were enough to stay up. The biggest issue settled on the final day was Tottenham avoiding relegation at West Ham’s expense. There was clear anxiety around the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in injury time as Spurs held a 1-0 lead, everyone aware that West Ham were 3-0 up against Leeds. But there was never much prospect of Everton scoring the two goals they would have needed to send Roberto De Zerbi’s team down.
Still, that Tottenham were in that mess in the first place, Wilson writes, suggests how badly the club has been run over the past couple of years. “And that is the message of this season: nobody is safe.”
West Ham learned that lesson even more painfully than Spurs. Given the advantages they should accrue from renting the 2012 Olympic Stadium on extremely generous terms, their relegation was a shock. Wilson’s analysis underscores a league where wealth matters, but wisdom – enlightened management – can still elevate a club, and where no lead, no reputation, no wage bill offers immunity.