Premier League Review - Vardy and Arsenal embarrass themselves again

Arsenal show their true character with another embarrassment

Leicester City extended their lead at the top by only a point, but that is almost certainly going to be enough. Nonetheless, they have almost sarcastically given a glimmer of optimism to Spurs behind them, and also to Arsenal in third place.This was it, then. A rare chance for Arsenal to show that when the pressure was on - even if infinitesimally small - they would step up and prove the doubters wrong. They would be able to at least cut the lead at the top of the table and show to their fans that they weren’t a bunch of chancers indulged by their manager and each other, and that Arsene Wenger’s comments about going easy in the transfer market weren’t completely daft. Instead, they did show that Wenger’s comments were completely daft, and they did demonstrate that they were a bunch of chancers.

In the past four months Crystal Palace have shown that they don’t have the talent to break free of Alan Pardew’s grasp when it comes to a complete fall-off in form, and yet Arsenal still couldn’t beat them. Worse than that, they showed that even when a side low on confidence went behind against them, they weren’t able to assert themselves. Perhaps because they have no real fortitude. This comes, of course, after collapsing against West Ham in a startlingly pathetic way. Credit to Arsenal, they have failed in their most fabulous way in the easiest of circumstances.

Jamie Vardy is Leicester’s warts and all

Congratulations to Jamie Vardy. He’s English, and past actions have shown that he’s evidently proud to be English given his denigration of other races. Which makes it even funnier that he got himself for supposedly the least English of all crimes, diving in a football match. Of course, it’s not the first time he’s dived in a football match - cast your mind back to Leicester’s brilliant 5-3 victory over Manchester United last season.What followed was Vardy apparently telling the referee that he was a ‘f***ing c***’ for the decision, which adds to the notion that Leicester’s fairly tale is, in truth, something that he will attempt to spoil for as long as he is at the club. There has never been a second when he has seemed anything other than unpleasant, no matter how much people attempt to claim that once playing in the lower leagues, and then scoring lots of goals, might change things.

Manchester United and Aston Villa leave everyone depressed

Aston Villa got relegated, but there were two sets of fans who had lost the will to live before kick off had even taken place.

For Villa, they were safe in the knowledge that they were already down. Only a string of barely credible results would have resulted in their survival on Saturday, and before kick-off Sunderland had beaten Norwich City to make things certain. They were a Championship side. They still had the same owner whose mismanagement had resulted in their slide down their table, and incompetent appointments which ensured their relegation. The players who had failed them utterly in 2015/16 had not suddenly changed into brave, committed warriors - they were the same gutless players who could barely keep themselves fit. And in Gabriel Agbonlahor’s case, they couldn’t even manage that.

After the defeat, Joleon Lescott talked about relegation being a weight off the shoulders of the Villa players, and he predictably - and understandably - got pelters for it. But it’s not Lescott’s fault, it’s just how players are these days. As society has changed to take off some of the harshest edges off masculinity, so footballers have changed to bring other aspects of their life to the fore. Having money that pays them for the talents that earn everyone else millions as a result, for one thing. So now they care less about the pursuit of victory, unless they have their own source of motivation or an exceptional manager.

Villa did not go down because they were especially a shower - the United players seem to be as committed to the cause. In the FA Cup they appeared to rouse themselves for their own benefit, but back to the grind of the league they could barely manage the motions to find a way of going through them. This is just what footballers are these days, and it is a waste of time to expect a return to the blood and guts of two decades ago, and before then. Football has changed, and the quality has generally improved across Europe, if not the Premier League in the last couple of years. It’s just that at the top and the bottom of the league, there’s no longer any real source of heroes.

And yet, and yet, Manchester United almost only drew against them.

Manchester City hint the Champions League has turned around their attitude

There’s little point reading a great deal into a single result. Chelsea have been on a slow upward tick since Jose Mourinho left, but they haven’t managed anything special. Rumours about the departures of Eden Hazard, Thibaut Courtois and Diego Costa have intensified, not relented. It is a mark of Mourinho’s unpopularity with many of his former players that despite that, the squad have delivered improved performances.

As well as that, this is a squad that’s in need of reinforcing. In the summer, Jose Mourinho was already agitating for more than he was going to receive, understanding that the midfield was understaffed, and that more across the squad was necessary. Not that he didn’t make his own mistakes, of course, but Chelsea’s struggles this season are not only his fault.

So Manchester City’s victory on Saturday was not quite the great victory it might have appeared, free from recent context. It was an adequate side in a good mood, tonking an adequate side still in relative disarray and devoid of ambition. City’s players, like United’s in the FA Cup, are now playing for their own sake, demanding inclusion in future Champions League ties to add glamour to their own. But that’s a change. In the past, City have been a side kept afloat by Sergio Aguero and Kevin De Bruyne, now they might be a side who are looking at Aguero and De Bruyne and hoping they can do something remarkable with them. In the pursuit of fourth place, that should be enough to secure them against a miserable United. In the pursuit of the Champions League, it will give them as good a chance as they’ve got - nobody ever went wrong by appealing to somebody’s self-interest, after all.

Newcastle and Sunderland drag their corpses along the ground for another week yet

Having spent most of the year trying to make it almost too easy for hacks and bloggers to line up their assurances in print that it was all over for them, they’ve suddenly started to win. It would probably be narcissistic to take it personally, but there we go - we all have our faults.

However, there’s something mildly interesting about the collapse of Norwich while the corpses of Sunderland and Newcastle twitch involuntarily. For too long, the clubs have promised to collapse under the weight of everyone else’s indifference and find themselves in the deserved obscurity of the Championship. Sustained incompetence deserves no reward, in regard to Newcastle. Sustained appointments of defenders of racism, fascism and employment of child abusers deserves no reward, in regard to Sunderland.

There is an idea that bias is an ugly word when it comes to writing about football - but in what world do Sunderland, and Newcastle - owned by Sports Direct’s Mike Ashley, sponsored by Wonga - seem more worthy of attention than Norwich City, whose biggest crime is a patronising TV chef?