UK Football Weekly Tips and Stuff – The Gurgler’s Own Goal

A week after the English Premier League signs off on a new record deal for TV rights, 2 of their team in Europe are out, another two on life support, and only Chelsea in some kind of position to progress. Does the amount of money or the European achievements determine the best league in the world? We don’t care about either, we just like the EPL as most games every week are compeditive and allow us our opportunity to continue placing losing multis every week.

The biggest surprise was Arsenal getting their pants pulled down at home to Monaco, which led to the usual complaints about Arsene Wenger, and plenty of Wenger Out calls. Nothing is likely to change, and the powers that be have already promised another 50 million to spend in the UK summer. Sure it’s about a fifth of what Manchester United will get to spend, but it will cover at least one more midfielder that they desperately need. As an Ipswich Town fan we hope they stay away from Tyrone Mings.

Manchester City’s loss to Barcelona wasn’t too big a surprise given the Spanish side’s European pedigree, and Spurs and Liverpool have thrown away good chances at Silverware in Europe.

Talking of silverware, the first piece of it in England is up for grabs this Sunday with the League Cup final at Wembley. Many will wonder if Spurs can repeat the spanking handed out to Chelsea last time they met, the same amount will probably wonder if the Thursday away game in Europe will hurt their chances. There’s also the worry that Jose Mourinho will blame everybody and claim a conspiracy if they lose the game. We don’t think it will be a worry for him, a Chelsea victory looks likely.

Further down the leagues and 7 of the Championship’s top 8 all won in midweek to keep the top as tight as it has been in a lot of years. just 3 wins separates 2nd to 8th with another one to Derby. Noone else looks likely to get in the promotion mix, although Nottingham Forest’s turnaround under new manager Dougie Freedman will be taken seriously if it continues.

Down the bottom of the division the bottom 4 all plays each other with 2nd last v last and 3rd last v 4th last. A loss for last placed Blackpool could just about sign their demise to the third division. A pair of genuine 6 pointers you won’t find anywhere else in Football this weekend.

League One is all about manager changes with Peterborough and Coventry dispensing of their managers, and Barnsley pinching Oldham’s main man leaving them managerless and a total of three teams without a boss. A total of 6 axings since February proved that League one is not all that fair from the Championship after all.

League Two is the quietest of all the four, which is business as usual, Burton lead this division with former Chelsea man Hasslebank in charge At the other end Hartlepool need to win and win plenty to avoid a drop into the abyss of the Vanarama Conference league.

EPL
SAT 12:45PM UK – WEST HAM v CRYSTAL PALACE
SUN 12:00PM UK – LIVERPOOL v MANCHESTER CITY
SUN 4:00PM UK – LEAGUE CUP FINAL – CHELSEA v SPURS
CHAMPIONSHIP
SAT 3:00PM UK – ROTHERHAM v MILLWALL
SAT 3:00PM UK – WIGAN v BLACKPOOL
SUN 2:05PM UK – NORWICH v IPSWICH

And here’s the rest of the games….

[soccer-info id=’2′ type=’fixtures’ title=’EPL FIXTURES’ limit=’8′ /]

[soccer-info id=’20’ type=’fixtures’ title=’CHAMPIONSHIP FIXTURES’ limit=’12’ /]

[soccer-info id=’21’ type=’fixtures’ title=’L1 FIXTURES’ limit=’12’ /]

[soccer-info id=’22’ type=’fixtures’ title=’L2 FIXTURES’ limit=’12’ /]