5 things to watch in the EPL: Leicester’s Palace visit, Arsenal on life support and the Manchester derby
LEICESTER City’s Palace visit, Arsenal’s season on life support, some very happy Hammers, Rafa Benitez and Sam Allardyce face-off and the Manchester derby.
This is happening, isn’t it?
Should Leicester take all three points from their trip to Crystal Palace on Saturday they will go eight points clear at the top of the ladder before Tottenham, increasingly looking like their only serious challenger for the title, host Bournmouth 24 hours later.
And, thankfully for Claudio Ranieri’s men, entering the squeaky bum time of their fairytale season, they come up against seemingly accommodating opponents. FA Cup semi-finalists they may be, but Palace last won a league match before Christmas, and have lost five on the bounce at home, and to some vastly inferior teams to Leicester (they even lost at Aston Villa in mid-January).
The only possible concern for the league leaders is the fact that Palace, too, like to play on the break, and so another arm wrestle of a contest could be on the cards for the visitors, who have won their last three matches 1-0, proving their incredible season owes as much to organisation at he back as it does hard running and industry up top.
It was at this point last season when Leicester went on an insane run to preserve their Premier League lives when it seemed an impossible ask. They probably don’t need quite as many points from here on in to achieve their remarkably elevated goal this term. In fact, in the last 38 games, Leicester have taken 82 points, a figure well above what will be required to take the title this year.
They have played like champions for a season’s worth of games, now they just need to maintain that for another eight matches, though with the final three being Everton, Manchester United and Chelsea, putting points on the board against sides like Palace seems as vital as it is likely.
A season on life support
If the inevitable Champions League exit to Barcelona didn’t entirely kill off Arsenal’s season, sick and feeble for the last two months after looking in such rude health up until the new year, it has at the very least left it on life support.
Defeat at the hands of Everton this weekend will pull the plug.
Goodison Park is not always somewhere to be feared, inconsistent and occasionally generous in defence such as the hosts are, but with Romelu Lukaku is sensational form, doing a passable impression of the original Ronaldo (fat, Brazilian) in almost single-handedly knocking Chelsea out of the FA Cup last week and booking Everton a semi-final match with West Ham or Manchester United, there is reason to be fearful. Especially with Arsenal in such wretched form.
A record of four wins in 15 matches in all competitions is made much worse by the realisation three of those victories came against Burnley, Hull City and Bournemouth. Just two wins in nine Premier League matches speaks of a side experiencing their now traditional collapse of confidence when it matters. Ending it now rather than dragging things on may actually be the humane thing to do.
The long goodbyes
Out of the title race, out of the Champions League and now out of the Europa League at the hands of the club’s fiercest rivals, Louis van Gaal’s toxic stewardship of Manchester United is quickly drawing to a predictable conclusion.
Down the road at the Eithad Stadium, another manager is running down the clock, though with slightly more in the way of well wishes from his soon to be former supporters. As well as a trophy already in the bag after their League Cup win over Liverpool.
Since the announcement that Pep Guardiola will be taking over at Manchester City in the summer, City’s league form has slumped and they have exited the FA Cup (the only slender hope at redemption van Gaal is clinging to). However, victory over two legs against Dynamo Kiev means their Champions League run continues.
All told this Manchester derby takes place under something of a suffocating cloud, though both teams need the points to maintain a push for Champions League football next season. It’s hard to see either manager truly enjoying their last local skirmish in the north west, especially if the points are shared and the weekend ends with neither Manchester club in the top four.
Holding a grudge
A Tyne-Wear derby needs little in the way of fuel to stoke the flames of animosity and tension. But this one has plenty, anyway.
With Aston Villa having long since been read their last rites, it looks like two from three to join them in the Championship next year, this pair and Norwich.
And on top of that, the match sees the renewal of a simmering, bitter feud between the two men in the dugouts, Sam Allardyce and newly minted Newcastle boss, Rafa Benitez.
There were signs in Benitez’s first match in the job, a 1-0 defeat to Leicester, that he has the ability to instil the tactical discipline necessary for an underperforming bunch of players to get themselves out of the mess they’ve made for themselves. At least they played like they cared. How Benitez would love that organisation to get the better of Allardyce.
Their feud goes back to a time when Benitez was managing Liverpool against Allardyce’s Blackburn. Allardyce was enraged when the Spaniard seemed to make a ‘game over’ gesture when Liverpool went 2-0 up with a decent amount of time left in the match at Anfield.
The barbs have flown regularly since, Allardyce suggesting in an autobiography that Liverpool’s 2005 Champions League win had ‘nothing to do with Benitez’, Bentiez responding with an admirable if juvenile stab at sarcasm in his second or third language, using a press conference before an El Classico when manager of Real Madrid to suggest Allardyce’s agricultural methods were soon to be taken up by Barcelona. Ouch!
Three — or six, depending on how you measure these occasions — points, local bragging rights, a helping hand to survival and personal vendetta gains to be made, then. It should be a spicy affair.
A place of worship
Were it not for the exploits of Leicester City and the comical collapse of Chelsea, the fact that Slaven Bilic’s West Ham United are themselves on the verge of crashing the Champions League party would arguably be the story of the season.
The Hammers will go fourth, for a day at least, if they complete their first double over Chelsea for well over a decade at Stamford Bridge. Their mix of high energy pressing and quick transition play, as well as the not inconsiderable talents of Dimitri Payet — surely in a face-off with Riyad Mahrez for player of the season — means the possibility should not be discounted.
An FA Cup replay against Manchester United, the last match in the competition to be staged at the Boleyn Ground prior to their relocation to the Olympic Stadium next season, means what has already been a fine season, could end as a truly memorable one.
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It is a position the club and its fans should “worship” rather than fear says Bilic, who has shrugged off suggestion that the pressure of such rarefied air will affect his players in the final stages of the season. And just two defeats in 16 Premier League matches suggest resilience and holding of nerve may not be beyond them.
“The problem would be if we are down — 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th — they are thinking about this. That is the chip on the shoulder, that is the pressure, that is the burden. This is a bonus, this is great,” said Bilic.
Happy Hammers indeed.
Originally published as 5 things to watch in the EPL: Leicester’s Palace visit, Arsenal on life support and the Manchester derby
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