Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Gary Newbon presents the Pieman's Blog


All season I have been predicting that Manchester United would retain the Premier League. I knew they were good but now they seem to be the best team in the world. They have a great manager, great players, a fantastic attitude to playing football and the power and depth to achieve it. They need four points this week to clinch the title again and with home matches against Wigan and Arsenal they could do it before second place Liverpool even play again! I really believe they can also retain the European Champions League and become the first club to achieve back to back competition wins in this ECL. United against Barcelona in their perfect-looking final.

Alan Shearer eventually achieved his first win as Newcastle manager at the sixth attempt… and good luck to him. Shearer is clearly making a difference. The 3-1 home win over relegation rivals Middlesbrough could be enough to keep them up with two matches left. They may need another win... last games are home to Fulham and then away to Villa. But the St. James's Park win on Monday means it’s now West Bromwich Albion bottom, then Middlesbrough and now Hull. You would not want to bet against those three going down. I was wrong about Stoke. Everyone at the start of the season was predicting relegation for Stoke. Their manager Tony Pullis made the Britannia Stadium a fortress with 9 wins, five draws and just four defeats. They dug in to win with the loudest crowd around. Take a bow Tony Pullis.

UEFA need to address two problems in the European Champions League competiton. They must put their very best referees in charge of the later stages of the competiton. Tom Henning Ovrebro may have been the best referee in Norway for the last five years and he may have taken over 20 ECL games but I did not see any mention anywhere of him being amongst the elite in Europe. He had a shocker at Stamford Bridge for the second leg of the ECL semi-final between Chelsea and Barcelona. He missed at least one penalty decision for Chelsea (maybe two were penalties but not all four!), but it was not a conspiracy to stop a repeat on an all English ECL final again! Anyway, if that had been the case (and it was not) then the referee would not have sent off a Barcelona player. By the way, as you may have seen, that was a mistake as well! Yet the behaviour of some of the Chelsea players afterwards was terrible. Some must be punished. Didier Drogba using crude and obscene language into a love TVC camera with millions upon millions listening around the world deserves severe punishment. His captain John Terry should not have condoned it and manager Guus Hiddink should have publicly criticised him as Reading manager Steve Coppell did about one of his player’s bad on-pitch behaviour at the weekend. The fact is – yes, the referee did make mistakes but so did some Chelsea players. Drogba missed a good chance and Michael Essien failed to mark and defend properly for the very late Barcelona equaliser. The culture to always blame the referee and not the shortcomings of the players is beginning to become so predictable and boring!

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