The English Premier League has one more round of games to be played in its season and that last round of games can be important for a whole bunch of teams.
- Liverpool will finish first; that is not in doubt.
- The teams from third place (Man City) to seventh place (Nottingham Forest) are only separated by 3 points. In the Premier League, a win is worth 3 points.
- The top 5 finishers will play in the UEFA Champions League next year.
- The top 6 finishers will play in the Europa League next year.
- The seventh-place finisher will stay in the EPL but not be part of other competitions.
Often in the final week of play, there is some drama at the bottom of the EPL standings as the three teams destined for relegation can be in doubt. Not so in 2025; the three bottom feeders are solidly in their places. The team at the bottom of the standings – Southampton – had a particularly miserable season. In their 37 games to date:
- They won 2 games, drew 6 games and lost 29 games.
- Their goal differential has been minus-59
- They may have difficulty even at the Championship level of competition next year.
Speaking of the Championship, two of the teams “graduating” to the EPL for next season are Leeds United and Burnley. The third team to earn “promotion” is to be determined by a playoff involving the teams finishing third through sixth in the final standings. That playoff will be hotly contested because there is a lot more money and a lot more prestige associated with EPL stature than with Championship stature.
There is one other thing to note in the EPL standings; that is the misfortune of Manchester United which is currently in 16th place and has lost four of its last five matches with the other being a draw. For more than 20 years, Man U was always in the top 5 of the EPL; this year has been a disaster; in 37 matches so far, the team has scored only 42 goals.
Man U is owned by the Glazer family – the same folks who own the Tampa Bay Bucs of the NFL; they bought the team in 2005. Man U fans are passionate about their team to a degree that is beyond what exists in the US. According to a report I read, the Glazer family members need to have security with them if they are in Manchester and are out and about in the city. Fans in the DC area may have loathed Danny Boy Snyder, but he was not in danger of tarring and feathering in the area if he were to go to dinner somewhere.
Man U is in no danger of relegation this year, but the trajectory of the team is not encouraging. For the record, the last time Man U faced relegation was in 1974 which predates the existence of the EPL itself; that league was not created until the early 1990s. It will be interesting to see if this season was an aberration or if Man U is destined for some time in the Championship down the line.
Moving on … The news related to Shedeur Sanders dropping all the way to the fifth round of the NFL Draft appeared to have ebbed; but in the words of Lee Corso:
“Not so fast, my friend!”
A fan of Colorado football has filed a $100M lawsuit against the NFL citing “harm caused to the Plaintiff and the impact of the NFL’s actions on his emotional well being.” Plaintiff asserts he is a Colorado football fan and that he has closely followed Shedeur Sanders as the team QB for the last two years. He asserts that the league “leaked” stories that Sanders “tanked some interviews” and that he was unprepared for interviews with teams and that caused his drop in the Draft. The Plaintiff somehow labeled such leaked information as “slanderous” and that slander of Sanders somehow inflicted “emotional distress and trauma to the Plaintiff as a fan and consumer.”
According to the lawsuit, the NFL’s actions here are in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, the Civil Rights Act and various consumer protection laws. In addition to the $100M sought in the matter, the Plaintiff also wants the NFL to implement “fairer practices in the drafting process” so that talented players are selected on the basis of merit alone.
I have never spent a single moment of my life in law school. Nevertheless, my completely uniformed opinion here is that the NFL’s legal department is not burning the midnight oil trying to figure out what to do to defend against this one.
Finally, consider this from Mark Twain:
“I can’t do no literary work for the rest of this year because I am meditating another lawsuit and looking around for a defendant.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………
The Championship level playoffs for promotion are down to the final, this Saturday, between Sunderland and Sheffield United. if you’re looking for a streaming series about English football which predates the Wrexham furor and gives you a true story of a town’s team support and dedication without the Hollywood flair, you’d be served well by Netfilx’ Sunderland ’til I die. Watched it several years ago and it was a great story about the effect that the ups and downs of a football team had on a town.
Concerning Shedeur Sanders, William Bendix on “The Life of Riley” had it correct: “What a revolting development this is!”