Last season was a great one in Europe and a poor one on the domestic front. A first trophy for 43 years whilst at the same time battling amongst the teams at the foot of the table. We certainly weren’t going to get into Europe via a league position. We were in the bottom three with 15 games of the season remaining but pulled away relatively comfortably with six wins and three draws (21 points) to finish in 14th place on 40 points.
This season has been almost the reverse. At the halfway stage which coincided with the end of 2023 we had won ten, drawn three, and lost just six games. We had 33 points from the 19 games, just seven short of last season’s total. We had scored 33 and conceded 30. Despite our football being less than convincing on a number of occasions the results were good and we sat in sixth place in the table and well placed for another tilt at Europe next season. In my first article of 2024 I speculated (hoped) that similar results in the second half of the season would see us finish on 66 points which would be a record total in the Premier League era with 66 goals scored (another record). 60 goals conceded wouldn’t be a record but would rank in the top half dozen of goals conceded in our 28 years of Premier League football.
So with just three games of the season to go where are we? Certainly not close to emulating the first half of the season. Incredibly we are still in the top half of the table (9th) despite in the last 16 games (as Geoff pointed out in his article this week) moving on to just 49 points, that is 16 points from 16 games. If we’d achieved a point a game over the whole season we’d now have 35, which, not quite relegation form would see us languishing in 16th, even worse than in the last campaign. So it’s just as well we collected as many points as we did up to the end of 2023.
Even now with three games left, three wins would see us bump our points total up to 58 which would be our third best ever in the Premier League. But with away games at Chelsea and Manchester City and a home game against Luton that’s not going to happen is it? Chelsea have been rejuvenated recently despite a thrashing at Arsenal, and it is hard to see us getting anything there. Luton will be fighting for their lives and Manchester City on the last day will be quite a challenge. Nevertheless as professional footballers three wins to end the season has got to be the aim. Stranger things have happened? Perhaps not.
Let me give you some hope for the Chelsea game by looking back at our record of games played on May 5th in my lifetime. None of our three FA Cup final wins came on this date. Our 3-2 win over Preston in 1964 was on May 2nd, it was May 3rd when we beat Fulham 2-0 in 1975, and May 10th when we beat Arsenal 1-0 in 1980. On May 5th 1976 we lost 4-2 in the Cup Winners Cup Final to Anderlecht, on May 5th 1979 we lost 1-0 to Blackburn, on this date in 1984 we lost 1-0 to Aston Villa and in our record breaking season on May 5th 1986 we lost 3-1 at Everton to drop from 2nd to 3rd as the final position that season.
I haven’t convinced you yet have I? Well in the eight other games played on May 5th in history we haven’t lost any of them, in fact the 1986 defeat at Everton was the last time we went down on this date. In 1980 in a Division 2 game we beat Charlton 4-1, and in 1990 Wolves were put to the sword 4-0 – remember this for Liam Brady’s final game including the magnificent goal he scored.
Julian Dicks scored in our 1-1 draw with Sheffield Wednesday in 1996, and in 1998 we drew 3-3 with Palace, a game where Manny Omoyinmi (remember him?) scored two goals, the only two goals he ever scored for us. He is best remembered for coming on as a substitute in our quarter final League Cup win over Aston Villa in 2000, although he had already played in the competition when out at Gillingham on loan. The Villa game had to be replayed as we had used an ineligible player, Harry was fuming, and sent Omoyinmi out on loan to Scunthorpe and Barnet – he never played for us again.
Four games in the twenty-first century on 5th May have all resulted in victories. In 2001 Cole, Di Canio and Kanoute were the scorers in a 3-0 win over Southampton and in 2007 (the Great Escape year) we won 3-1 against Bolton in the penultimate game of the season with Tevez scoring twice and Noble with the goals. In 2017 a Lanzini goal was enough for a win over Tottenham at the London Stadium and the following year Joao Mario and Noble were the scorers in a 2-0 win at Leicester.
And did you know that Chelsea are as bad at playing on Sundays as we are? They’ve only won once in their last 13 attempts in Sunday games.
How many famous recent wins at Stamford Bridge can you remember? With David Martin in goal we held on for a 1-0 win in November 2019 with a goal from Cresswell (the only West Ham win in the last 17 games at Chelsea), a 3-2 victory in 2002 with two goals from Di Canio and one from Defoe, a Paul Kitson goal in a 1-0 win in 1999, Dicks and (Danny) Williamson goals in a 2-1 win in 1996, Martin Allen and Moncur in a 2-1 win in 1994, and for the best one of all are you old enough to remember the great win there in the famous 1985/86 season when we thrashed them 4-0 (McAvennie, Devonshire and Cottee 2)? Just six victories at Stamford Bridge in the last 40 plus years.
It would be great to record another win but can it happen? As you would expect the bookmakers have Chelsea odds on to win the game – we are at 15/4, which is exactly the odds they gave us to draw at home to Liverpool last week!
I won’t enter the Moyes debate today – Geoff covered that in this week’s article. My choice would be McKenna from Ipswich. It won’t happen of course. Lopetegui heads the betting with bookmakers, closely followed by Potter, Fonseca and Carrick. Three unlikely wins to end the season, qualification for Europe, and Moyes could stay! Surely not!