Premier League Season Review Part Two
11. West Ham
For Slaven Bilic's team this has to go down as a bad campaign. After finishing 7th last year, and building a brand new stadium and promising to spend £30m on a striker in the summer (which didn't happen), West Ham fans were anticipating another assault on the top four. Instead they got a side that lost five of their opening six games, won just three of their opening fifteen and never rose above lower mid-table. A mid-season spurt turned things from being actively bad to just mediocre, but five defeats in a row in March/April meant that they needed a strong finish just to stay out of the relegation battle. 17 points down on last season.
Player of the Season: Manuel Lanzini - Only just pipping Antonio who scored lots of early goals. Lanzini was more influential over the whole campaign I think.
Best Result of the Season: West Ham 1-0 Spurs. Their only win against the top seven all season.
Worst Result of the Season: West Brom 4-2 West Ham. Having thrown away a 2-0 lead the previous week to lose 4-2 to Watford, West Ham were 4-0 down inside an hour to West Brom. Shocking.
Overall Score: 4/10
12. Leicester City
Whilst Leicester were never expected to repeat their title-winning feat, I still don't think it was reasonable to expect them to end up nearly getting relegated. And whilst the sacking of manager Claudio Ranieri in February helped keep the Foxes up, as they went on to win their next five games having lost the previous five, there's no denying that Leicester were poor for the majority of the season. What they did do well was pick up 25 points from their nine games at home against teams in the bottom half, but their away form was ugly, their performances against better sides were ugly, and whilst they rallied well late on, they can be largely disappointed with this season I think.
Player of the Season: Kasper Schmiechel - Whilst Vardy ended up with 13 goals, their keeper was just about the only player to give 100% and play well across the season.
Best Result of the Season: Leicester 3-1 Liverpool. Right when they needed it, the new manager bounce appeared. Putting 4 past City in December very close too.
Worst Result of the Season: Spurs 6-1 Leicester. Plenty of poor results against top sides, but shipping six to the team you pipped to the title last year in front of your own fans has to sting.
Overall Score: 5/10
13. Stoke City
After a car crash start to the season that saw Stoke bottom of the table until mid-October as they failed to win any of their opening seven games, it became clear that this was not going to be a season of improvement for the Potters. Whilst Stoke rallied to mid-table by Christmas, a shocking end to the season which saw them win just two of their last eleven games meant that they finished 13th, their worst finish and lowest points tally since 2013. A big step backwards for sure.
Player of the Season: Joe Allen - Six goals and two assists from midfield, Allen has been one of the few bright sparks of a bad season for Stoke.
Best Result of the Season: United 1-1 Stoke. Very little to choose from with their 1-0 win on the final day the only win against teams finishing higher. Drawing at Old Trafford with United in form is good.
Worst Result of the Season: Palace 4-1 Stoke. I was with a Stoke fan when this happened. It was ugly. Very ugly.
Overall Score: 5/10
14. Crystal Palace
Given that Palace are one of the few sides finishing ahead of where they were expected to, and given that they looked like relegation material for significant periods of the season, it would be arguably unfair to call this a bad season for Palace. Indeed, they were only one point worse off than last season. And yet, they lost 12 of 15 games between October and the end of January, notching just one win. Four wins in a row around March, picking up 19 points from 8 games at a crucial point in the season including wins at Anfield, Stamford Bridge and over Arsenal kept them up. Big Sam to the rescue again.
Player of the Season: Christian Benteke - Wilf Zaha and Mamadou Sakho are both candidates but goals keep you in the Premier League, and Benteke provided 15 of them.
Best Result of the Season: Palace 2-1 Chelsea. Demolishing a wretched Arsenal comes close, but beating an in-form Chelsea at the Bridge and being only the second team to take points off them there? That takes it.
Worst Result of the Season: Sunderland 4-0 Palace. Losing 4-0 at home to the worst team in the division is about as bad as it gets. Sunderland would win only one more game in their remaining 14.
Overall Score: 6/10
15. Swansea City
Swansea are another team it's tough to judge as a coherent whole. They were woeful and all but relegated under Bob Bradley, but Paul Clement's resurgence saved them. It's very much a good season in the sense that they didn't go down, picking up 13 points from their last five games in a last ditch survival surge, but picking up three points from 11 games after winning on the opening day, losing four straight games in December and picking up one point from six games in a pivotal period across March and April really does spell a tale of woe. Overall a disappointing season, but one that they survived intact.
Player of the Season: Gylfi Sigurdsson - Llorente's goals might have been huge, but Sigurdsson's quality was evident throughout, with nine goals and 13 assists. Massive player.
Best Result of the Season: Swansea 3-2 Liverpool. One of only two teams to win at Anfield all season, Swansea's only win against the top six came at a pivotal time for them.
Worst Result of the Season: Middlesbrough 3-0 Swansea. Losing 3-0 to the team in the league that scores the least goals? Yeah this compounded Swansea's place as relegation battlers.
Overall Score: 6/10
16. Burnley
Burnley are the only newly promoted club to survive this season, and frankly the fact that they never looked like going down is a huge achievement. Whilst their final points tally of 40 and position of 16th make things look a bit worse than they were, overall to keep their Premier League status means that they've achieved their goal. Their fantastic home form has been the key to that all season, with 10 wins at Turf Moor and four of their six home defeats coming to the top six. Whilst it took them until their penultimate away game to register a win on the road, they ended up not really needing more away wins to stay up.
Player of the Season: Tom Heaton - Consistently brilliant for the majority of the season, Heaton is a player who won plenty of points for his side. An extremely good keeper.
Best Result of the Season: Burnley 2-0 Liverpool. Their only win against the top six, but one that resonated early on that Burnley would be tough to beat at home.
Worst Result of the Season: West Brom 4-0 Burnley. Burnley suffered some hammer blows away from home, but getting obliterated at the Hawthorns was as bad as it got. They were horrendous.
Overall Score: 7/10
17. Watford
Six straight defeats to end a season, not to mention sacking your manager, tends to put a rather bad gloss on a season. Not that finishing 17th and only getting 40 points represents a good season, but Watford hit a very bad patch at the end, having been consistently okay for most of the season. Watford never won three games in a row in this campaign, but until that final run they didn't lose more than two in a row either. Nevertheless, just five league wins and 18 points in 2017 is a horrendous back half of the season, and their front half wasn't much better. Overall a pretty poor season, but it was only their second season back in the Premier League and they never looked like going down, so a bit of context needs to be applied.
Best Result of the Season: Watford 3-1 Man United. Winning at the Emirates runs it close, but this terrific early win over Man United is their overall best result.
Worst Result of the Season: Liverpool 6-1 Watford. Losing 5-0 at home to City on the final day was also pretty shoddy, but shipping six at Anfield is the kind of terrible defending that typified Watford away from home.
Overall Score: 5/10
18. Hull
Yikes Hull. They really went through the ringer. Written off before the season started. No manager. 13 fit players. A relegation dogfight for the majority of the season despite a reasonable start. Marco Silva and a slew of January signings bringing home. Clawing their way out of the drop zone. And then losing 2-0 at home to Sunderland and 4-0 away at Palace allowing Swansea to leapfrog them to safety having been in the box-seat with only three games to play. Ugly, ugly ending to what ended up being a really long and painful season. Only one away win all season clinched their demise. They always looked up against it, but relegation remains a bitter pill to swallow.
Player of the Season: Robert Snodgrass - Struggling to score goals or defend, it's hard to pick out a standout. The fact that Snodgrass was comfortably Hull's top scorer despite not being a striker and leaving in January says it all.
Best Result of the Season: Hull 2-0 Liverpool. *sigh*
Worst Result of the Season: Bournemouth 6-1 Hull. Shipping 7 to Spurs, losing to Sunderland at home with safety in their own hands and the 4-0 to Palace all ran it close. But 6 goals. To Bournemouth. Christ.
Overall Score: 4/10
19. Middlesbrough
Boro looked reasonably okay for large swathes of the season, as their strong defence earned them four wins in 2016, along with a handful of decent 0-0 and 1-1 draws. But whilst they continued to get a healthy amount of 0-0s in 2017, what wasn't healthy was their inability to put the ball in the back of the net. Nine goals in 2017, just the one win, and just the ten points. An absolute calamity of the back half of the year saw Boro very, very relegated. They scored the least goals, their defence fell apart, and everything just went horribly wrong, as they scratched for momentum. One win. In twenty one games. And it was a 1-0 win at home to Sunderland. Oh dear.
Player of the Season: Ben Gibson - Defensively Boro had a solid enough season and Gibson did well to ensure that. Goals were always the problem.
Best Result of the Season: Boro 3-0 Swansea. The only time Boro scored more than twice all season, and the result that took them to 18 points from 17 games. It all went downhill from there.
Worst Result of the Season: Bournemouth 4-0 Boro. On the verge of going down, Boro travelled to Bournemouth needing a win to keep their survival hopes just about alive. They were 2-0 down and down to 10 men inside 20 minutes. Disgrace.
Overall Score: 3/10
20. Sunderland
Oh Sunderland. What is there to say. David Moyes' appointment, their signings, their form, their team. Everything was just an absolute shambles from first kick til last. They weren't bottom of the table from the beginning until the end but they were pretty close. 189 days spent rock bottom of the league, only 21 days total outside of the relegation zone. It took them until November to register a win, They won just two games in 2017, picking up just ten points, same as Boro. Truthfully they never looked close to staying up, and sure enough they were relegated with an absymal 24 points. Two points from ten games in March/April at the pivotal point in the season? Wretched.
Player of the Season: Jermain Defoe - How he scored 15 goals in this side remains a mystery. Him and Pickford are the only two players who are good enough for the Premier League.
Best Result of the Season: Sunderland 4-0 Palace. If you're going to win just once in 17 games, might as well make it one to remember right?
Worst Result of the Season: Southampton 4-0 Sunderland. Of all the dismal performances in Sunderland's season, this one sums them up. At home to a mid-table club and they turned in one of the worst team performances in Premier League history. Abysmal.
Overall Score: 2/10 (Only because a 1/10 is reserved for Aston Villa/Derby levels of bad)
The Hard and Fast Section
- Conte named Manager of the Year. Rightfully.
- Sangakkara retiring from first class cricket. Legend.
- Hockey legend Macleod retires from internationals. Champion.
- PGA Championship this weekend. No Rory.
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