EPL Monday: Chelsea is Champion; Newcastle United's Lack of Ambition Under Mike Ashley

Chelsea are officially champions of the Barclay’ Premier League — the unofficial greatest sports league in the history of humanity. Congrats to Jose Mourinho and his team. Since I wrote at length about the Blues, particularly if they were boring or not, in a post that ran Saturday morning, three quick thoughts.

Mourinho didn’t go wild celebrating, understandably since his father underwent surgery on his head during the week. He did offer some digs at other high-profile managers for taking jobs in countries where only one or two teams can win the title. Fill in the blanks yourself.
Given the way Chelsea finished the season, it’s fitting the title-clinching goal vs. Crystal Palace came from Eden Hazard missing a penalty and scoring off the rebound.
Post-match celebration music at Stamford Bridge included “One Step Beyond” from Madness. If anything screams sports title celebration it’s a ska saxophone riff.

That’s all. Moving on.

Ambition?

The situation at Newcastle United is easy to laugh at right now. The Magpies lost, again, this time to Leicester City for their eighth straight loss. With three games to go Newcastle is two points clear of the drop zone. During the match, Mike Williamson picked up two yellow cards. Afterward, caretaker manager John Carver accused it as being intentional and an “easy way off” during the 3-0 defeat. Williamson denied it.

Step away from the current dysfunction at the club and it raises a small, but definite dilemma, for the Premier League. If we work under the assumption that any given season, at best, four or five teams can realistically challenge for the title where does it leave the other 15 clubs? Chelsea, Manchester City, Arsenal, Manchester United and, to be fair, Liverpool can’t simply play each other all the time. Opponents are necessary.

Yet it creates a strange outlook on life for a club like Newcastle United — or any of the other established, mid-tier teams which include Tottenham and Everton at the higher end and the likes of Stoke City, Swansea City, Southampton (of late) and others. At best these teams can finish in the Europa League spots, but most English clubs treat that as a curse more than a blessing because of extra games and more travel, which tax the squad during league play.

During 2011-12 Newcastle finished fifth — its best since placing third in 2002-03. Instead of finding a way to build off that success, club owner Mike Ashley went the other direction, eventually parting ways with the likes of Demba Ba and Yohan Cabaye, replacing them with cheaper or less experienced players who cost less on the wage bill.

In a sporting sense, this is disturbing. If you’re a Newcastle supporter — 50,000+ still turned out to St. James Park this year — you want your team to try to be the best, even if that only means placing fourth and a trip to the Champions League.

Ashley, a businessman, likely looked at it the other way and assumed without pouring hundreds of millions into player signings, he couldn’t compete with the Manchester Citys of the world. Ashley is a billionaire, but not a billionaire backed by oil money. In essence, Ashley is/was content to play the role of small market baseball owner in the 2000s, collecting revenue sharing money (in the EPL’s case television money) without re-investing a lot into the team. It’s a cynical move, true, but the unofficial glass ceiling of the Premier League tends to limit how much a club can achieve.

Trying the game Ashley is playing — making Newcastle United decent enough to finish anything other than 18th, 19th or 20th — is tricky. Relegation does thwart teams from out-and-out tanking, but it doesn’t make Ashley’s intentions any more defensible in the eyes of frustrated fans questioning if the team has any ambition other than the bottom line. (Ashley bought the club in 2007 for $270 million and put it up for sale in 2008 but didn’t find a buyer.)

The aforementioned Swansea City and Southampton are going a different route, developing either a style or players through their academy to maintain their position. If Ashley isn’t going to fight the big fish of England for the signature of elite players, he ought to consider re-investing some of the EPL television cash into internal development.

However you want to look at it, Newcastle United has the foundation in place to contend, i.e. a big stadium that’s played to 97 percent capacity despite all the front office turmoil, along with passionate fans and a long (if trophy barren) history. That the owner of this team would rather collect checks than attempt to contend is the ugly side of the ‘world’s greatest league’ on full display.

Signs like this existing are sad and serve as another example of why it’s ultimately foolish to care all that much about professional sports:

On the same subject, read this about the fan protest that forced the final Blackpool match of the year to be abandoned.

High Note:

If we scripted the end of Steven Gerrard’s Liverpool career, walking off (as friend of the blog SROD mentioned on Twitter) with an 87th minute winner vs. QPR would be the way to do it. Instead, it’s going to be complicated now that Manchester United left the door ajar for the Reds to continue harboring Champions League hopes. It remains debatable how useful Gerrard is to the Liverpool lineup at the moment, saying nothing of his missed penalty.

Manchester United lost its third straight, this time to West Brom, but Louis van Gaal’s team still has a four-point gap on Liverpool for the final Champions League spot. The remaining games:

Liverpool: at Chelsea; vs. Crystal Palace; at Stoke City.
Manchester United: at Crystal Palace; vs. Arsenal; at Hull City.

Hard to see Liverpool overcoming that in such a short amount of time.

Sad news:

Rio Ferdinand losing his wife, Rebecca Ellison, to cancer over the weekend is awful to hear about. From John Terry to Robbie Keane, players around the world offered their condolences to the former England international.

Welcome AFC Bournemouth:

Eddie Howe and Bournemouth ended up winning the Championship and automatic promotion. The Cherries, thanks to a Russian investor, have followed the path of clubs like Norwich City an Southampton in recent seasons, winning from League One to the Championship and then to the Premier League in successive seasons.

A couple quickees on Bournemouth.

The club chairman had fun on Monday after clinching promotion.
You’ll hear a lot about manager Eddie Howe, a 37-year-old Englishman.
Dean Court, Bournemouth’s home, seats only 12,000 — Loftus Road is the smallest venue this season at 18,000.
Perhaps the only familiar name on the roster is ex-Newcastle midfielder Dan Gosling. (Artur Boruc and Kenwyne Jones are on loan there.)
Bournemouth face the dilemma of either a) sticking with the team that got you there or b) reinforcing with “Premier League experience.” I’d guess in the summer Howe adds 4-5 veterans but nothing extravagant.
The club mascot is named Cherry Bear. He wears a full kit and cap.

The playoff for the final promotion spot is between Norwich City-Ipswich Town (a local rivalry in England) and Middlesbrough-Brentford. These are always among the best games of the season and will begin on Friday.

The Table:

****1. Chelsea 83 points/35 games played
2. Manchester City 70/35
3. Arsenal 67/33
4. Manchester United 65/35
5. Liverpool 61/35

15. Newcastled United 35/35
16. Hull City 34/34
17. Leicester City 34/35
18. Sunderland 33/34
19. QPR 27/35
20. Burnley 26/35