FOUR Let-Downs from this Season’s Premier League

The Premier League is arguably the greatest the league in the world of football, attracting the world’s biggest footballing names, usually producing four teams in the latter stages of the Champions League and showcasing some of the best free flowing attacking football. Like all beautiful things, there is usually a flip side, and this Premier League season, in amongst unbeaten runs and unbelievable ‘tekkers’ there has been sending off’s, dodgy decisions and the odd unnoticed elbow.

Weak FA- This season more than most, has been surrounded in off the ball incidents, goals that should have been and goals that shouldn’t have been, but the main disappointment for me, a lover of the beautiful game, has been the FA’s inconsistency and lack of punishment in dealing with incidents. Wayne Rooney’s WWE style elbow on James McCarthy, whether or not Mark Clattenberg saw the incident or reported the incident, is all irrelevant; an obvious and callous attack on a fellow professional should’ve been punished. Also this season has seen the emergence of Twitter being used by footballers, it is a fantastic way for fans to feel closer to their ‘heroes’. However this season has seen a footballers, regularly being reprimanded for things they have said on Twitter. Ryan Babel, Danny Gabbidon and Carlton Cole are just some of the players who have been fined and warned by the FA this season but there have also been cases this season where the FA haven’t punished footballers for outspoken comments on the website. Jack Wilshere avoided being reprimanded for these comments “Inconsistent refereeing needs to stop, its killing the game.” How will the FA’s respect for referees campaign ever be a success if such things go unpunished?

The standard has dropped- The Premier League is always classed as the greatest league on earth and don;t get me wrong, that is still the case after this season. However many are praising the improvement of the teams outside the top four for taking more points off the ‘big boys’. Being the cynic I am, I just can’t help but think this is because the likes of Manchester United and Chelsea have just dropped in standard. After making a blistering start to the season, Chelsea struggled to eventually claim second, Arsenal failed to hold on to a 4-0 lead at Newcastle, Manchester United drew 11 games and Liverpool still didn’t reclaim their Champions League status. Not exactly attributes of football’s elite.