Not just due to the demands of work, and the World Cup but also a need and desire to reflect on the season that just passed. It's been a hallmark of recent campaigns (with the exception of the Man Utd romp the year before) to have flawed teams seemingly doing their best not to win.
I don't know if that's true this year - I said at the start that City were the best team and thought they'd win it, but they only just about did enough. Arsenal were never going to have the legs to go the distance, Spurs were Spurs and Everton were Arsenal only cheaper (and therefore, 99 times out of a 100, worse). No-one other than Brendan Rodgers saw Liverpool improving by the extent that they did - although assisted greatly by being able to focus solely on the league. Chelsea were disappointing regardless of the little horse shtick, and Man Utd were always going to have a blip, but few expected them to blip off a large cliff. Funny though...
Southampton - that was a fun season on the South coast, although they've now had the full Bain Capital treatment and been stripped of their parts. Tony Pulis and his magic grimy cap showed that Ian Holloway should never be trusted with a Premier League squad ever again, and Newcastle....er....well at least they now assault people and not livestock.Apologies to Stoke & Swansea but you are just not particularly memorable...you may have been good this season, but I don't think anyone really noticed or cared.
I got the feeling that there were a lot of evenly matched teams - and real competition in the "mini-leagues" - title race, CL, Europa League qualification, and the rest fighting against relegation.
And let's be honest - anyone of them could have gone down. Sunderland finished well but were dreadful. West Ham were solidly dreadful as were Villa. Hull did well initially, then qualified for the Cup final and went on holiday, playing dreadfully for the remainder of the season (excluding the 1st 10 minutes of the Cup Final.....bloody hell that wasn't fun) and WBA did the same, but less well, and no Cup final excuse.
The 3 relegated clubs though.....well....they won't really be missed. Except Cardiff, but that's more for the off-the-field lunacy than anything they contributed on the pitch. All in all, I'm going to look back on 2013/14 with great fondness - and that's without mentioning the record breaking season here - more players than ever before, higher average scores and 2 perfect predictions!
Enough waffle - you've all already done the league review thing a month ago. Great World Cup though! Let's get statty:
Premier League:
Matchday 38 results:
This week, 20 people played
Most predicted result: Liverpool WIN (19/20)
Most disputed result: Southampton vs Man Utd (8-3-9 split)
Highest odds: Josh Daniels 7,030,363/1
Lowest odds: Steven Daniels 599/1
Average odds: 1,422,837/1 (1567/1 if you exclude the moronic outliers)
Best predictors: Eli Daniels & Josh Gaon (8/10)
Worst predictor: Jonathan Chernick (3/10)
Average score: 6/10
Best predicted result: Liverpool WIN (19/20)
Worst predicted result: Swansea WIN (2/20)
Everyone's results:
Final League Table (for those who played >2/3 games or 25/37 weeks). Players with stars are those who have paid to be in with a chance of winning cash prizes:
EuroClubIndex hold off FinkTank to record their first title, and the second consecutive non-human (sorry Lawro) victory. Dinkin caps his debut season with a highest placed human finish (this all sounds a bit SciFi) whilst Eli Daniels wins the cash game (but not the family pride). No surprises to see Josh Daniels at the bottom, but Yanik Joshi will be disappointed with the poor form this term.
Best of the rest:
Message: Play more next year. Except Collymore who's fired.
The FA Cup Game:
Having now fully updated the graph - the results are as follows:
In 3rd place, Doron Salomon - showing himself to be more of a cup man - earning himself some cash by 1 point. Above him, in 2nd place, David Dinkin who consolidates a strong 1st season, but the winner, retaining his FA Cup crown for the 2nd year is the new Dr Josh Gaon who has held the lead throughout since the 3rd round. A strong showing from Wessex's finest.
Congrats to all prize winners - contact me with your bank details and I'll transfer you your winnings.
Enjoy what's left of the summer folks.....only 6 weeks to go until we're back for Season 4!
