Brighton Blues For Hammers
The Hammers’ Champions League hopes lie in ruins after their 1:1 draw at Brighton
Brighton West Pier has been declared beyond repair by the English Heritage Trust
Having played a superb season so far, recently the Irons have had to pay for punching above their weight for so long with a relatively small squad. It also seems that opponents have learned how to deal with Jesse Lingard who couldn’t score a goal since his penalty in the 2-3 loss at Newcastle. West Ham have only one win from their last 5 games and with the draw on the south coast their top-four hopes have suffered a final blow. Now they have to pick themselves up and make sure in their remaining games against West Brom and Southampton that Europa League football will be played in London Stadium next season!
However, the result could have been worse if Said Benrahma hadn’t equalised Danny Welbeck’s late goal for the Seagulls (84.). Benrahma’s beautiful strike from outside the box was his first goal after 31 appearances. It gives hope that the former Brentford man who scored 27 goals in 83 league games for the Bees will come good, and that West Ham will hold on in the last two games of the season.
Manager David Moyes, who feels that their top-four aspirations have already disappeared, is now hoping his side can rouse themselves to earn a place in the Europa League.
“We’re trying to get a place in European football if we can. We’re still in a good place for that. It’s a great thing to say we’re in a good shout with two games to go.” (David Moyes)
Brighton & Hove Albion 1-1 (0-0)
Lingard Double and Moyes Sustainability
Jesse Lingard’s sensational strike at Wolverhampton Wanderers has won the Budweiser Premier League Goal of the Month award for April. The award completed a superb double for Lingard, who was also named EA Sports Premier League Player of the Month for April after scoring four goals and assisting a fifth in four Premier League appearances.
The England attacker (28) held off the challenge of Pablo Fornals, who also received a nomination for his own fine goal in West Ham United’s 3-2 win at Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Lingard opened the scoring with a wonderful individual effort that saw him collect the ball from Vladimír Coufal well inside his own half before running at the Wolves defence, taking advantage of a clever decoy run from Michail Antonio, before confidently and accurately finishing past Rui Patricio with his left foot.
West Ham won their first two games of April with the same result, beating Wolves and Leicester 3:2. In these games and also in their last match of March against Arsenal, the Hammers had managed to rush into a 3-goal-lead in each of these fixtures. When they could hold on to this advantage in two consecutive matches, with Lingard scoring twice in the win over third-placed Leicester and Mark Noble marking his 400th Premier League appearance in this game, the Irons sometimes were in front of Chelsea in fourth place and still have a chance to achieve qualification for the Champions League.
But with three defeats from the following four matches in April and May, the Irons now have to take care that they win their last three games against Brighton, West Brom and Southampton – otherwise the still existing possibility of Champions League football and seemingly certain qualification for the Europa League (for which the clubs ranked fifth to eighth will qualify) could end in final despair as West Ham still could drop down to tenth…
I hope and think this won’t happen. But it could become a nervy finish to the end of the season as West Ham now could suffer from the fact that its squad is quite slim and Declan Rice has been out for more than six weeks. The talismanic midfielder was injured in the Three Lions‘ win over Poland by the end of March and has not played ever since.
But I want to end on a positive note: Manager David Moyes has worked wonders with West Ham and kept his promise to improve the club. He has added steel and a winning mentality to his squad and made sure that the Irons wouldn’t be a team that could be easily beaten anymore.
Therefore we have been witnessing a real “Moyes March” out of mediocrity after the collapse of the “Pellegrini Revolution” which turned out to have been just a Chilean intermezzo between Moyes’s first and second spell. We do not know yet if the Irons will play in Europe and if Manchester Utd loanee Jesse Lingard will be with them next season, but one thing is for sure: It’s David Moyes who’s here to stay and long may he and his Hammers run!
Come on you Irons!
The Battle For Europe
A look at the Premier League run-in after Chelsea’s win over “champions elect” Manchester City and ahead of West Ham’s Sunday game at home against Everton:
ManCity unexpectedly lost 1:2 against their future opponents in the CL final (with Aguero missing a penalty and Chelsea scoring in injury time), which meant that they will have to wait at least until next week’s game against Newcastle to be crowned PL champions. However, if the Sky Blues lose at St James’s Park next Friday, they still could be leapfrogged by Manchester United in the last three rounds if the Red Devil’s win all their remaining games…
That’s quite unlikely, but well, who would have thought that Leicester would be defeated by Newcastle 2:4 on Friday night?
This unexpected result could mean that West Ham could still make the Champions League despite fourth placed Chelsea being on a very fine run and difficult to be caught. In a discussion on BT-Sports Glenn Hoddle as well as Rio Ferdinand said they think that Leicester (after suffering that shock loss against Newcastle and having very difficult games ahead) could finish outside of the Champions League places with West Ham capitalising. What a finish to this season that would be!
Come on you Irons!
Wie kann man nur….
… mit so einem hässlichen Auswärtsdress in einem Semifinale antreten?
Roma 3-2 Man Utd (5-8 on aggregate): Solskjaer’s side through to Europa League final!
The Champions League final will be an all English affair with Manchester City and Chelsea meeting in Istanbul on 29 May. But with Arsenal having been eliminated by the “Yellow Submarine”, the Europa League final in Gdańsk three days earlier will see a match between Spanish side Villarreal (under former Arsenal boss Emery) and Manchester United.
The “yellow submarine” which eliminated the Austrian representative Salzburg in the first knockout round of this season’s competition, are the only club from the continent that made a final this year preventing a repeat of 2019. In that year both European Cup finals were played between English outfits when Liverpool and Tottenham were the opponents in the final of the Champions League in Madrid (2:0), and Chelsea and Arsenal played the final of the Europa League in Baku (4:1).
This year’s finals will be played in Istanbul and Gdańsk. The CL Final is rumoured to be played in front of 19,000 spectators, while in Gdańsk 9,500 fans will be allowed into the stadium.
Fußballklubs unter Denkmalschutz!
Nach dem Super League Desaster wird es neue Regeln für die Fußballklubs geben. Wie groß der Ärger über die Gründung der schließlich schnell gescheiterten Super League ist und wie sich über Jahre angestaute Unzufriedenheit mit den “billionaire owners” der Klubs nun entlädt, zeigte der Stadion-Sturm von ManUtd Fans am Wochenende. Das erste „Geisterspiel mit Platzsturm“! Und die Forderung der Fans, die überall lauter wird, heißt Mitsprache! Wie bei einem unter Denkmalschutz stehenden Gebäude sollen die Eigentümer der Klubs damit nicht mehr tun und lassen können, was sie wollen (aus The Telegraph):
Malcolm Clarke, chair of the Football Supporters’ Association, said that a “seismic” moment had arrived and stressed that the Government’s review into football, which will be overseen by former sports minister Tracey Crouch, must lead to meaningful fan involvement.
“[A football club] is a bit like a listed building,” Clarke said. “Just because you own it doesn’t mean you should be able to do what you want with it. What this whole episode shows is how frustrated supporters are. If the ‘rebel six’ have done one good thing for us, they have pushed those issues right to the top of the political agenda and public agenda in a way that some of us have been trying for decades.”
Fit (and Rich Enough) for Office?
The Times on Sunday reports that Prime Minister Johnson has told friends that he needs to earn about £300,000 a year — twice his salary — to keep his head above water. Johnson’s salary puts him close to the top 1 per cent of UK earners. Yet he makes less than Angela Merkel’s £267,000 or Joe Biden’s £290,000. Luxembourg, with a population roughly equivalent to that of Sheffield, pays its prime minister £200,000.
Good News From UK
The Telegraph reports that Britain is no longer in a pandemic, as new data showed the vaccination programme is reducing symptomatic Covid infections by up to 90 per cent.
In the first large real-world study of the impact of vaccination on the general population, researchers found that the rollout is having a major impact on cutting both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases.
Sarah Walker, Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at Oxford and Chief Investigator on the Office for National Statistics Covid-19 Infection Survey, said that Britain had ‘moved from a pandemic to an endemic situation’ where the virus is circulating at a low, largely controllable level in the community.
The new research, based on throat swabs from 373,402 people between December 1 last year and April 3, found three weeks after one dose of either the Pfizer or AstraZeneca jab, symptomatic infections fell by 74 per cent and infections without symptoms by 57 per cent.
By two doses, asymptomatic infections were down 70 per cent and symptomatic by 90 per cent.
Back to normal – a short-lived slogan
In the FA Cup semi-final 4,000 supporters were allowed back into the stands at Wembley. But this “back to normal” was very short-lived because only one day later the plan of twelve clubs to found the European Super League turned European football upside down (from The Telegraph).
Six English clubs together with Real, Barcelona, Atlético, Juventus, Inter and Milan declared that they had founded a new competition in European football called European Super League. The new league would play in midweek and its members would pull out of next season’s European Cups. As an immediate consequence, Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City were in danger of being thrown out of the Champions League and Europa League semi-finals on Monday night as football authorities, fans and the Government declared war on the European Super League.
The four remaining English clubs in Europe were warned they could be expelled from their respective competitions as soon as Friday, while the likes of Harry Kane, Raheem Sterling and Marcus Rashford were facing a ban from playing at this summer’s European Championship.
Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur were also rendered footballing outcasts, along with Real Madrid, Barcelona and the rest of the “Dirty Dozen” clubs behind a plot that has sparked arguably the biggest outcry in the history of the game.
The backlash against the largely-closed competition has intensified as:
- The Government vowed to do “whatever it takes” to stop the Super League, which was also denounced by the Duke of Cambridge.
- The Premier League called a meeting of its remaining 14 clubs that could see action taken against the so-called ‘Big Six’.
- Bruno Fernandes became the first player from a Super League club to cast doubt on it while Mesut Ozil and Ander Herrera spoke out against it.
- United executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward was branded a “snake” by the president of Uefa, who described the rebel tournament as “a spit in the face of all football lovers”.
- Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Paris Saint-Germain and Porto refused to sign up for it and the Champions League reforms were passed by Uefa.
- A YouGov poll found 79 per cent of football fans opposed a Super League and just 14 per cent supported it.
- The Super League began legal action to prevent the competition being killed off before it began.
That action failed to stop unprecedented steps being taken to do just that, including to ban what Ceferin dubbed the “Dirty Dozen” from the Champions League and Europa League – potentially even from the rest of this season’s competitions.
“My opinion is that as soon as possible they have to be banned from all our competitions and the players from all our competitions,” he said.
West Ham United also expressed vehement opposition to the proposal for a Super League after consulting with the club’s Independent Supporters’ Commitee.
UPDATE: “Power to the people” – the Super League seems to be off before it has started.
The move of six Premier League clubs to join the “cartel” of 12 European clubs has been unanimously condemned by the FA, the rest of PL clubs and especially by the fans! Manchester City and Chelsea were the first to pull out of the ESL on Tuesday, and later in the evening it was announced that all the Super League clubs were about to disband the Super League.
It also emerged that Andrea Agnelli had resigned at Juventus and that Ed Woodward would resign from his role as executive vice chairman of Manchester Utd. This man of confidence of the Glazer family, who was very much in favour of the ESL, will be gone and so is the idea of a Super League.
This could be a “watershed moment”in football. Coming together and fighting against the “big six” and the “cartel – that achieved victory within one day. This could be the beginning of smaller clubs and the real fans winning back power from the big money clubs, and football could change for the better maybe.
Tonight the football fans have won a battle – but how are they going to win the war? (talkSPORT)
The seismic but ultimately farcical attempt to launch a super league will be remembered as a pivotal moment in the sport’s history. The moment when many in football, having seen the wealthiest clubs consolidate more power and wealth over years, finally said ‘enough’ and fought back. But the game is not yet over, and future battles lie ahead (BBC).
Prince Philip’s Send-Off At St George‘s
The Duke of Edinburgh who died on 9 April, on Saturday found his temporary rest (until the day when Queen Elisabeth dies and they will be buried together and join the late King George VI in their tomb) in St George’s Chapel within the perimeter of Windsor Castle.
Nearby to the Chapel is the building of St George’s House. It was there where Prince Philip co-founded an organisation which is not known so well as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), an other NGO the Prince had helped to found in the sixties:
In 1966 the Duke and the then Dean of Windsor Robin Woods founded “St George’s House” which takes its name from the building and is committed to “effecting change for the better by nurturing wisdom through dialogue”. The organisation brings together people of responsibility and influence in business, government, society and the church to consult on contemporary issues with the purpose of investigating means of overcoming challenges in contemporary society through dialogue.
St George’s House featured, albeit in a fictionalized series of events, in the seventh episode of the third series of the Netflix series The Crown; “Moondust”.
EXTRA TIME 
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