Farewell, then, to the year that almost was. This was a Premier League season that sparked with a controlled excitement, never quite caught fire but still dished up another digestible slice of high-end product.
Things kept on almost happening. Leicester City almost completed the most dramatic title-plus-relegation act of all time. But then it was all sort of OK. Marco Silva almost pulled off a minor managerial miracle – but somehow not quite. To great fanfare Tottenham Hotspur pulled to within one victory of being quite close to creeping up on Chelsea’s shoulder at the top – almost but not quite, leaving for the third season in a row not so much a title race as a well-ordered title jog.
Manchester United eked out arguably the most pointless extended unbeaten run in footballing history. Liverpool fought heroically on one front to make it to fourth place – quite a good result pending success in the Champions League qualifying round. Arsenal finishing fifth rather than fourth was one of the stories of the season. At the bottom there was a relegation struggle almost to the end that only really involved two clubs, Hull City and Swansea City. Whisper it but the season could have been pretty much called off in February without too much being lost.
And yet, this being English football, there was still drama – moments of brilliance and great booming narrative arcs to be resolved – though this tended once again to be extraneous drama and noises off, a league of personality and soap opera where the football itself has at times felt like a necessary background music.
The sacking of Claudio Ranieri in February, a straightforward enough event in context, was among the most furiously discussed and emoted-over events of the season. West Ham United’s stadium-angst was the most interesting thing about West Ham United. Paul Pogba’s agent’s fee was, for now, the most interesting thing about the world record signing. At Arsène Wenger’s final press conference there was a degree of exasperation when, right at the last, someone made the mistake of asking a question about football tactics rather than boardroom politics.
Perhaps the most intriguing storyline in the league of chatter was the way a season billed as a meeting of the super managers became instead a season of struggle for José Mourinho and Pep Guardiola. The fluency of Manchester City’s attack at the end suggests Guardiola’s delicate, slightly precious methods may start to show real progress next season. Before then Guardiola found himself jounced and jostled in novel fashion. The puritanical obsession with style and method, with wheeling out game, gaffe-ridden Claudio Bravo, with praising unconditionally the stones of Stones, was fascinating to watch. “What is tackles?” Guardiola’s response to the defeat at Leicester, was a delicious, if slightly spun, moment of worlds colliding – and the quote of the season.
Mourinho eventually gave up on the league, having arguably not really engaged with it in the first place as something to be seized with any real enterprise or energy. Victory in the Europa League final will justify, if not quite explain, United’s meekness in a league they once made a habit of taking by the throat.
There were plenty of individual success stories. N’Golo Kanté was crowned best player, fittingly in a league that prizes energy and industry, though his excellence as a midfield screen is as much a tribute to his intelligence and reading of the play. Antonio Conte’s switch to a back three has already been lauded as a cultural breakthrough up there with the invention of the horse-drawn train but its effects were instant and brilliantly worked.
Paul Clement pulled off a wonderful coup in keeping his inherited Swansea team up, a rescue act achieved not via the familiar “personality” and motivational tropes but through hard work, tactical acuity and relentlessly drilling his players.
From a neutral point of view Bournemouth, Burnley, late-season Crystal Palace, Everton in patches and, above all, Tottenham were the real joy of the season. Spurs in particular are a success story with everything bar an actual real-life trophy. They can still claim a fine record in the league, a hugely engaging team and a thrilling style, all achieved on a (relative) budget and despite some awful recruitment in the summer.
Harry Kane’s partnership with Dele Alli, a football league product given sustained early exposure, has been a piece of rare illumination. Thanks to a starburst of goals at the end the season’s top scorer is a young English player trusted to bloom in the Premier League in his early 20s. A constrained budget and simple good luck may have played a part in this but it is surely an example to be followed.
The enemies of progress have been the same as ever: too much chop and change, too many options, too much cash in the float, too many interested parties on board. This is a league where teams are built at hyper speed by a manager flipping pancakes and building a matchstick replica of the Eiffel Tower while simultaneously sliding down the banisters; and where there is often no time for development or studied improvement. Premier League clubs spent £1bn in the summer without obvious improvement in standards or ramping up of the star-ometer beyond the glister of late-career Zlatan Ibrahimovic, a standard-bearer for ageing, well-preserved men everywhere.
Beyond this the actual football in the Premier League has been gripping and also interesting, with a degree of fluidity, new shapes and tactical innovation. At times through the autumn and winter the league seemed to have found a new level of physicality, a game of bruising collisions and endless sprints, the idea of hurrying a mistake out of an opponent in an attacking area still eagerly embraced by English football, from the days of Charles Hughes and putting it in the mixer to the current “high press”.
It made for some breathless contests, some impressive feats of stamina and power and some wonderful yardage stats. In between times the steel of Atlético Madrid, the class of Bayern Munich and the attacking verve of Monaco exposed the vulnerability of the Premier League style to a skilful counterpunch. Next season will as ever promise more of everything. The real challenge is to produce more coherent, settled teams, not least among the bigger, hungrier clubs; and above all to give the domestic dramas a more flattering context by challenging the very best in Europe once again.
