THE BUSINESS END
With several weeks of nothingness looming, bar the odd bit of transfer-related tumbleweed rolling across the football landscape until the Women’s World Cup takes the bare look off the summer, it’s important we enjoy the last few weeks of the season before everything shuts down after Big Cup final next month. This weekend the action ramps up another few notches as the Premier League inches closer to its denouement with the title and a couple of top-four places up for grabs, while the unseemly scramble to avoid – with apologies to not-officially-doomed-quite-yet Southampton – the two remaining relegation spots continues to enthral. It looks almost certain that two of Leicester, Leeds, Forest and Everton will be joining Saints as they go marching in to the Championship, in a race to the bottom that has eclipsed even that of the Tory party.
In the women’s game, Chelsea take on Manchester United in Sunday’s FA Cup final at Wembley, with Emma Hayes’ side bidding for the first leg of a third consecutive league and Cup double, while her opposite number Marc Skinner will be hoping to mastermind his side’s first major tournament win. The final will be played in front of a 90,000-capacity crowd, a testament to the tireless work of the dwindling number of below-the-line commenters on Big Website’s women’s football pages who have spent years telling those who play the game or write about it to get back in the kitchen and stop ramming it down our throats.
While 60 of the EFL’s 72 teams are officially on the beach, the rest have playoff semi-finals to dread. Despite their atrocious start to the season, Middlesbrough are arguably the best equipped to go up from the Championship, while promotion for any of Luton, Sunderland or Coventry would constitute quite the story given the different vicissitudes visited upon them in recent years. Less than a year after emerging from their four-year purgatory in League One, a knack-ravaged Sunderland side – so young that most of their players still have stabilisers on the bikes they ride to training – host a Luton team who consistently punch above their weight despite having the fourth lowest wage bill in the division. The Hatters are big spenders compared to Coventry, who go toe-to-toe with Boro in their semi-final first leg on Sunday. Meanwhile in League One, few apart from their playoff rivals Barnsley, Bolton, and Peterborough – not to mention fans of their city rivals United – would begrudge playoff favourites Sheffield Wednesday a return to the Championship, if only because their manager Darren Moore is a very, very, very, very nice man.
While Salford, Stockport, Bradford and Carlisle are all desperate to get out of League Two via the playoffs, Notts County and Chesterfield are desperate to get in. Only one can prevail in their Wembley showdown, with the Magpies favourites to go up. While the Wrexham side who beat them to the solitary automatic promotion spot available in English football’s fifth tier were largin’ it up at the various pool parties and trendy nightspots Las Vegas has to offer, their counterparts were trying to recover from the bruising semi-finals from which they both emerged by the skin of their teeth last weekend. Having finished the season on 107 points with 117 goals on the credit side of their ledger, it would really be quite something if County came a cropper at the final hurdle. But this being football, anything is possible and that’s why we love and occasionally bloody hate it. Good luck to all concerned, with the notable exception of Luton. Eric Morecambe, Nick Owen, Alastair Cook and Faye Carruthers, the Mackem wing of Football Daily hopes your boys take one hell of a beating.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“You ask yourself questions. ‘Why? Why me? Why am I like this?’ But I have to snap out of it and make the most of it. That’s how I am and that’s how I’m dealing with it” – former Bristol Rovers, Ipswich and Sunderland striker Marcus Stewart on living with MND as he prepares for a fund-raising match.
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
José Mourinho really is blessed, touched, and very special. The latest evidence: when he needed something, anything to gain an edge over his latest opponent, he got help from a Bove” – Peter Oh.
If it had stayed 1-0 to AZ in Tin Pot, then the papers would have read: ‘West Ham sleighed by Reijnders’” – Mike Smith.
Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’ the day is … Peter Oh. And commiserations Peter, but prizes are back all next week, baby!
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