Following Man City's dramatic triumph, here are several thoughts from the end of the EPL season.
Martin Skrtel's early own goal gave Fulham a historic first win at Anfield on Tuesday and left Liverpool in danger of finishing outside the top eight in the English top flight for the first time since 1954.
Some quick thoughts on this weekend's FA Cup semifinal contestants:
An 87th minute header from beleaguered striker Andy Carroll handed Liverpool a 2-1 victory over Merseyside rivals Everton in the semifinal of the English FA Cup on Saturday.
Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish will be under pressure to deliver an FA Cup semifinal win Saturday after receiving the "full support" of his bosses.
With the derisory and ironic chants of "Hodgson for England" from the Anfield crowd ringing fresh in his ears, following Liverpool's stunning and stultifying 1-0 home loss to then bottom-placed Wolves, coach Roy Hodgson committed probably the final fatal two verbal missteps in what has been a tortuous six-month reign.
A dramatic injury-time goal by Juan Mata handed Chelsea a 2-1 victory over Wigan in the English Premier League on Saturday to boost their chances of qualifying for next season's Champions League.
Liverpool's disastrous run in the English Premier League continued Sunday with a 2-0 defeat at Newcastle - the sixth defeat in the last seven for Kenny Dalglish's men.
The Best -- One of the first black football pioneers, Clyde Best
Manager Kenny Dalglish is determined to use Liverpool's first trophy win in six years as a catalyst for future success, following Sunday's dramatic penalty shootout win in the English League Cup final.
Uruguayan striker Luis Suarez scored for the first time since returning from his ban for racially abusing a fellow player as Liverpool moved into the last eight of the English FA Cup with a 6-1 win over Brighton.
Senior Sports Illustrated writer Grant Wahl is surprised at how Liverpool FC has handled the Suarez case.
The head of a football anti-racism group has called for the English Football Association to charge Liverpool with bringing the game into disrepute over the club's response to Luis Suarez's eight-match ban for using racist language at Patrice Evra.
Liverpool will not be appealing the eight-game ban for their Uruguay international striker Luis Suarez, the English Premier League club said Tuesday.
Liverpool's Uruguay international striker Luis Suarez has been accused of giving "unreliable" and "inconsistent" evidence to the disciplinary panel which banned him for eight-games for alleged racial abuse of Manchester United's Patrice Evra.
Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish has defended his side's decision to wear t-shirts in support of teammate Luis Suarez, despite the striker being found guilty of using racist language by the English Football Association.
Ray Rudowski, Regional Director of Crisis Planning at Edelman, on how to control brand damages in sports
Manchester City retained their leadership of the English Premier League as a David Silva goal settled a high-class clash against Arsenal at the Etihad Stadium Sunday.
Liverpool are waiting to learn the extent of the injury which prevented captain Steven Gerrard playing in the club's 2-0 win at West Bromwich Albion on Saturday, manager Kenny Dalglish has said.
Five thoughts from Saturday's action in the Barclays Premier League:
Five thoughts from the weekend's action around the world:
Dalglish has a sip of the managerial whine
Five things we learned from Saturday's action in the Barclays Premier League:
Harry Redknapp's jibe this week -- pouring scorn on Chelsea's £22 million ($35M) offer for Luka Modric, he noted that "there are people being sold for £20 million who are not fit to lace Luka's boots" -- wasn't exactly thinly veiled. In the preceding week 19-year-old Blackburn defender Phil Jones had been signed by Manchester United for £16.5 million ($26.6M) plus add-ons, with 21-year-old Sunderland midfielder Jordan Henderson heading to Liverpool for the same figure.
For the last few months, Liverpool has emitted a perceptible hum. In the red half of the city, groups of people chatter like charged particles, each collision redoubling the thrill, heightening the pitch of the buzz. It is not often in modern soccer -- where the phrase "results driven business" justifies every half-cocked decision -- that recruitment must grasp at something so ethereal, so wishy-washy or impressionist, as mood. But the swell of feeling around Anfield is so great as to pop your ears before you are through the turnstile: crown King Kenny.
Here's what I'm thinking about this Tuesday morning:
On Sunday, Kenny Dalglish's wife, Marina, tweeted that for the first time in 20 years, she had woken up next to the Liverpool manager. Later that afternoon, at Old Trafford, for the first time in 20 years, Sir Alex Ferguson walked out for a game against Liverpool alongside a manager who had won the League.
Premier League storylines from the weekend's FA Cup action:
Roy Hodgson always was likely to face two problems at Liverpool: that his football was too boring for the fans, and that his training was too boring for the players. A certain stodginess leading to long-term grumbling was perhaps to be expected, but what nobody predicted was that Liverpool would be as bad as it has been so far this season, and that there would be immediate outrage.
Seventeen years and seventeen days ago, I fell in love in the back of a cab. I was in a London black cab on my way to Wembley Stadium, which is like riding a rickshaw to the Great Wall of China or a camel to the Great Pyramid of Giza. That is to say, I was traveling to a postcard icon in a postcard icon when I fell in love with soccer.
Roy Hodgson arrived at Fulham in 2007 without much fanfare. He was regarded, probably largely because of an unhappy spell at Blackburn Rovers, as a mediocre manager who'd had reasonable success abroad with a string of mid-ranked countries -- Finland, Switzerland, Sweden -- but who couldn't really cut it at the highest level. His two years of rebuilding work at Internazionale in the 1990s, in which the Italian club finished seventh and third and reached the final of the UEFA Cup, was broadly ignored.
© 2013 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
|