Prem Wrap III- The End

This is it, no more premiership 2009-10 talk for now. The PitchItchy awards for the season:

Best Player- Wayne Rooney
If you just look at the goal tally maybe a case can be made for Didier Drogba but really there is no one in the conversation with Rooney. Every minute of every match saw Rooney make a superhuman effort to keep United in the hunt for the title. With the departures of Cristiano Ronaldo and Carlos Tevez there was plenty of slack to take up and Rooney did better than anyone could have asked. His 26 goals were second most in the Premiership but more important was how crucial it was to his team's success. Dimitar Berbatov was the next highest scorer at 12, which happens to me the exact amount of opposition's own goals United benefited from. Without Wayne Rooney Manchester United this season would have been more along the lines of Everton than a point off the title. He also put in some great performances in the Champions League.

Best Manager- Harry Redknapp
A lot of people mention Roy Hodgson and he deserves credit for sure, but in my opinion the best manager over the course of the league season was Harry Redknapp. He took a team that have made a home in the upper half but not quite elite part of the table and got them into the Champions League. Particularly impressive in a season where a pack of teams made legitimate assaults on fourth place. The consistency required of a side, and its manager, to maintain that level over 38 games is impressive. Add to this key wins like the decisive 1-0 away at City on the second to last match. Redknapp brought in Nico Krancjar when Luca Modric went down and he was an absolutely terrific fit. The departures of Robbie Keane and Darren Bent were barely felt. And his tinkering with Gareth Bale eventually turned him into one of the most exciting and effective young players in the premiership. There really is not much Harry Redknapp could have done better this season.

Pitch Itchy 11-

Joe Hart

A. Cole, Michael Dawson, Vermalean, Baines

Gareth Barry, Frank Lampard, Cesc Fabregas, James Milner

Wayne Rooney, Didier Drogba


What This Season Meant:
The legacy of the 2009-10 season will be a shift in the balance of power away from England. In the run up to the season 3 of the true superstars in moved to new clubs and none of them were in the Premiership. Kaka, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic all migrated to Spain. Money, prestige, and glamour are one thing but on the field the change is evident as well. Domestically the Prem was won with the lowest point total in a while. As everyone knows the race for the last Champions League spot came down to the end and involved many clubs. These are healthy things for the game but they show that the elite clubs have come back to the pack a little bit. This is illustrated even better by the poor English showing in the Champions League. After completely dominating the competition in recent years and habitually claiming 3 of the 4 semifinal spots, English teams failed to go that far for the first time in nearly a decade. United and Arsenal fell in the quarters, Chelsea in the round of 16, and Liverpool hobbled out in the group stage.

Fortunately for the Premiership the level of play is still very high and more importantly (the Portsmouth and Hull blemishes aside) its clubs are on very solid ground compared to those in Italy and Spain. In those countries there are many, many problems lurking beneath the surface that may threaten the viability of the way business done in the next few years. I think we are entering a period of 2-4 years during which the true elite teams will be Barcelona and Real Madrid, but the balance will swing back to England in the not too distant future.