Comment and analysis round up

Quote of the day: “All you wonderful people in the press have been talking about the integrity of Wigan but nobody has questioned or even mentioned Bolton. I’ve heard about Bolton players out all week celebrating. And it’s interesting, the different attitudes between them and Wigan. All we have seen this week are the Wigan players saying how they want to beat Manchester United. That’s fine; I have no problem with that, because we are a big club. But when you hear about the Bolton players out all week celebrating that amazes me, that change in attitude.” - Sir Alex Ferguson.

Runner-up: “They dug themselves into their own hole and now they have to dig themselves out of it. We would never have got into that hole if I had stayed. The panic button was pushed far too early. The first time we dropped into the bottom three I got the sack. I spent seven days in the bottom three. Fulham have spent one week out of the bottom three since I left. If panic had not set in they would not be in this situation.” - Lawrie Sanchez.

Today’s overview: The final day of the Premier League occupies the thoughts of Fleet Street’s scribes. Jim White and Henry Winter use the crescendo of the domestic season to argue against Keegan’s ‘boring’ label tagged onto England’s top flight, while David Lacey offers the dissenting opinion. Events at Arsenal continue to be chewed over, with exaggerated articles from James Lawton and Jimmy Greaves predicting the downfall of the Gunners. And completing today’s round up is the wonderful story of how Everton’s Dixie Dean defied the Nazis.

The Telegraph’s Jim White writes of the excitement ahead of the final day of the Premier League. “Paranoia, pleading and conspiracy theories: what more could you ask for at the season’s end? For 90 riveting, compulsive, drama-infused minutes tomorrow afternoon, no one will dare blink for fear of missing the moment that could seal nine months of sweat and toil. This is what sport should be: competitive uncertainty on a grand scale. Surely not even Kevin Keegan could reckon tomorrow boring.”

Still reeling from Keegan’s “boring” comments, Henry Winter (Telegraph) shows why Everton prove this myth defunct. “Currently 13th in the salaries table (behind even Fulham, Bolton Wanderers and Middlesbrough), Moyes’ side lie fifth in the points rankings, only a rung below the Champions League elite of Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool. No manager gets a bigger bang for his players’ bucks than Moyes. Everton’s five top earners are on £45,000 per week, and Moyes has a delicate balancing act when considering recruiting a Chelsea discard such as Steve Sidwell, who makes £68,000 per week.”

Yet the Premier League is boring according to the Guardian’s David Lacey. “It is depressing to think that a new generation of supporters is growing up without ever experiencing even the remotest possibility of seeing their teams become champions, as the fans of Leicester City, Queens Park Rangers and West Ham have done in the old First Division. Even Watford came second once upon a time.”

Jumping on the ‘Arsenal are in crisis’ bandwagon, James Lawton (Independent) paints a negative picture for Arsene Wenger. “Now he must sign at least two or three players who will possibly not meet his best aesthetic values but will supply a demand that became critical in the run-in to the finishing line… They will not be pieces of a sublime jigsaw but the building blocks of survival around the top of a league which has never had fewer serious candidates for significant success.”

Adding to the Arsenal nonsense is The Sun’s Jimmy Greaves, who gets carried away by the events at the Emirates. “The message is simple — we are no longer at a club that is going anywhere. I’m afraid Arsene Wenger has to stand accountable. There is no doubt he has created some great teams. But the club have gone three years without a trophy… When Wenger first arrived he was a picture of composure. Now he resembles Basil Fawlty on the sidelines.”

Kevin McCarra argues that Chelsea’s squad in the short-term needs to be overhauled. “The strategy is supposed to be one of subtle evolution, yet the 21-year-old Mikel John Obi, booked seven times this season and sent off twice, is currently too much of a hothead in the holding role. Salomon Kalou, 22, is not a key attacker as yet. Bids to acquire ready-made players are also problematic and Florent Malouda, a £13.5m buy, is yet to settle. Michael Ballack, for all his renown, has imposed himself only recently. There is no more to be said about the case of Andriy Shevchenko. Claudio Ranieri and then Mourinho recruited an excellent group. They have been daunting to opponents but in the seasons to come these footballers will present a steeper challenge to the manager who must replace them.”

Focusing on the foot of the table, Stuart James (Guardian) pulls a stat to give Reading and Birmingham hope. “Twice in the past three seasons teams in a relegation spot on the final day - West Bromwich Albion in 2005 and Wigan last year - have hauled themselves to safety come the final whistle of the 38th game.”

The Times’ in-house boffin, Daniel Finkelstein, produces his internal results for the player of the season awards. “Cristiano Ronaldo wins easily, as he did last year. More surprisingly, the runner-up is David James. The large amount of time spent on the pitch is one reason he came close to winning the whole thing. Tomasz Kuszczak, of Manchester United, would have been player of the season if he had played as much as James. This season, unusually, Steven Gerrard finished above Frank Lampard, who would have finished in third place if he had played as much as in previous seasons.”

The Times’ Owen Slot reveals a report on the health of Premier League managers. “The Times has seen the statistics from the League Managers Association (LMA) healthcare programme and it shows that of 114 managers who are or have recently been working, 60 per cent have cholesterol levels so high that they are under increased risk of heart attack, 50 per cent have raised blood sugar levels that put them at risk of diabetes and 40 per cent have dangerously high blood pressure.”

The Independent’s Sam Wallace interviews the head of Manchester United’s academy, Brian McClair. “In 1995, the first team was world-class, but we weren’t competing at the level they are now… That summer Andrei [Kanchelskis] left, Incey [Paul Ince] left, Sparky [Mark Hughes] left and Paul Parker was dithering over a new contract. He dithered and suddenly Gary [Neville] had taken his place in the United and England team. How good were these boys? Nobody knew. We had played with them in the reserves, and they looked good enough. They took their opportunity.”

Earlier in the week, superagent Pini Zahavi came out in support of Avram Grant, claiming his fellow Israeli had been the subject of anti-semitism. The Daily Mail’s Paul Hayward responds angrily to those charges. “Personally, I’m offended by the accusation that if a pundit questions Grant’s wisdom in playing 4-3-3 rather than 4-4-2 then he must be a closet anti-Semite. We’re not talking here about the handful of reptiles who have sent the Chelsea manager Jew-loathing hate mail… It might have been different had Grant ever managed outside Israel, or not been Roman Abramovich’s buddy. It might have been different had he won the Carling Cup Final against Spurs, or delivered on his promise to bring more entertaining football to Stamford Bridge.”

The ‘and finally’ piece of the day comes from Henry Winter (Telegraph), who tells the story of when “Everton’s Dixie Dean defied the Nazis.” “On a pre-season tour of Germany in 1932, Dixie told the Everton players not to do the Nazi salute - unlike the England players a few years later. All of Hitler’s henchmen ordered Everton’s players to do it, but Dixie said no. Then when they played in Dresden, with Goering and Von Ribbentrop looking on, the Nazis tried to get Everton to train with the wrong ball. ‘We play with a size five ball, not four - that’s a children’s garden ball,’ Dixie told them.”

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