I don't usually mark the end of the Premier League season, but this has been such a remarkable one that it felt right to note down some thoughts on the final day. You can't argue that anything particularly surprising happened on this last match day, particularly the identities of the top four teams, but given how it's blurred in with last season it's just felt like such a long marathon to get here.
That marathon aspect is the first thing I want to talk about, since the season started late, owing to the long break last season when the pandemic hit. That delay meant the 2019-2020 season ended late, and left us with an abnormally short summer break - the narrative for the players all this season has been the fatigue and risk of injuries caused by not having a proper break over the summer. This all means that the past two seasons have blurred together, so that it's hard to remember that, for example, Bruno Fernandes has now been at Manchester United for about a year and a half, or that Aston Villa stayed up by the skin of their teeth in 2020 (when this season started I honestly thought they'd gone down).
The other reason that 2020 to now has felt like one long slog is that my beloved football podcasts haven't had a break either. When the previous season ended, Football Weekly had a wrap-up episode to talk about what had just happened, and then the following week launched into preparations for the season that was about to start a few weeks hence. I think we might have a similar situation this summer, as the upcoming European Championships mean that Football Weekly and Totally Football won't be taking long breaks to recharge.
As for the winners, it's felt a bit anticlimactic that, after the upheaval of 2020 and all its knock-on effects, the champions should be Manchester City again, for the third time in the last four seasons. This is not to detract from their achievement, since they not only came back from a slow start to win the league by 12 points, but they did it by adapting their tactics to the new circumstances of everybody being exhausted and without their main goalscorer, Sergio Aguero.
Much was made of how out of sorts the big teams were - for instance, when reigning champions Liverpool lost 7-2 to Aston Villa - but City did well to manage their energy, especially in the nervy last few weeks before they clinched the title. There was a point where City lay 10 points ahead of Manchester United, and the title was likely theirs but not sewn up, and they lost a couple of games, which kept the title race plodding along. At the time it was clear that they could afford to drop points, in order to have their first team fresh for the Champions League (and they're now in the final of that competition, so Guardiola's strategy worked).
It's also interesting that City win this season with the lowest total points for a champion since Leicester won the Premier League in 2015-2016 (86 vs 81). More than indicating that City were out of sorts, I feel that total reflects Guardiola's concession that his team didn't need to win every single game to lock in the title - it's just an interesting contrast to the 2017-2018 season where they steamrolled everything in their path to end the season on a record 100 points.
The final notable aspect of this season was the fallout from the European Super League. Man City was, of course, one of the teams involved, but also one of the first to pull back from those plans. That short summer break between seasons likely cut into the top clubs' income by not allowing them their traditional off-season tours of foreign markets, and that lack of money is what precipitated the ESL announcement. Luckily, fan voices made themselves heard in this case, and the plan lasted less than a week, but it would have been an even better repudiation of the ESL if Leicester had managed to beat Tottenham today and get into the Champions League places - especially given that the ESL was a clear response to Leicester's unexpected title triumph in 2015-2016.
In any case, this season's now been consigned to the history books. I'm looking forward to a little break from the weekly football grind, when I'll be watching Euro 2020 daily. But mostly I'm hoping for a more successful fantasy league season in 2021-22, as this one was roundly disappointing.
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