The biggest disappointments of the Premiership

This has been one of the most interesting campaigns in the Premier League history and some teams have done better than others. In this piece I will concentrate on the teams that disappointed their fans and that are eagerly waiting for this season to finish. Some of those will get relegated, while others would use this campaign as the reminder of what could go wrong in the future.

Blackburn Rovers had no problems achieving mid table finish in the last few years and they were never even close to entering the relegation zone. They had high hopes for this season even though many pundits were skeptical about Paul Ince’s managerial abilities. As it turned out, they were right in expressing their fears as Ince was unable to get the best out of his team and Rovers quickly fell into the dangerous zone. We have to be fair and say that the manager had plenty of problems with injuries, mostly to his midfielders, but that cannot be an excuse for the poor results. Sam Allardyce was brought to replace Ince and it seemed that Rovers would be able to escape the dangerous zone, but they lacked some consistency and still face a difficult fight to stay alive. Blackburn definitely have the team for the top party of the table and that is why their league positions is so disappointing. We will see if they will be able to avoid relegated but even if Big Sam’s team stay up, they should forget this season as soon as possible.

Portsmouth emerged as one of the candidates for the European places over the last few years and they were expected to push for the European qualification this season as well. They started the season well, but Harry Redknapp’s decision to leave for Tottenham was the turning point. Redknapp was the architect of this team and without him things started taking the wrong turn. The club management didn’t make Tony Adams’ job easier by selling two best players, Lassana Diarra and Jermain Defoe. Portsmouth started slipping down the Premiership ladder as Tony Adams was unable to stop the poor run of results and he was eventually sacked. Caretaker manager Paul Hart managed to stop the poor run but Pompey are still very much in the relegation fight. The club management have made some very questionable decisions and those are the main reason for the utterly disappointing season for Pompey.

The biggest disappointment of the season are definitely Newcastle. The Magpies have invested a lot of money in the squad over the last two years and they were expected to fight for the European places, but that simply did not happen. The club was shaken by the departure of Kevin Keegan and then owner Mike Ashley put the club up for sale, and the problems just kept mounting. Joe Kinnear, who was appointed an interim manager had plenty of problems with injured players, as at least seven or eight players were constantly on the injury list. All the problems affected the performances and it soon became evident that the Magpies will be fighting to avoid relegation. Newcastle have been in the relegation zone for some time now and they have very difficult fixture list in front of them. Thus, we could easily see one of the true giants of English football get relegated to the Championship.

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