May Football: It's Up For Grabs Now

[Jimmy Floyd]

It isn't up for grabs, of course, unless you're referring to leagues other than the Premier. Let's take a tour around the world of tabled soccer:

Premier League: Liverpool have won it. Arsenal will probably come second, and then Newcastle, Manchester City, Chelsea and the Nottingham Forest will play a game of musical chairs for Champions League places next year, with the odd one out doomed to the Europa. Villa will come seventh and then there's a scrap for 8th. Ipswich, Leicester and Southampton are back from whence they came.

Championship: Leeds and Burnley are up, or rather oop. Sheffield United and Sunderland will contest the playoffs; they'll be joined by two of Bristol City, Coventry, Millwall, Blackburn and Middlesbrough. Cardiff are down and Plymouth as good as gone too; Luton, Hull, Preston, Derby and Stoke are the five glamorous towns hoping to avoid the drop on the final day.

League One: Birmingham and Wrexham are up. Stockport, Charlton and Wycombe are in the playoffs; Leyton Orient or Reading will join them. Cambridge, Shrewsbury, Bristol Rovers and Crawley are outta here.

League Two: Doncaster and Port Vale will be screaming back to the third tier next season. Bradford can join them with a win on the final day; otherwise Walsall, who have completely shat the bed, could yet pip them. Notts County and Wimbledon look playoff-bound, and the last place could be down to Salford, Grimsby, Chesterfield or Colchester. Carlisle and Morecambe are gone from the Football League, replaced by the more southerly Barnet, and then one of many from the labyrynthine National League playoffs.

The League, or 'La Liga' as it's known in Spain: Barcelona look likely to win it from Real Madrid and Atletico. Athletic Bilbao look to be in the CL, and the last spot probably between Villarreal and Betis.

Serie A: Naples lead by three from Inter. Six more clubs are still in contention for the remaining two CL spots. Milan, in a distant ninth, are not among them. Pisa look like being promoted, which is good news for fans of leaning towers.

Germany: Bayern will win it from Leverkusen. After that it's a bit less predictable: Frankfurt should come third, and then Freiburg are looking to outlast Leipzig and Dortmund for the final CL place. It could finally be the year when Hamburg come back up.

France: Basically the same table every year, except Marseille have been a bit less useless than normal and could yet make the CL.

Portugal: Sporting and Benfica are duking it out for the title. Porto are 4th behind Braga.

Elsewhere: Ajax should win in Holland; pretty close between three in Belgium. I'm not going to check Scotland but I presume Celtic have won it by 20 odd points. Krasnodar are top in Russia, for anyone interested. Galatasaray are five ahead in Turkey.

And then..

the cup finals!

Champions League: Arsenal or PSG vs Inter or Barcelona.
Europa League: Athletic Bilbao or Man U vs Tottenham or Bodo/Glimt
Conference League: Betis or Fiorentina vs Chelsea or Djurgarden

FA Cup: Crystal Palace vs Manchester City
Cup o' kindness: Celtic v Aberdeen (again, this is proposed from logical deduction rather than knowing what the fixture actually is)
Coupe du Fromage: PSG vs Reims
Coppa Lasagne: Bologna v Milan
Reichspokal: Stuttgart v Bielefeld

Enjoy your May football here - and make sure you do enjoy it, because the June thread is going to be a tough scene.

[Lofty]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football...s/cz01z4rdx4no

[wullie]

Preston potentially being relegated having lost fewer games than us, Boro and Blackburn. It's the draws that kill you

[Yevrah]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football...s/cz01z4rdx4no

It’s good to see sense is finally prevailing after the insanity of the last near 10 years on this issue.

[Manc]

This morning, my Uber driver and I got into a discussion about football. Born in Eritrea, raised in Italy, namely Milan, and somehow supports Arsenal. He was eager to discuss the semi-final, but I stepped out of the car, disgusted.

[Kikó]

Portugal is going to go down to Sporting Benfica in a few weeks and even with that, Benfica still need to play Braga away.

McTomminay winning the league for Napoli is a great story as well.

[Ben]

Preston potentially being relegated having lost fewer games than us, Boro and Blackburn. It's the draws that kill you

Fancy yourselves to beat us and get through to the playoffs?

[wullie]

Fancy yourselves to beat us and get through to the playoffs?

I don't think I can ever predict us to win. Full house, all in our hands, good record against you recently, all the ingredients for a classic Cov letdown.

[Trancemeister]

Ah fuck 0-1. That's three own goals in a row now from Djurgården. Both of Rapid Viennas goals were own goals as well.

[Danny]

We have been dreadful but Maguire

[randomlegend]

Harry Magwinger.

[Gray Fox]

Maguire is genuinely the best forward you have.

[randomlegend]

That's a penalty clear as day. These are a right bunch of cheating bastards.

[Danny]

I came in here to ask if that counts as DOGSO but decided not to post it.

[Gray Fox]

Didnt look so until they showed the one across the line. VAR did well there.

[randomlegend]

Hahaha fuck these cunts.

[Gray Fox]

Bilbao on the verge of a colossal head loss here.

[Danny]

What in the world is going on.

[Shindig]

The Empire never died. They just became football clubs.

[Gray Fox]

One of Spurs or United getting into the CL is a very strange concept.

[Waffdon]

We’re all Man Utd because fuck the idea of spurs ever winning anything

[Gray Fox]

Spurs winning it would produce by far the most comical results I think.

[Shindig]

Nah, Spurs winning would be high comedy. Ange gets a longer contract and then they go down next season.

[Gray Fox]

The 2 goals Notts Forest have conceded here are both almost identical and very strange for the type of team they are.

[Waffdon]

It’s been a pleasure, Forest. Palace away on Monday to be the dagger

[Waffdon]

Maresca has just brought on Palmer, Jackson and Caicedo when 2-0 up at half time ahead of Liverpool on Sunday. What an utter retard

[Gray Fox]

As long as you give us the guard of honour, I don't think we give a fuck about those 3 points now tbh.

[randomlegend]

This is some glorious seethe

[Lewis]

The Forest representative on that Sky fan debate said he would rather get Champions' League than win the FA Cup what a pleb.

[randomlegend]

I swear Mount gives the ball away on purpose just so he can run around PRESSING to get it back.

[randomlegend]

Meanwhile Antony casually banging in goal of the season with his right foot.

[Giggles]

What stage are all these matches? And why does Livescore stupidly not tell you? Was the same last night.

[randomlegend]

Semis.

[Lewis]

United win. Chelsea win. Even Tottenham win. Very typical of Arsenal not to get it done.

[Jimmy Floyd]

That Spurs tie is ripe to be turned around. Polar bears skating around the pitch etc, fisherman arrives at the back post, 3-0.

[Lofty]

United win. Chelsea win. Even Tottenham win. Very typical of Arsenal not to get it done.

The converse view would be whilst the CL format ensured the top teams in europe by and large progressed to the latter stages, the drop off in quality outside of the non PL teams is stark. Potentially 2 teams that could have been in a relegation fight any other season could run out comfortable winners, makes it all look a bit tinpot.

[Jimmy Floyd]

If you take Barcelona/Madrid/PSG/Bayern and the Italian side du jour out of the equation, the PL absolutely shits on European football.

It'll be interesting to see if someone like Fulham or Bournemouth get into the Conference League next year how easily they win it. I suspect very easily.

[niko_cee]

Is this the first year there have been no Champions League drop downs into the Europa League? I guess that makes a difference.

[Danny]

View Tweet

[Luke Emia]

If you take Barcelona/Madrid/PSG/Bayern and the Italian side du jour out of the equation, the PL absolutely shits on European football.

It'll be interesting to see if someone like Fulham or Bournemouth get into the Conference League next year how easily they win it. I suspect very easily.

Even with that even though they were the better team over two legs PSG could have gone out to both Liverpool and Villa on another day.

Plus I think if we’d have had Barca’s draw we’d have pissed it to the semi as well.

[Shindig]

The real heavyweight clash of the bank holiday weekend is at the International Stadium. Gateshead v Southend for a spot in the play-offs. Form says Spikey's lot will do it. Up until a week ago, we had been in the play-off spots the whole fucking season.

Meanwhile, City are grinding results out that probably makes them one of the CL qualifiers.

[niko_cee]

Had absolutely no idea City were playing tonight.

[Shindig]

Are we just cursed at the Amex? I'm told we have won there once.

[Waffdon]

Brighton are a streaky team and won last week so it was always going to be very tough for Newcastle.

If that result stays the same and Chelsea beat Liverpool then they really shouldn’t struggle to get CL football. Can’t see Forest picking up a win tomorrow at all.

[Jimmy Floyd]

One of the biggest ifs in history just deployed there.

[Gray Fox]

We've thrown you a bone by resting half of the first team.

[Waffdon]

We've thrown you a bone by resting half of the first team.

Hardly.

Not a single academy player in sight. Another disgrace of a manager. Not even any on the bench. Should genuinely be a rule to field academy players in meaningless games

Caicedo playing right back again when there’s 3 on the bench

[Gray Fox]

I see you're playing the full midfield 3 of 'you chose the wrong club, lads.'

Meanwhile the best CDM in the world starts for us.

[Waffdon]

Liverpool would have won the CL with caicedo in their team. Absolute monster.

Brighton are playing some haram ball here. 1 shot on 76 mins and 0.15 XG lmao

[Waffdon]

That handball from the Brighton player should genuinely be investigated for match fixing