FROM Hackney Marshes to Wembley Stadium, London is a city which eats, sleeps and breathes football.
Forget the supposed heartlands and hotbeds of the north, England’s capital boasts more professional clubs than any metropolis outside South America — 16 of them in the top five tiers, with seven in the Premier League.
Yet Erik ten Hag won more silverware during his dismal Manchester United reign than the whole of London put together.
And after a major February meltdown, it’s highly likely that no London club will lift a domestic trophy for a fifth consecutive season.
Arsenal have blown another title, the Gunners and Spurs lost the League Cup semi-finals, while only Fulham, Crystal Palace and Millwall remain in the FA Cup — with none of them having previously lifted the trophy.
Arsenal don’t have a striker and don’t have any discipline, Chelsea’s owners have spent a billion and don’t have any senior players, while Tottenham don’t even want to be referred to as Tottenham any more.
West Ham are the worst Premier League team in the capital after sacking their best manager in decades — and David Moyes is the only boss to have won a major trophy for a London club in front of a full stadium since 2018. If Uefa’s Conference League even counts.
Chelsea won the Champions League in front of a post-pandemic sprinkling of supporters in 2021 but the Blues have lost six successive Wembley finals, while Arsenal haven’t won the title since 2004 and Spurs have won nothing since 2008.
So with London such a des res for footballers, and with more than a third of the Premier League based in the capital, why do all major domestic trophies head north?
The winner of next month’s Carabao Cup final between Liverpool and Newcastle will be the 14th consecutive English trophy-winner from north of Watford.
One common factor, a perennial problem for all of the capital’s clubs, is the sheer weight of derby fixtures.
Derbies tend to be levellers which take their toll — and while Arsenal are top of this season’s London derby table, they have lost at home to West Ham twice in succession and failed to beat Fulham this term or last.
Since the exits of Arsene Wenger and Roman Abramovich — the two most influential figures in London football over the previous half-century — the city is becoming a trophy-free zone.
Wenger took the Premier League by storm with his genius during his early years at Arsenal — and kept winning FA Cups even in his dog days.
By then, Vladimir Putin’s pal Abramovich had arrived at Stamford Bridge and, as Arsenal director David Dein put it, “parked his Russian tank in our front garden and fired £50 notes at us” — before we’d even heard of FFP or PSR.
With Manchester City in meltdown, this ought to have been Arsenal’s time for a first title since Wenger’s heyday. Yet five red cards have cost them up to ten points and the lack of a fit striker, or any authentic No 9, means their chances of catching Liverpool were always remote.
Under Abramovich, Chelsea collected five Premier League titles and the only two European Cups ever won by any London club.
Since he scarpered into exile, the Blues have become prisoners of their own dogmatic business model — signing young players on extremely long contracts, with no senior pros to guide them.
Now Cole Palmer, the 22-year-old who has carried the club for 18 months, faces another season without Champions League football.
And with six years to run on his Blues deal, a player who sees himself as Ballon d’Or material might soon be getting itchy feet. A Conference League title won’t cut it.
Then there’s the football club formerly known as Tottenham who, in a bizarre missive, requested broadcasters no longer refer to them as “Tottenham”, only as “Spurs” or by their full name, Tottenham Hotspur.
We knew Ange Postecoglou’s men were having a poor season but we didn’t realise they needed to seek a new identity under the witness protection programme.
All in all, it’s grim down south.
DIFFERENT LEAGUE
LAST season, the clubs promoted to the Premier League all went back down.
While two of those relegated to the Championship came straight up and the third, Leeds, lost the play-off final.
This term, the three promoted clubs look relegation certs.
And all three were hammered at home this weekend by an aggregate scoreline of 12-1.
Opposition players aren’t even properly celebrating their goals against Southampton or Leicester any more.
Meanwhile two of last season’s relegated clubs — Sheffield United and Burnley — sit in the Championship’s top three, along with Leeds.
If it seems the gap between the top two divisions is widening again, then how on Earth do you explain the plight of Luton Town?
The Hatters made a decent stab at top-flight survival last year but are rock-bottom of the Championship right now.
ASH CLOUD
OVERTURNING the injury-time penalty awarded to Everton’s Ashley Young against Manchester United proves the supposed VAR ‘high bar’ has been forgotten and matches are again being re-refereed from Stockley Park.
And, after ref Andy Madley had made an honest, instinctive on-field decision on a 50-50 call in awarding the spot-kick, it’s also possible his VAR might have had time to take into account Young’s previous for taking a tumble.
Which wouldn’t be right.
LEAKY BUM TIME
IF you thought Manchester United were bad on the pitch, consider the mess behind the scenes.
Chief executive Omar Berrada is threatening to sack any United employees who turn whistle-blower and leak news of plans to axe even more staff.
These job cuts will help pay for billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s disastrous decision to offer a new contract to Erik ten Hag, then sack him, and to poach sporting director Dan Ashworth from Newcastle, only to fall out with him and pay him off five months later.
Ratcliffe’s chum Sir Dave Brailsford is apparently sick of hearing about the Sir Alex Ferguson era.
Brailsford reckons it puts unfair pressure on the Ratcliffe regime to mention that, under Fergie, United dominated the English game, winning 13 Prem titles and two European Cups.
In which case, why didn’t Ratcliffe buy a club which had never won so much as a raffle prize, and run that one into the ground instead?
HOME RULE?
YOU’VE got to turn your home stadium into a fortress because it’s always tough to win on the road in the Premier League, isn’t it?
Well, hardly any tougher than winning at home, actually.
There were seven away wins in the top flight this weekend, meaning a total of 101 home victories and 95 away successes this season.
With plenty of teams enjoying success on the counter-attack, with defensive ‘low blocks’ difficult to break down and away ends invariably out-singing home fans, home advantage is a thing of the past.
