In the end, the Premier League wrapped up in low-key mode this weekend.
Hull City went down, as expected, while Chelsea collected the trophy, celebrating a little self-consciously, in the manner of a team that had already acted out its authentic joy when it actually won the league two weeks ago and was being asked to reproduce that joy in front of the fans and the cameras.
This kind of ending, you have to think, is what happens when all of your rivals fail to turn up for the start. The blame for the awkward procession that has been Chelsea’s last few games has to be placed at the feet of its rivals, who simply failed to plan out their seasons well enough.
Manchester City went into the campaign after a close title-win last time and then completely failed to match Chelsea’s purchases for quality. Arsenal spent well but left an obvious gap in central defence which left it out of the race before October. Manchester United spent the first six months of the season changing formation before arriving at something very similar to the one most people would have gone for right from the start. Liverpool tried to have Rickie Lambert and Mario Balotelli replace Luis Suarez.
In the end, even with just these early errors in judgement in mind, Chelsea led from start to finish. Of course it did. Mourinho formed a base on which to work from last season, then built on it neatly, in ways that we are all familiar with by now. In terms of top-level sport, and compared to that simplicity, everyone else pretty much thrashed around blindly for far too long to get anywhere close.
Chelsea, then, isn’t Usain Bolt running 100 metres in 9.58 seconds; it’s someone quite fast running pretty well against other athletes who forgot to arrange transport to get to the race on time and, in Liverpool’s case, turned up at the wrong place, wearing inappropriate clothing.
This mellow end to the season emerged out of inadequacy and some of the details of that inadequacy only serve to clarify the issue.
Manchester City’s complacency in largely sticking with the same team that had been successful last season wasn’t just a mistake because of Chelsea’s ruthless, big-spending summer, it also came within the context of a team that was heading towards an average age of thirty. To rely on each of Yaya Toure, Fernandinho, Vincent Kompany and Pablo Zabaleta maintaining exactly the same outstanding levels of performance as ever before has to count as optimism, rather than realism, and it was duly punished.
Liverpool had the opposite problem: it was too negative. Balotelli was not merely an inadequate replacement for Suarez—the task there was close to impossible—he was also, more tellingly, sold short from the moment he arrived at the club, in two ways. First, by being a target man brought into a team previously built around a poacher and a harrier. Second, by being spoken about as a ticking time bomb by his new manager, destined to explode or fail from the outset. That approach turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy: Brendan Rodgers believed his own negativity around the player, never trusted him and then watched on as the guy stopped trusting himself.
We, observing from the outside, obviously can’t fully understand how difficult managing a title-challenge might be, but it’s not that the teams below Chelsea weren’t miraculous, it’s that they were in places below ordinary in the way they planned their seasons. At United, Louis Van Gaal ended up with Wayne Rooney, his best striker, playing as his worst midfielder. At Arsenal, Arsene Wenger ended up with Nacho Monreal at centre-back.
Whether it is realistic to expect better or not, this is exactly how one team ends up being a dominant force in a title race without necessarily being a dominant force in the league in which that title race occurs. The clubs themselves might even accept that and as a result we can probably expect a summer in which they act quickly to ensure that there’s no repeat of what’s happened this time around.
City has already been linked with every big name going. United has already signed its first new player, getting organised early clearly a priority. Arsenal signed its missing centre back in January and, it looks like, will sign Morgan Schneiderlin before summer comes into full effect. Only Liverpool lacks a clear impetus and it still has time to find one. We’ll have to wait and see what happens.
For now, though, Jose Mourinho believes his success has been played down in the end of season awards stakes, and perhaps he’s right, but on the other hand the risk is that if you romanticise his achievements this season you’re really just romanticising competence.
His Chelsea was certainly spectacular at times early on, but 87 is hardly a revolutionary points total and as soon as you look back on its rivals’ seasons it’s not exactly difficult to imagine where they might be improved.
On we go into summer…
Ethan Dean-Richards is a London-based writer. Follow him on Twitter