About a year ago, Blackpool were the team to follow for entertainment, ups, downs and adventure-you got the real rollercoaster ride with the Tangerines and Ian Holloway. Their ability to capture attention with their fearless attacking style of play (albeit they couldn’t defend) won over the hearts of our football-mad nation as they pulled off some outstanding results for the team expected to ‘do a derby county’. Tears were shed as they were relegated on the final day.
This season, all three promoted clubs are making a similar mark upon the Premier League in their own unique style.
Norwich City, this time two years ago were steamrolling most of League 1 after Paul Lambert had started a revolution. Absurdly, the first game of that season saw a 7-1 defeat to Colchester-as a result, two Norwich fans ran onto the pitch to rip up their season tickets mid way through the first half when their team were already 4-0 down. Lambert joined a short while later from Colchester and back to back promotions see the Canaries playing in the top flight with an attractive style of football.
In North Wales, the first ever Welsh club in the Premier League are boldly going were no promoted team has been before. Under Brendan Rodgers, Swansea City are playing a pass-and-move style that famously passed even Arsenal off the pitch in the 3-2 win at the liberty stadium.
Swansea are the 7th best team for passing in Europe’s major leagues; their midfielder, Leon Britton has a 93.3% pass accuracy rate, incredibly bettering Barcelona’s Xavi and Andres Iniesta, the Spanish Maestros. The Liberty stadium is now a fortress-numerous clean sheets for the brave Swans leave the Premier League’s elite becoming wary of the trip to North Wales.
Directly contrasting the two explosions of unexpected talent is QPR. Promoted as Champions, Rangers had looked under Neil Warnock, like they were to go back down. However, the dismissal of Warnock by the club’s Twitter happy owner, Tony Fernandes (who took over at Loftus Road in August) sees a turnaround in fortune. As Mark Hughes now has managerial duties, two victories over MK Dons and Wigan in the same week make the future look brighter. Upon leaving, a disgruntled Neil Warnock told the press how people ‘inside and outside’ the club (referring to Fernandes being influenced on Twitter) had lost him his job. Joey Barton, the club’s controversial captain told Warnock to ‘look in the mirror’ through his favourite social networking site if he wanted someone to blame.
Nearing February, optimism is circling all three promoted clubs with hope for them all to stay up.
Therefore, if you would like some excitement and just enjoyable football instead of the top clubs moaning at each other and winning everything, cast your eye upon what really makes the Premier League the greatest of its kind.
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SOUTH WALES not north i take it you dont even know where swansea is its about 200 miles west of london hope you got a sat nav or you will watching football at the race course ( wrexham ) in case you didnt know ( norht wales ).