2020 Review
Football didn’t escape the ominous hand of 2020, with nearly all the major leagues being placed into lockdown at some point, international tournaments cancelled, players and staff falling ill with Covid-19 and games resuming behind closed doors, or in front of hugely reduced crowds at best. But the world’s greatest sport is made of hardier stuff than that, and still managed to summon up a series of memorable moments, even if you were now in a world where you could hear what Ray Lewington was saying more easily than you’d ever imagined. Here then, is my month by month review of the year.
January
The virus was spreading but English football was untouched, as yet. On January 23 Liverpool won their 22nd Premier League game of the season (in their 23rd game) to go 16 points clear of Manchester City with a game in hand. It was as many league games as arch-rivals Manchester United had won in the entirety of their 1998-99 treble season. It seemed this season was going to be a very different one. Narrator: yes. Meanwhile Aston Villa reached the Carabao Cup final which meant they had reached a major cup final in the 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1940s (the war cup but that seems fair enough), 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and now the 2020s. The 1930s remains a stain on the club’s illustrious history.
February
The virus was getting closer. The UK had left the EU on January 31 and it seemed like some of the leading Premier League clubs were trying the same in the Champions League round of 16. Chelsea lost 3-0 at home to Bayern with Serge Gnabry scoring two at Stamford Bridge to go with the four he scored at Tottenham Hotspur stadium in the group stage. Timo Werner, a man with six goals in London so far this season also scored, for former club RB Leipzig, as they won 1-0 at Spurs. Tottenham would crash out of the competition in March, but Chelsea would last until August. That sounds better than it was. Liverpool ended February month by losing their unbeaten Premier League record at Watford, although the fact it happened on the 29th has led to some leap year truthers to claim it doesn’t actually count as a real result. It does.
March
The virus was here and Premier League football only crept on until March 9 when Leicester thrashed Aston Villa at home. Mikel Arteta’s positive coronavirus test later that week saw league football mothballed for an undetermined period, and people reacted in the best way they knew, sinking their teeth into nostalgia such as the fact that only four players born on a Wednesday have scored on a Wednesday in the PL for Sheffield Wednesday: Chris Waddle, Regi Blinker, Mark Bright & Gilles De Bilde, or that Sergio Aguero is the top scoring Premier League player with his weaker foot who was born in a leap year. Please football, come back soon. Please.
April
What did you do in April 2020 grandpa?
people asking whether Stoke have ever got close to zero again. Not reallyhttps://t.co/oNK2n9UBsz pic.twitter.com/OomOdJsrKN
— Duncan Alexander (@oilysailor) April 21, 2020
Oh and Jose Mourinho got in trouble for training Tanguy Ndombele on Hadley Common. It was that sort of year.
May
Dear Diary. Not too much going on, apart from the return of the Bundesliga and the my plans/2020 meme. My plans hadn’t involved that much watching of the Bundesliga but 2020 intervened and while people fretted about fake crowd noise and real shouting from footballers, Bayern showed everyone that maybe an audience is less important than having an absolute ton of great footballers. The weather is lovely. We can hear the birds singing.
June
What’s that coming over the hill, it’s the rearranged Premier League fixtures! June football, July football! There was controversy in the very first game as “ocular occlusion” meant that the goalline technology ruled out a valid Sheffield United goal and gave Villa a key point in the relegation battle. How the Blades could do with that point back right now. Watford and Burnley reminded of us of what we had been missing by producing 47:28 of ball in play time, taking the total for their two games in 2019-20 to 91 mins and seven seconds. A festival. Frank Lampard achieved a dream by guaranteeing the Premier League title for Liverpool when Chelsea beat his former club Manchester City at Stamford Bridge. The same night Ole Gunnar Solskjaer made the first ever quintuple substitution as Manchester United played Sheffield United. It took so long, Juan Mata technically came on a minute later than the other four. Five substitutes is, of course, three more than Sheffield United have points as we end the year.
Mason Greenwood is the first player born after The Office began to score against a PL club who have all the letters in 'Brent' in their name pic.twitter.com/lKjRKyrDz2
— Duncan Alexander (@oilysailor) June 30, 2020
July
Manchester City became the most socially distanced runners up in English top-flight history by finishing 18 points behind first place and 15 ahead of third, while in other 2020-branded content Divock Origi became the only player currently to have all the letters in ‘Covid’ in his name and exactly 19 Premier League goals. The FA Cup returned and Arsenal and Chelsea progressed in the semi-finals against Manchester City and United respectively, Bruno Fernandes becoming the first Bruno to lose at Wembley Stadium on July 19 since Frank Bruno vs Tim Witherspoon in 1986. United at least ended the season having been awarded 0.6% of all penalties ever given in the competition’s history but in a single season. To one club. In one season.
"Man Utd have won a penalty" now autocompletes when I type "M"
— Duncan Alexander (@oilysailor) August 10, 2020
August
The neat “finishing tournament” for the Champions League and Europa League in Portugal was good and made everyone go “hey this was like a World Cup with teams who have been coached well, we should do it again.” Barcelona losing 8-2 to Bayern was nonsensically tremendous, and meant that if you exclude the years they were managed by Pep Guardiola, Bayern have reached the CL final in four of the last eight seasons. This time the Bavarians actually won it, after the first set of European cup semis not to contain a single club from England, Spain or Italy since Sonic the Hedgehog came out in 1991. Barcelona, reeling, with Messi wanting out, needed a coup man, but instead got a Koeman.
September
The new English season got underway in September just like your uncle claims it used to back when football was good even though the last time it actually happened was 1914 and he means Frank Worthington or someone. The Premier League VAR rules had been tightened for the new campaign which meant that if the ball hit anyone’s hand or they had used their hand to fill a plate at a buffet in the past six years then a penalty should be awarded. By the end of the month we were on course to see more than 300 penalties in 2020-21 although that has slowed down after the buffet rule was relaxed. One team with more than their fair share of penalties were Leicester City who opened a season with three wins for the first time since the year water skiing was invented. Brighton, in contrast, lost unjustly to Manchester United at home to a goal scored after the final whistle had been blown. For me, the worst time to concede.
October
The month seemed to try and make up for the lack of supporters in stadia by replacing each missing person with a goal. On the same insane Sunday champions Liverpool lost 7-2 at Aston Villa while Jose Mourinho returned to Old Trafford with Tottenham and won 6-1. It was the first time England’s two most successful clubs had conceded 6+ times on the same day. Goal enthusiasts said it was a new paradigm and that 2020-21 would end with an almost infinite number of strikes, but meek scientists stated that it was just a few weeks where teams were scoring way above their Expected Goals rate and that things would calm down soon enough. As per, the scientists had defeated crazed theorists with logic and accuracy.
Ziyech and Zouma scoring is the 6th time in PL history two players whose surnames start with Z have scored on the same day and the first time for the same team #history #GenZ #thealphabet
— Duncan Alexander (@oilysailor) October 31, 2020
November
Bernd Leno had to wear Arsenal’s outfield away kit in their home defeat to Wolves. Wycombe’s Matt Bloomfield scored a league goal for the club for the 18th season in a row, which seems a lot. All this ephemeral content faded into the background though, when news of the death of Diego Maradona filtered through. The player who suffered 3% of all the fouls committed at the 1986 and 1990 World Cups yet dragged his team to both finals is without doubt the greatest of all time and the outpouring of love in the days following his death only proved as much.
The gap between Theo Walcott's last two league goals for Southampton is two and a half years longer than the Napoleonic Wars
— Duncan Alexander (@oilysailor) November 23, 2020
December
December is always the most effectual of months as the sheer number of games allows sides to remould their seasons or press their dominance home. After Liverpool’s runaway lead 12 months ago, we now have a compressed division with anyone from Southampton upwards on at least the periphery of the title race. Arsenal have gone from a relegation battle to a Bright New Future™ powered by the spirit of youngsters. Big Sam came back, lost to Villa, nullified Liverpool, then got eviscerated by Leeds. The philosophy wars will continue. Or at least we hope they will. If there’s one thing that March and April and May showed it was that an absence of football only makes everything else drag more slowly. We had to delve into the game’s rich history to retell the stories that are the fabric of the sport but live, real-time narrative happening right there in front of you whether in person or on a screen is what’s really needed. You’re only ever one positive VAR decision or Mike Dean arm flourish from spiritual contentment so let’s hope 2021 brings us what we need.
Sheff Utd 2019-20 : we have two overlapping centre backs
Sheff Utd 2020-21 : we have two points
— Duncan Alexander (@oilysailor) December 26, 2020
