As the match between West Ham and Manchester City in the Premier League at Upton Park on Saturday entered its closing stages, West Ham's Cheikhou Kouyate had a chance to nick it for his team as a free kick came in from the left side.
The midfielder’s header just went over the bar as the match ended 2-2. Last season, West Ham would have been overjoyed to take four points off a Premier League giant, having beaten them 2-1 at the Etihad Stadium earlier this season. This took their season tally of points taken off last season’s top six clubs to 17 out of a possible 24, a remarkable return punctuated by away victories over the likes of Manchester City, Liverpool and Arsenal.
However, West Ham manager Slaven Bilic seemed disappointed at the post-match press conference and added, “It’s a good thing if you’re disappointed. It means you have a good team.” At the heart of this revolution is the man, who delivered the free-kick to Kouyate, West Ham’s 28-year old diminutive French talisman, Dimitri Payet.
Up with the best
Now when West Ham were getting Payet, it is important to remember that they were acquiring the services of a man with 16 assists to his name in last year’s France’s Ligue 1, only behind Kevin De Bruyne (20), Cesc Fabregas and Lionel Messi (both 18) in Europe’s top five leagues.
Payet’s influence has been clear for all to see as West Ham have a win percentage of 14% (one in seven Premier League games) without him as compared to matches which he’s started (50% - eight out of 16). When he plays, West Ham score at a rate of almost two per game (31 goals from 16) and this falls to a rate of less than one goal per game (five from seven) when he is absent.
Whoscored.com lists Payet as the fourth best performer in the league this season with an average match rating of 7.63, outperformed only by Riyad Mahrez (7.94), Mesut Ozil (7.80) and Mousa Dembele (7.64).
For the moment, West Ham seem to be in contention for the European spots. Add this to the fact that the London club are to move into the brand new 54,000-seater Olympic Stadium next season and the future looks very rosy for the Hammers.
But West Ham still do not get the nod for the “surprise package of the season”. That accolade goes to the boys in blue, who whipped Stoke City 3-0 at the King Power Stadium. Leicester’s story this season has been nothing short of a fairytale.
Although Leicester fans might not take too kindly to the term ‘fairytale’, especially after the exploits of Messrs Vardy and Mahrez, after 23 games last season, they were last in the division, dead and buried, having garnered 17 points and had scored just eight goals.
Fast forward a year and they have garnered 71 points in the 38 league games since, having scored 80 goals in the process, a tally good enough for a Champions League spot in most years.
The lynchpin of their resurrection last season was none other than Argentine legend, Esteban Cambiasso, who had signed for the newly promoted team after having spent the previous 12 seasons at the likes of Internazionale and Real Madrid. Even though the Leicester project could have ended up in relegation, Cambiasso’s signing proved that the Premier League’s lure is difficult even for the best to ignore.
Top of the table fairytale
As things currently stand, Leicester are top of the table with about 15 games of the 38 still remaining. The impossible dream draws nearer and Leicester might win or not, but this season will be a master-class to the other clubs on how to try and break the big clubs’ stranglehold on the Champions League places.
Leicester’s opponents on Saturday, Stoke City had let go of one of their longest-serving managers, Tony Pulis by mutual consent in 2013, in order to play a more “attractive” style of football. At the time, the general notion was that Stoke had shot themselves in the foot by getting rid of a manager who could ensure survival by virtue of defensive stability and that it would take more than a change in manager to change Stoke’s “rough-and-tumble-long-ball’ approach.
New manager Mark Hughes thought differently and with Stoke establishing themselves in the top half of the table, the media who were once too hard on Stoke for their overtly physical tactics have hailed that Stoke are no-longer a "long-ball team".
This evolution of Stoke is also down to the fact that they have the joint-highest number of Champions League winners in their squad currently (five – Arnautovic, Shaqiri, Muniesa, Afellay and Bojan). Perhaps it is no surprise that three of those players are amongst their top five goal-scorers for the season.
On Welsh shores, they have a new hero. Even though Swansea City are currently struggling in 15th, they could have done much worse than signing former ‘BBC African Footballer of the Year’ and Ghanian star, the son of Abedi ‘Pele’, Andre Ayew.
Without his eight goals this season, the situation would have been much worse for the club who parted ways with manager Garry Monk this season and they would have been second from last if not for the ex-Marseille star’s goals.
His finest moment in a Swansea shirt this season came when the Swans were level at 1-1 with Sunderland but had full-back Naughton sent off with just 37 minutes on the clock. Ayew pulled off a superb solo run and individual finish to try and grab the control of the match for his team. Although 10-man Swansea would go on to lose the match 2-4, the goal underlined Ayew’s pedigree and importance to his team.
Show me the money
But the true value of being a Premier League club can be understood from the new behemoth of a television deal that will run from 2016-2019. This deal is worth £5.14 billion and with the overseas rights; this figure could go up to £8 billion, making it the second most lucrative deal in the world behind the United States’ National Football League.
What this means is that even the bottom placed club in the league from the season 2016-17 can expect to earn €150 million a season, a figure dwarfing the current TV revenues of European giants like Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain and Juventus and only matched by the Spanish duo of Barcelona and Real Madrid.
The final clinching part of the evidence as to the Premier League’s riches came from a Deloitte report examining the highest earning football clubs. Seventeen out of the top 30 clubs were from the Premier League and despite participating in little or no European competitions, the likes of English clubs such as Newcastle United, Everton and West Ham were providing tough competition for continental heavyweights such as Atletico de Madrid, AS Roma and Internazionale.
With more money, an ever-burgeoning talent pool to choose from, more markets to target (read Asia) and more die-hard fans, the Premier League’s proletariat has changed its stance from ‘Stay’ to ‘Compete’. There are no pushovers in the League anymore; the big boys have been served notice.
