International Break - Odds & Ends

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30,000 foot view 🛩️ - What’s Been Going On

☝️7 Matches Left in the PL Season

• INTERNATIONAL BREAK

  • It’s the final IB before the World Cup. EPL MW 32 will pick up on April 10.

• PL TITLE

  • Arsenal lead the PL by 9 points over City, BUT City have a match in hand - 8 matches left. The two sides meet in Manchester at the Etihad on April 19. A Gunners home win could seal it. City have been GREAT under Pep at the end of seasons. If City win all 8 remaining games, they would sit on 85 points. Gunners need 16 more points to secure the title with a possible 21 in play.

• RELEGATION

  • 6 teams are in play for the 3 relegation spots.

  • Wolves are most likely heading down, Burnley too, unless they collect 18+ of the 21 remaining points.

  • So, it’s really 4 teams fighting to stay out of the last spot.

    • West Ham (29 points), Spurs (30), Forest (32) and Leeds (33).

    • These sides do play each other - will be key matches

    • Wolves v Westh Ham

• EUROPEAN QUALIFICATION

  • Champions League - most likely the top 5 in the table.

  • Europa League - 6th & 7th in table.

  • UEFA Conference League - 8th in table.

    • Locks for Champions League: Arsenal, Man City

    • Eleven teams fighting positions 3-8: Man United, Villa, Liverpool, Chelsea, Brentford, Everton, Fulham, BHA, Sunderland, Newcastle, Bournemouth

• THE TABLE

✌️ Relegation Deep Dive

Let’s look at the remaining schedules of each RELEGATION CONTENDER and highlight key matchups. These sides will have several opportunities to play each other and this COULD come down to the final match day, get your popcorn ready. 🍿🍿

• Wolves are probably too far behind, but IF they were to rattle off 4 wins over the next 4 (and the schedule is favorable) it could get interesting.

• Forest & Spurs have the toughest schedule.

• Leeds needs to take care of business at home against Wolves and Burnley.

• Burnley’s schedule is most likely too daunting to overcome.

• That leaves us with West Ham & Spurs - two London clubs, one BIG SIX club.

  • Spurs are arguably playing the WOSRT of all PL teams and there is genuine concern in North London that this BIG club could be playing in a huge stadium in the Championship next season. Something to watch as the pressure gets tighter.

  • West Ham have been playing better, but they better take care of business over the next couple weeks. Don’t want to go into those last 3 games needing wins.

PREDICTION

• Forest finish 18th and are relegated. Their schedule is brutal to finish and Spurs find a way to get just enough points, and have the best goal differential to own tie breakers.

• West Ham will do enough to finish 16th and not have to win on the final day.

• Wolves will overtake Burnley and make a run but fall short.

• West Ham, Spurs and Forest all play at home on the final day, and it may come down to who gets all three points that day.

👌 Top 10 Storylines with 7 matches to go

1. Can Arsenal hold off City and win their first PL title since 2004.

   1. “Magic Number is 16” - The Gunners need 16 points, if City were to win out, to win the title. A City loss drops the magic number by 3, a City draw by 2.

2. 11 teams are fighting for Europe (CL, EL, UCL), who gets the 5 available spots after Arsenal & City?

   1. At a minimum 1 of these 4 teams will miss out on the Champions League - Man United, Aston Villa, Liverpool and Chelsea.

3. Who gets relegated (see above in section ✌️).

4. Spurs, will this Big6 club and their 70,000 seat stadium be in The Championship next season? They are playing the worst of any PL club.

5. Will Man United be back to where they (think they) belong? Top 4? with an “interim” manager.

6. Everton are 3 points behind rival Liverpool, could they finish ahead of the Red’s for the first time since 2013 (Everton 6 and Liverpool 7)? You know that is the goal of Toffee fans. Not bad considering Everton’s last couple of years trying to avoid relegation the last weeks of the season.

7. Could Sunderland go from promoted to Europe? NO newly promoted team has ever made the Champions League in the promoted season. In 2018 Wolves were promoted and finished 7th in the table, good enough for the UCL. The highest position a recently promoted side has ever finished in the table in that season, 3rd. Newcastle did it in 1994 and Forest in 1995. Regardless, if Sunderland finish top 10 Manager Regis Le Bris should be EPL Manager of the year, with close competition of Brentford’s Keith Andrews.

8. How will Arsenal and Liverpool fare in the Champions League? It’s Arsenal’s to lose according to the book makers. While Arteta has won two Carabao cups and one FA Cup, the pressure is on to close the deal in the PL and CL.

9. The PL has a legit chance to again win the Europa League, can Villa and Forest advance? How about Palace in the UEFA Conference League? They also have a shot. A win for Forest and or Palace would mean European qualification again next season even given they both sit outside the top 10 in the table.

10. OK, not PL directly, but Wrexham has a chance of Promotion to the PL. Will be fun to watch.

🍀 Champions, Europa & UEFA Conference Leagues

• 7 of the top 8 favorites advance to the ELITE EIGHT.

• Man City flame out getting drubbed by Real Madrid.

• As predicted - Newcastle, Spurs, and Chelsea also are eliminated, each one not even in it losing the aggregate goal 3-8, 2-8 and 5-7 respectively.

• The Elite Eight schedule

  • April 7 & 15 home & away

    • Real Madrid v Bayern Munich

    • Sporting v Arsenal

  • April 8 & 14 home & away

    • Barcelona v Atletico Madrid

    • PSG v Liverpool

Here are the remaining teams and their sweet 16 odds to win it all.

• Forest had a nice result in the sweet 16. Down 0-1 and heading to Midtjylland (Denmark) they tied it up by scoring 2-1 goals on the road and then winning 3-0 on penalties.

• Villa took care of business beating Lille (France) 3-0 aggregate goals.

• The Elite Eight schedule

  • April 9 & 16 home & away

    • Sporting Braga v Real Betis

    • Bologna (Italy) v Villa

    • Freiburg v Celta Vigo

    • Porto (Portugal) v Forest

• Palace take on Fiorentina (Italy) in the Elite Eight April 9 & 16.

✋ Carabao Cup & FA Cup

As a reminder, the Carabao Cup is the England tournament for the top 4 leagues across England. The FA Cup is the ALL ENGLAND tournament - every team.

Carabao Cup - FINAL

Man City beat Arsenal 2-0 in the Final. The Gunners will have to wait for their Cup this year, but there is no guarantee yet - PL, CL and FA Cup are all still in play but far from decided.

FA CUP - Elite 8

• 7 PL teams and 1 League One side (Level 3) and that side sits LAST and will most likely be relegated to League Two.

• April 4 & 5 - One match - winner advances.

  • Man City host Liverpool

  • Chelsea host Port Vale (League One)

  • Southampton host Arsenal

  • Wesst Ham host Leeds

🕕 CS World Cup Corner 🌎🍵🏪

Less Than 75 Days to the World Cup and next week we will see who the remaining 6 teams are to join the party.

Matches are Tuesday - You can watch on FS1/FS2 and Fox Sports.

7️⃣ USMNT Friendlies

The USMNT had a good 1H in a “friendly” against Belgium (World #7) but the wheels came off in the 2H in Atlanta. A good test for the club, yet disappointing outcome, losing 2-5. Might it be like the 1980 Men’s US hockey team’s warm up against the Russians where they got run off the rink?

If you saw the match, you may have struggled knowing who was who. That’s because both sides had just ONE of their kit’s for the match in Atlanta and they were basically the same.

“It was almost a 50/50 thing so you definitely had to maybe take a little more time on the ball before you make a decision or play one touch to a player.” ~Weston McKennie USMNT

🎱Who Woulda’ Thunk it.

One of these guys seems to really have a problem.

9️⃣ BONUS CS World Cup Corner 🌎🍵🏪

For those saying the World Cup will struggle lack energy and excitement - check out this 15s clip for Colombia’s FRIENDLY in Orlando this week against Nigeria. Buckle Up! WATCH

🔟The Financials of English Soccer is…..well…..something 💵💵

The difference between staying in the PL and falling to the Championship is around $300M. Crazy numbers.

And here are 2 very different stories of teams currently in The Championship.

Money Problems - Leicester City

The Foxes have lost A LOT of money yo-yoing between the PL and Championship 2 of the last 3 seasons. Last season in the PL (2024-2025) the club has reported a loss of $100M.

This becomes a big problem for the club as Financial Fair Play rules state a club must balance their spending with revenue, a failure to do so leads to points deductions. LCFC have been deducted 6 points this season in the Championship and it puts them in the race to be relegated to League One. A big drop from their PL expectations.

Part of the issue for LCFC is that ownership (a family from Thailand who runs one of Asia’s largest Duty-Free businesses) has been struggling financially.

While the revenue opportunities of being in the PL are huge, so are player wages if you expect to compete in the PL.

Just 10 years removed from winning the PL, the foxes are trying to stabilize their finances to make a run back to the PL.

Money Solutions - Wrexham

Last season Wrexham set a record for highest revenue for a League One club at $45M.

Also what may be a record, 57% of that revenue comes from the rest of the world.

HOWEVER - even with those revenues, the club reported a loss of $20M.

The cost can be tied directly to the cost of player acquisition/salaries. The wage bill jumped 75% to over $25M.

You might be wondering, how much money does the Welcome to Wrexham documentary generate for the club. The answer is $0. Nadda. However, it provides the international marketing platform that drives that 57% number above.

In addition, the club is building a new stand at the stadium with costs expected to be $80M expanding the capacity to 18,000. All of this is to prepare for a run to the Premier League and/or staying in The Championship.

Just a little look at two clubs - one struggling to maintain their PL status and the other looking to get to PL level. $300M for promotion to the PL would help either side but finding the revenue to sustain the wages and stick in the PL makes it much more difficult than it seems. Makes what Sunderland has done this year, getting promoted and sitting in top 10 of table, impressive.

➕BONUS 🤔🤔

• Mo Salah announced he will be leaving Liverpool after the season. Truly an amazing run. Could MLS be on this list for Mo next year? Or the $$$$$ of Saudi Arabia?

• Spurs are onto yet another new manager, they have more managers this season than wins at home.

• Arsenal - something to keep an eye on, they have TEN of their first team players were held out of their international teams during the break due to injury. This could impact their run to the title.

• Sunderland pulled the double over their rival Newcastle this season. Not the first time tho, they did it in 2015 as well.

• 75% of fans OPPOSE VAR in the EPL according to a survey by the Football Supporters’ Association. 8,000 fans responded. 90% disagreed that VAR has improved the game day experience. Here is a deeper dive on the survey at BBC.com.

• MLB fan? Here in the USA trying to find your team play has become quite the adventure, unless you don’t live in your home market, then you can just buy the MLB package. But if you do live in your home market, you need another package. Here’s a good primer, not too far from the truth.