Match Week 26 Recap

EPL Match Week 26 - CleanSheet Recap

In Today’s CleanSheet:

• Headlines 📌

• Current Situation📈📉

• Hot Topic 🔥🔥🔥- Carabao Cup Champions - Liverpool

• Off Island 🏝️ - The Great Uniform Disaster

• Best Bets 💰

For the Liverpool fans……

Headlines 📌

• Best Result of Match Week 26. Man United 1-2 Fulham.  The last time Fulham won at United, 2003. If I were managing United, here is how the post-game press conference would go - “Congrats to Fulham who played great and deserved the win. As for us, we were Shite.” United looked like they didn’t want to play the match and FFC was very aggressive and physical. FFC missed chance after chance, finally took the well-deserved lead at 65’ but it looked like each side were going to share a point when McGuire equalized at 89’. FFC’s Iwobi decided they wanted all three points and scored at 97’.

  • Cottagers lead. Calvin Bassey gives FFC a well-deserved lead (X).

  • All Even. Harry Maguire with the tap in (X).

  • 97’ For The Win. Alex Iwobi (X).

  • 8 Home Defeats. That is Man United’s EIGTH defeat at home this season, the most in over 50 years.

  • 10 Losses. Man United has lost 10 PL matches this season, something former great Sir Alex Ferguson never did in his 21-year United career. 

• 10—→6. Wasn’t just a great weekend in Liverpool because of the EFL Championship for the Reds. Liverpool’s “other team” Everton had their 10-point deduction for FFP penalties reduced to 6 after a successful appeal. 10 points was the most ever imposed. The appeals board said, the original commission's decision….. “was wrong not to take into account available benchmarks.” More from BBCSport.

• Gunners on Lock Down. Since the return from the mini-break in January, Arsenal have scored 25 goals in 6 matches, allowed just 12 shots on goal and given up only 3. This week it was Arsenal 4-1 Newcastle. It was 4-0 before the Magpies got a goal at 84’ with just 2 shots on goal. This is a dominating Gunner team.

• Red Cards.

  • Burnley’s Josh Brownhill, 0-0 when it happened (X) and the Clarets couldn’t handle it.

  • BHA’s Billy Gilmore, 0-1 when it happened (X) but the Seagulls found a very late winner.

• Not A Red Card! (Or Yellow)

  • Chelsea’s Moises Caicedo, seriously - no card given (X).

  • Klopp’s post EFL Final referee (non) handshake. (X)

• FA Cup. “Sweet 16” happening this week and its 15 Premier League and Championship clubs and 1 Cinderella.

Current Situation 📈📉

Clean Sheets Counter

Hot Topic 🔥🔥🔥

“Easily the most special trophy I’ve ever won” ~Jurgen Klopp

LIVERPOOL WIN the first Major Cup of the season over Chelsea 1-0 in OT.

Here are 2min on Klopp’s reaction and SkySports analysis.

Was a pretty even match on the stat sheet, both sides had great chances and goals overturned. A draw was not surprising in regular time but there were enough chances that it could’ve been 2-2 or 3-3 instead of 0-0. Extra time was another story, it was all Liverpool who won the match at the 119’.

The Pundits reaction can be summarized this way - “Jurgen Klopp's kids beat Chelsea's billion-pound bottle-jobs”. (had to look up “bottle job” = to fail or screw up).

The win for Liverpool was really a Club win, a great example of how the top-level club down to the Academy are on the same page. Why a club win?

• Liverpool was without 6 of 11 consistent starters.

• At the end of the match, the average age of the team on the pitch was under 22.

• Pretty amazing in a Final to have these 5 playing: Conor Bradley (20) started at right-back and with the match running into extra time, Bobby Clark (19), Jayden Danns (18), James McConnell (19) and Jarell Quansah (21) all were in position to be a part of PKs if it got to that point.

• Liverpool’s starting Goalkeeper, Alison, was out injured. They got great contribution from backup.

Liverpool needed their experience to step up, and that is exactly what their Captain did.

• Chelsea have lost 4 finals in the last 5 years to Liverpool.

• Chelsea are the first English club to lose 6 straight domestic club titles, 3 by PKs 3 by 1 goal.

• 4 of Liverpool’s trophies under Jurgen Klopp have been against Chelsea.

• YNWA - Great Scenes (X 20s) regardless of what team you root for, maybe.

1 Down, 3ish To Go

• FA Cup - May 25

• Premier League Champions - May 19

• Champions League/Europa League/Europa Conference League - June 1/May 22/May 29

Off Island 🏝️

On February 15 CleanSheet pubulished Match Week 25 Preview which included a section on each Premier League Club’s home/away/third kits. Little did we know kits/uniforms would be in the news as much as they are now after the significant blow back on the latest MLB uniforms. If you haven’t seen them - they are bad.

Here is the Barstool Sports take with PICTURES - The Great 2024 MLB Uniform Disaster.

If you’d like to read a story on the business behind the move to new uniforms, Here is the WSJs take.

Best Bets 💰

Season Starting Balance: $1000 Current: $1265

Overall GuestPicker Standings ($)