Weekend in Review...

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends...really, this does seem to be dragging a bit at the end. The top 4 are in place, there's still some work to be done at the bottom and I suppose the pretty much useless UEFA Cup spots are still up for grabs.

Storyline 1 - Dean Ashton, Dean Ashton, Dean Ashton - Norwich takes the lead in the relegation battle and Dean puts off the inevitable move to Highbury for another year. One can only imagine where Norwich would have finished with Ashton in the line-up all year and Bentley injury-free.

Storyline 2 - Paradise Lost - ManYoo, once again, puts out a second team line-up (leaving Rooney and Scholes on the bench) and pays the price by giving up two points to West Brom. Not the greatest penalty call ever, but certainly more legit than Rooney's vs. Arsenal earlier in the season. The decline of the non-Rooney, non-Ronaldo ManYoo talent pool will, of course, get its own blog entry (or two) after the season is over.

Storyline 3 - Talented Chelsea - and in this case, we mean the wives that took the field to celebrate with the newly crowned champions. Maybe Jose should have played them at Anfield. No way talent like that would ever lose to the Reds. And we KNOW that they'd never walk alone.

Storyline 4 - High Hopes - this will also get one or more entries to itself over the summer, but here's the early list of potential breakout players for next year: Robin van Persie, Mikael Arteta, Tim Cahill, Luis Garcia (potentially scarey with a full year under his belt), David Bentley (if he gets PT somewhere), Darren Ambrose, James Milner, Jon Stead, and Collins John. Probably not appropriate to include anyone who will be joining Chelsea (as they will likely be an established star from somewhere costing upwards of $20 million) and ManYoo's kids seem to have already either broken out (Rooney, Ronaldo, and Heinze) or burnt out (everyone else Sir Alex has purchased in the last 3 years).

Here's hoping that the one storyline that I'm missing is the last hurrah for Scholes, Pires, Ronaldo, Terry and Ashley Cole later this week so that I can nudge my way back into 2nd place in advance of the last week of the season. A pox on John O'Shea. Ryan Giggs and the aforementioned Arteta - yellow cards and/or seats on the bench all around.