In his latest column, Dave Tickner celebrates a weekend that featured a great leap forward for football thanks to Ross Barkley
Ross Barkley scores a gamechanging goal against Bournemouth
Two things were settled once and for all on Saturday. We now obviously know who will win the Premier League title, but some would say even more importantly we now also know the winner of the goal of the season award.
There's been plenty debate in recent weeks, with Manchester United fans adamant that Henrikh Mkhitaryan's scorpion kick should be goal of the season while everyone else correctly argued that Olivier Giroud's was better.
"Mkhitaryan did it first."
"Mkhitaryan was offside."
"Yeah, but Giroud did that daft Morecambe and Wise celebration instead of retrieving the ball in the next game at Bournemouth."
"Giroud is handsomer and gets bonus points for going in off the bar."
Valid points all.
But now a goal has come along to make scorpion kicks like shinned tap-ins from a centre-back after an undignified goalmouth scramble. A goal of such craft and audacity that all must bow before it.
"Now a goal has come along to make scorpion kicks like shinned tap-ins from a centre-back after an undignified goalmouth scramble"
Dave Tickner
I speak, of course, of Ross Barkley's vital late goal in Everton's nonsense 6-3 victory over Bournemouth on Saturday. It was genuinely vital as well; the way things had gone, that game had 5-5 all over it until Barkley sealed things by scoring a goal WHICH HE HAD ALREADY STARTED CELEBRATING.
This. Is. Huge. Every now and then sport produces a great evolutionary leap forward that changes things forever. Overarm bowling. The Fosbury Flop. The backpass rule. Walk-on girls and beer.
It's no exaggeration to say this belongs in that company. There have been pleasingly few people harrumphing about Barkley's chutzpah, with most rightly recognising that we are in the presence of greatness here. Ian Wright was absolutely delighted by it on
Match of the Day, the only note of disappointment coming when he admitted he felt, like all those other old high-jumpers watching Dick Fosbury must have felt, gutted he hadn't thought of it himself.
Yes, like all great leaps forward, it seems obvious once it's happened.
And boy did the Premier League need it.
Sure, the relegation battle is shaping up nicely now Hull and Swansea have emerged from their apparent sleepwalk into the Sky Bet Championship, in so doing dragging Middlesbrough and, most enticingly, Leicester - the full extent of last season's Faustian pact becoming horrifyingly clear - into the mix.
But at the top of the table things are looking all too predictable. Chelsea, as we know, have the title in the bag after bullying Arsenal and stealing their pocket money in the most coldly predictable manner imaginable. Seems strange now looking back from here in the Post-Barkley world, but, way back then at Saturday lunchtime, Eden Hazard's goal that he didn't celebrate until after he'd scored really did seem quite lovely. In the same game, Cesc Fabregas scored a goal and didn't even celebrate it afterwards. A match quite literally from a different age.
For the Gunners, meanwhile, February is in full swing. The league title is gone, top-four hopes hang in the balance, Arsenal Fan TV is in open dignity-shedding revolt and Arsene Wenger's position as manager is being questioned by everyone except those with the power to do something about it. Arsenal now just need to complete the formalities of a Champions League exit to Bayern Munich before focusing themselves fully on the inevitable eight-match winning run to secure a top-three finish and with it the wrongheaded belief that next season they really could win the title you know.
While the other members of the Big Five trying to reel in the Bigger One have done so by relentlessly beating the Small Fourteen and scraping together a few points here and there when competing among themselves, Liverpool have embarked on a bold, noble but mathematically-flawed attempt to do things entirely the other way around. Hull join Bournemouth and Burnley on the list of teams to beat a Liverpool team still yet to lose to any of the other Big Six. The good news for Liverpool fans watching their season seemingly unravel before their eyes is that it's Tottenham up next. Three points in the bag.
Ah yes, Tottenham. They're still there or thereabouts by virtue of Mauricio Pochettino's witchcraft in turning Tottenham - Tottenham! - into the league's most consistent and reliable defensive performers. The final-day hilarity at Newcastle remains the only game in the last two Premier League seasons in which Spurs have conceded more than two goals. They've only conceded twice in three out of 24 matches this season, and taken four points from those games anyway. That is a solid framework on which to build a Premier League campaign.
And while Saturday evening's vaguely uninspiring 1-0 win over Middlesbrough doesn't, as Pochettino would later claim, keep them in the title race it does make them look good things for second place. Start celebrating now, nothing can possibly go wrong.
And that, truly, is the brilliance of Barkley.
His celebragoal is a wonderful achievement and spectacular moment in its own right. But more importantly, Barkley's goal means that right now there is a Premier League player, and that Premier League player is almost certainly an Arsenal player, and that Arsenal player is almost certainly Olivier Giroud, who is now destined to become the first player to make a complete mess of the Pre-Celebration. That, truly, is Barkley's gift to the world.
http://www.sportinglife.com/footbal...w-a-procession-but-ross-barkley-a-gamechanger
