An­dre Bap­tiste

Now that the Eng­lish Pre­mier sea­son is over and Sat­ur­days and Sun­days be­come mun­dane for many, there is a lot to re­flect on.

Man­ches­ter Unit­ed an­dAlex Fer­gu­son

In a sea­son, where it was clear­ly vul­ner­a­ble, Man­ches­ter Unit­ed took ad­van­tage of the er­rat­ic ear­ly form of sev­er­al of its lead­ing ri­vals to build an in­sur­mount­able lead by Jan­u­ary 2013. How­ev­er, if Alex Fer­gu­son is hon­est, he will ad­mit that this sea­son was won in the trans­fer mar­ket when he con­vinced Ar­sene Wenger to sell Ar­se­nal's cap­tain Robin Van Per­sie. By De­cem­ber, Van Per­sie's late win­ning goals had al­ready re­paid the trans­fer fee. By the end of the sea­son, Van Per­sie was win­ner of the Gold­en Boot award for the sec­ond year in a row. And even though for a brief pe­ri­od Man­ches­ter Unit­ed seemed to lose its way when it was dumped out of the Cham­pi­ons League, it still won the Cham­pi­onship for the 20th time.The an­nounce­ment that Fer­gu­son was quit­ting as man­ag­er was more shock­ing than the even­tu­al ti­tle win­ning sea­son. This was a man who seemed in­tent on try­ing to win the Cham­pi­ons League again. But in the end, fa­ther time and prop­er­ly the wis­dom of re­al­is­ing that this cur­rent squad will strug­gle to re­tain its ti­tle in 2014, led Fer­gu­son rather quick­ly to the ex­it door. The choice of David Moyes will give a lot of hope to com­peti­tors that Man­ches­ter Unit­ed can be beat­en as through­out his time at Ever­ton, he failed to win any ti­tles.

Man­ches­ter City an­dRober­to Manci­ni

Af­ter win­ning the ti­tle in dra­mat­ic fash­ion in 2012, Man­ches­ter City was ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue its rise, but a com­bi­na­tion of in­ter­nal tur­moil and in­jury, caused in­con­sis­tent per­for­mances. It was a Jekyll and Hyde year as some days it looked pure­ly un­beat­able and oth­er oc­ca­sions it was very vul­ner­a­ble, and in the end this slop­py dis­play of foot­ball from a team that had in­vest­ed so much cash in its play­ers reached a boil­ing point. But it turned worse when City lost the FA Cup Fi­nal to Wigan Ath­let­ic at Wem­b­ley. The Man­ches­ter City play­ers ap­peared to be play­ing for them­selves and there was an ob­vi­ous lack of team spir­it.

It was there­fore no sur­prise when Manci­ni was fired as the City own­ers, who spent mil­lions of pounds on this squad, could sense the play­ers' re­volt was on the way. His re­place­ment, ex­pect­ed to be for­mer Mala­ga coach Manuel Pel­le­gri­ni, will have to be wary as well, as it is clear that for­eign in­vestors and for­eign own­er­ship in the Pre­mier­ship was very de­mand­ing.

Chelsea and Rafa Ben­itez

It was a mixed year for the de­fend­ing Cham­pi­ons League win­ner, as it failed to progress to the last 16 of this tour­na­ment, but still man­aged to win the Eu­ropa Cup. Add to that a third place fin­ish in the Pre­mier­ship and out­go­ing man­ag­er Rafa Ben­itez can be rea­son­ably pleased with the team's suc­cess. How­ev­er, there was al­so a lot of un­pleas­ant mem­o­ries for Chelsea as well, with its de­fen­sive fragili­ties ex­posed by weak op­po­nents. Add to that the se­ri­ous doubt over the fu­ture of John Ter­ry and Frank Lam­pard did not help mat­ters.With Rafa Ben­itez ex­pect­ed to leave and be re­placed by Jose Mour­in­ho, there is bright ex­pec­ta­tion for a much bet­ter sea­son in Au­gust for Chelsea, per­haps the news that Lam­pard has a one-year ex­ten­sion will as­sist. But what will hap­pen to Fer­nan­do Tor­res? And will Mour­in­ho bring new play­ers to Stam­ford Bridge?

Ar­se­nal and Ar­sene Wenger

An­oth­er dis­ap­point­ing year for Ar­se­nal al­though it end­ed on a high in the Pre­mier League by win­ning eight out of its last ten match­es to fin­ish fourth and qual­i­fy for Cham­pi­ons League for the 16th con­sec­u­tive year. While Ar­se­nal can lay claim for be­ing the on­ly team to beat even­tu­al Cham­pi­ons League win­ners Bay­ern Mu­nich 2-0, it was an ex­as­per­at­ing sea­son, which, over the four months, saw it suf­fer from a lack of a qual­i­ty strik­er and goal scor­er. Wenger has one more year on his con­tract and may de­cide fi­nal­ly to in­vest the mil­lions that Ar­se­nal now has in at least four new play­ers (a goal­keep­er, a right back, a cen­tral de­fend­er and an­oth­er strik­er) if it wants to win some­thing at last.

Tot­ten­ham and An­dre Vil­las-Boas

On­ly one thing can be said...Gareth Bale!...Gareth Bale!...He has made the dif­fer­ence this sea­son, his per­for­mances and his goals, but he can­not do it alone next sea­son, he will need re­in­force­ments.

Liv­er­pool and Bren­dan Rodgers

This team on pa­per has the po­ten­tial to be very com­pet­i­tive and com­bat­ive, but some­how los­es the plot at im­por­tant junc­tures of the sea­son. I have a feel­ing that come Au­gust, Liv­er­pool will be a threat with or with­out Luis Suarez.

Ever­ton

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, a num­ber of their lead­ing play­ers may be sold or re­quest trans­fers, so next sea­son will be about not on­ly re­build­ing with a new man­ag­er but per­haps dif­fer­ent play­ers.How­ev­er, for the time be­ing, if you are look­ing for a sport, there is still bas­ket­ball and the NBA fi­nals.