With the season at a close, it’s time to reflect and look back over the last year of football. With plenty of highs and lows, this season has been arguably one of the strongest we’ve had for some time. With the title, top 4 and relegation spots all heading to the final weekend and a jam packed schedule all season, it’s now time to breathe, and reflect back on the 2021/2022 Premier League season.

That said, we have already gone through our great and brilliant celebration awards, and so we now must look at the negative side of the season. We have picked out our worst performers, performances and some of the worst parts of the latest season.

As with every vote and football opinion on the internet, these are subjective and a personal opinion. If you disagree on the choices made, feel free to head over to Twitter (@NextGoalWinBlog) and have a discussion on who you’d select in our chosen categories.

Enjoy.

Worst Team Of The Season – Manchester United

Any team that signs Sancho, Varane and Cristiano Ronaldo in one summer, is obviously going to have expectation and pressure on them, however I have not seen a Manchester United team look so passionless and lacklustre in my lifetime. The post-Fergie era has had issues, and the likes of Van Gaal, Mourinho and Moyes have all hit stumbling blocks, however this current crop has done the absolute worst that a group of players could do when struggling, and that is give up. With top 4 still in their hands for most of the season, the squad looked like they were annoyed to have been picked in many of the games this season, and it’s led to some horrific results.

Whether we look at the Ole spell for the first half of the season, of the Rangnick internship for the second, both have demonstrated that no matter who stands on the touchline, those players do not care enough. With humiliating losses to Watford, Brighton, Liverpool twice and Manchester City to name a few, they have been record breakers in the worst sense possible. The club broke their record for the fewest Premier League wins, their worst season overall since 1989-90 and the most goals conceded since 78-79. A season the fans and most of the players will want to forget, and we wait to see if Ten Hag can save anything from the wreckage at the club.

Worst Player Of The Season – Romelu Lukaku

To label a player with 15 goals from 44 appearances the worst player of the season seems perhaps harsh, however the context of the Lukaku signing surely has to make this true. Returning to Chelsea for his second spell after a stellar campaign for Inter Milan the previous year, and with a hefty price-tag, many thought this signing would just add to Chelsea’s great end to the previous season, but how wrong they were.

Whatever has gone on behind the scenes with Lukaku and Tuchel and the club as a whole, it’s not worked and is a huge dilemma for the club to solve on top of dealing with their ownership change. Despite claiming he asked for this deal to be done before arriving, and netting on debut against rivals Arsenal, things changed quickly when the infamous Sky Italia came out in which Lukaku claimed to be “not happy” with the system and setup used by Tuchel, and how he wished to return to Inter. Whether this was a misunderstanding of his comments, a mistranslation from the interview or simply journalists trying to make headlines, things weren’t looking good, and despite the player being sanctioned and dropped from the side, and making a public apology, he hasn’t been able to break into the starting XI since this point, and all the talk so far this summer is that he will be moving back to Milan if the two clubs can come to any form of agreement, especially tricky with the huge price tag that he comes with.

Lukaku’s performances don’t make him the worst performer of the season, but to be the cause of a breakdown in relationship between the player and club despite only just arriving, and not even seeming to be interested in building bridges, means he has to be considered a flop signing and a massively poor performer from the previous campaign, and it will be fascinating to see what next year holds.

Worst Signing Of The Season – Bryan Gil

At only 21 years of age, this could come back to bite us, however Bryan Gil has been a terrible piece of business for Spurs, something that has haunted them over the past few seasons. With the turnover of management and obvious changes in philosophies that this brings, Spurs have struggled to create a consistent squad of players who can perform in the managers’ system, and Conte’s arrival just adds to this. Admittedly, this summer things look to be on the up, however last season spending over £20million on the Spanish winger has been a terrible decision for the club.

Arriving last summer, he made 20 appearances for Spurs this season, but scored 0 goals and was hugely underperforming in the games he was involved in. As Conte arrived and set about making his changes, he sent Gil out back to Spain for a loan move to Valencia. Here, he again was lacklustre, appearing in 17 games for the La Liga side, but again added 0 goals.

Perhaps he just hasn’t had a chance to settle in England, perhaps he needs a run of games to bed into the new system under Conte, or perhaps it’s a move that just won’t work. But widely regarded as one of the worst performers of the season when called upon, and costing Spurs over £20million and Erik Lamela in exchange, and this has to be regarded as a terrible signing for the player and club.

Notable mentions: Lukaku, Varane, Sancho

Worst Performance Of The Season – Manchester United (vs Liverpool)

We could have easily chosen Manchester United vs Liverpool in the home fixture, Manchester United vs Watford, Manchester United vs Brighton, Manchester United vs Everton, but it had to be the 5-0 drubbing away to Liverpool that is the worst performance of the entire season. Going up against your biggest rivals away from home, with them challenging for the title and you still in with a genuine shout for top 4, and having been battered 5-0 in the previous meeting, you’d assume a group of top quality professional footballers would be all-out for revenge. What happened couldn’t have been any less true.

Inside of 5 minutes, Liverpool had their 1st from Luis Diaz, and things got worst in the 22nd. Late into the second half, Liverpool added their 3rd and 4th of the evening, but from the very kick-off, the game was Liverpool’s. United put up no fight whatsoever, they looked disinterested, lacklustre and honestly ashamed to be out there. After the first goal for Liverpool, the players would have loved nothing more than the full-time whistle to go off and save their energy/effort for the post game Instagram/tweet filled with cliché and motivational quotes. With only 28% possession, 1 shot on target and not even a red card or something to demonstrate their frustration and anger, it was the epitome of an embarrassment for the Red Devils.

If there was to be any light in this dark, dark season, I suppose the yellow card for Mejbri deserved credit for him getting stuck in, and respect belonged to the Liverpool crowd who showed great humility and respect in their applause for Cristiano Ronaldo’s horrible loss prior to this game.

Worst Part Of The Season – NFTs/Shirt Signs/Pitch Invasions

Where to even begin with these, and to be fair, they aren’t specific moments that occurred just once, rather new trends that have emerged and are very much a negative to come out of this latest season.

We couldn’t just chose one, so here we go with a few of our biggest gripes;

Firstly, we have the rise of footballers getting involved with Crypto and NFTs. The millionaire footballers spreading advertisements on social media for hugely risky investments, despite them clearly being paid good money to do this. I’m not going to say I fully understand the world of NFTs and Cryptocurrency, however that just adds to our point, that the majority of people don’t understand it. Therefore, to see these hugely influential footballers all over social media trying to encourage everyday people to make these investments with little information/guidance is just outrageous. To the everyday person, this essentially is as risky as gambling, however for some reason these players jumped on the bandwagon and took their share of the pie and quite frankly need to be ashamed of themselves.

Secondly, and this one is our absolute least favourite trend to take over the sport, is children taking homemade cardboard signs asking for shirts/boots/shorts and anything else the players might be willing to hand over. I love the spontaneous joy that is sparked by a footballer talking to young fans and making their whole year in just a few seconds, however spending 90 minutes holding these signs in the hope that you’ll get a shirt is just crazy. Again I agree that footballers should interact with their fans as much as possible, and for them it’s nothing to give their shirts, but this isn’t late 90s WWE, so put the signs down, in fact don’t even bother taking them or making them in the first place. Take your children to the game, get them hooked on the whole experience and the game as a whole, and maybe just maybe you might meet these heroic figures at some point, but for your child who now has a new passion for football, that won’t matter so much.

Finally, and again this could perhaps be challenged, is the rise of pitch invasions. We made a comment earlier in the year that these are the adult equivalent of the children’s shirt signs. Fans are now jumping on the opportunity to get on the pitch for anything, and while I understand the passion and love of the game, it’s becoming theatrical to the point where fans are trying to outdo each other for the best ‘limbs’ performance for a goal and the most chaotic pitch invasion. This isn’t genuine and for the majority, they’re getting involved for social media clicks, to be one of the lads and just a bit of attention. It’s the YouTube fan reaction culture where suddenly a goal causes fans to have a full on breakdown, which just isn’t the case. No matter how much time and effort you put into supporting your side, there’s no genuine feeling in these over the top reactions. Save the pitch invasions and over the top celebrations for the matchwinners or trophy winning games, not a 2-2 draw at home to Stoke City please.

Notable mentions: Newcastle’s takeover, FA Cup semi-final schedules, players running down contracts.