So 2016 is almost over and it’s been one hell of a year.
From Leicester lifting the Premier League title to England being rubbish at a major tournament again to Portugal actually winning a major tournament for once, so much has happened over the last 12 months.
We saw Manchester United break the world record transfer fee for Paul Pogba, Zlatan Ibrahimovic finally arrive in the Premier League, Claudio Ranieri pulling off the impossible and West Ham making a complete mess of their move to a new stadium, with so much more in between.
So in the last Big Talking Point of the year, four of our writers have had their say on the winners and losers of 2016…
Alex Hams
Greatest Moment of 2016: From a Liverpool perspective, Dejan Lovren’s header vs. Dortmund is pretty hard to top. I remember watching it huddled around a phone screen when I should have been giving a friend’s party full attention, but the game was electrifying and that goal would, had Liverpool gone on to win the Europa League, surely now be talked about in the same breath as some of the club’s finest continental moments.
However, the overall moment for me is Wes Morgan being dragged around Jamie Vardy’s living room on his back with a smile almost too wide to be captured by a video camera when Leicester winning the Premier League became official.
Player of 2016: N’Golo Kante. Leicester topped the league at the end of last season and now Chelsea will top the same division at the halfway point this time. Enough said.
Biggest Shock of 2016: Leicester winning the Premier League is the biggest shock without a doubt. However, Iceland making it as far as they did at EURO 2016 was as special as it was surprising. For a nation with so few people to punch so far above their weight deserves great recognition.
Biggest Flop of 2016: England at EURO 2016. Aside from Daniel Sturridge’s late goal, was there anything to really get excited about?
Signing of 2016: Lamine Kone has been pretty poor this season, but after arriving in January 2016 he really was key for Sunderland as they stayed up once again. From the summer just gone, Sadio Mane and N’Golo Kante really stand out.
Overachievers of 2016 (excluding the obvious): RB Leipzig. Heading away from the Premier League, for a side like the Red Bull-backed team to gain promotion and be mixing it with Bayern Munich at the halfway stage of the season is impressive – regardless of their financial muscle. Southampton deserve a mention, too, with all the usual issues not keeping them from the upper end of mid-table.
Best game of 2016: My Liverpool bias comes through again with the 4-3 win over Dortmund at Anfield. The game had it all and really was one of the best watches of last season.
Manager of 2016: Claudio Ranieri is the obvious one to pick, but Jurgen Klopp has been great. Liverpool have been a brilliant team to watch through 2016 and it’s easy to forget just how big the job he faced at the club was when he took over. Two cup finals and being in the title race now is some achievement.
Most ridiculous moment of 2016: Alan Pardew’s FA Cup Final dance. The bloke is a clown and his jig and Wembley when his team equalised in the FA Cup Final was just horrendous.
Christy Malyan
Greatest Moment of 2016: Jamie Vardy’s wonder-volley against Liverpool. It was the moment I realised Leicester City would win the title, and one I’ll never forget.
Player of 2016: Cristiano Ronaldo. 55 goals scored, a fourth Ballon d’Or, a third Champions League title and a unlikely European Championship with Portugal.
Biggest shock of 2016: Hal Robson-Kanu’s goal. At no point throughout my many years of watching Robson-Kanu has he done anything to suggest he’s capable of such brilliance. Here’s a Championship journeyman, bamboozling three defenders with one Cruyff turn and firing Wales to the semi-finals of the European Championship.
Biggest Flop of 2016: Memphis Depay. Once hailed the Dutch Ronaldo, a relatively injury-free Depay made just four Premier League starts in 2016. An incredible fall from grace.
Signing of 2016: N’Golo Kante. He started 2016 dominating midfields for the Premier League’s champions in waiting and has finished it in the exact same way, this time with Chelsea. Whether you’re judging the Frenchman on the miserly fee Leicester paid or the £30million Chelsea spent to bring him to London, he’s still easily the best value-for-money signing of the year.
Overachievers of 2016: Leicester, Portugal, Wales – in that exact order.
Best game of 2016: Chelsea 2-2 Tottenham Hotspur. A game that covered beauty, violence and everything in between as last season’s fallen champions poetically passed the title to everybody’s favourite underdogs by beating bitter rivals Tottenham Hotspur in the most dramatic of comebacks, triggering a 1990s-esque on-pitch brawl.
Manager of 2016: Sam Allardyce. Kept Sunderland up, took the England job, left England with a 100% win record, helped expose corruption in modern football and took a cushy job at Palace. Nicely done.
Most ridiculous moment of 2016: A tie between Michael Oliver’s tramlines and Enner Valencia’s attempts to evade arrest in his native Ecuador by feigning injury and hoping an ambulance would outpace a whole troop of policemen.
Chris McMullan
Greatest Moment of 2016: It was a scene warm enough to make your little heart melt. Tottenham players lost their cool so hideously that they turned their game at Stamford Bridge into an edition of Gladiators more akin to Ancient Rome than 90s Britain, and miles away a squad of young men gathered to cheer, party, and drink WKD at the home of a footballer who once racially abused a man of East Asian origin in a casino, and had to play for six months with an electronic tag around his ankle.
Ah, back when 2016 was still so young and innocent….
Player of 2016: N’Golo Kante – Leicester were the champions of 2016 until the summer break, and afterwards, Chelsea took the crown. There is only one constant.
Biggest Shock of 2016: That one’s easy: the champions of England are Leicester City. Though if you told me that Iceland would beat England at Euro 2016, and that Swansea would have four managers by the end of the next January I’d have thought you were crazy.
Biggest Flop of 2016: It could well have been Leicester again, for the way they started the season, but for sheer longevity of floppiness, it surely has to be Alan Pardew at Crystal Palace: averaging less than a point per game under Pardew in 2016, the Eagles are lucky they started last season so strongly and – in many ways – they’re probably also lucky that Sam Allardyce was available to make 2017 look promising in south London.
Signing of 2016: N’Golo Kante played a crucial part in bringing the Premier League title to Leicester. Then, once he signed for Chelsea, his new team find them six points clear at the top. It may be a happy coincidence that both the fall of his old club and the rise of his new have been so pronounced, but he’s certainly played some part in that.
Overachievers of 2016 (excluding the obvious): One of the problems with picking the overachievers for a calendar year as opposed to a season is you have to take into account the end of last season as well as the start of this one. So, for example, Chelsea’s six point lead at the top of the Premier League table may have been fairly unexpected, but their burst of form over the last few weeks hasn’t been totally outside of their form for the rest of 2016 – they went unbeaten from the start of the year until 9th April, and were beaten only three times in the league from January until the end of the season, and only twice from August until now.
Chelsea aren’t really overachieving, but Bournemouth are – the Cherries had a nightmare start to life in the Premier League, or at least once they’d settled into top flight football, losing numerous key players to long-term injuries. In 2016, they turned it around, stayed in the league and are now establishing themselves as a mid-table Premier League side. Surely that’s obscene overachievement for a club that is in only its fourth season above the third tier in its entire history.
Best game of 2016: If we’re talking just the Premier League, probably either Arsenal v Liverpool in the opening game of the season – for sheer mania and theatre – or Tottenham v Man City – for an actual footballing masterclass. But if we’re talking about the best game overall, in all competitions – Borussia Dortmund 8-4 Legia Warsaw takes some beating….
Manager of 2016: Claudio Ranieri – as mentioned earlier, it’s hard to pick for a calendar year, especially given Leicester’s league collapse this season. But Ranieri’s achievement in steering Leicester to the title – it’s one thing getting them into position before Christmas, and a whole other thing to get them to see it through – is so great that he has to be in the running. What tips him over the edge is the fact that Leicester’s target this season surely isn’t the Premier League but the Champions League: where the Foxes are performing like their old selves.
Most ridiculous moment of 2016: The Twitter revenge of Samir Nasri’s wronged girlfriend was, by all accounts, more entertaining than any actual football played this year.
Josh Challies
Greatest Moment of 2016: Despite being English, seeing Wales and Iceland perform superbly at Euro 2016 was a highlight and showed that international football doesn’t need to be as boring as it seems to be at times.
Player of 2016: Antoine Griezmann, he was really unlucky to end last season empty handed.
Biggest Shock of 2016: Eder’s winning goal at Euro 2016. I think everyone fancied France to win and no-one would have Eder down as a match-winner.
Biggest Flop of 2016: Crystal Palace. The FA Cup final was an excellent achievement but they’ve been woeful all year.
Signing of 2016: N’Golo Kante. He was the key to Leicester’s success last season and is doing the same for Chelsea.
Overachievers of 2016 (excluding the obvious): Liverpool. To be title contenders and reach two finals last season with the squad they have is remarkable.
Best game of 2016: Wales 3-1 Belgium, a superb performance from Chris Coleman’s side.
Manager of 2016: Claudio Ranieri, who else? Sure, Leicester have been poor in the league this season but he’s led them valiantly in the Champions League.
Most ridiculous moment of 2016: It was only recent but the dive from Harry the Hornet in front of Wilfried Zaha was brilliant- especially after the winger’s reaction.
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