FORECAST 38

All times are Mountain Standard Time

LAST WEEK’S SUMMARY

SUMMARY

Well, that’s it for the season. Arsenal wins the league and Wolverhampton, Burnley and West Ham go down. Ipswich return to the Premier League after one year and are joined by Coventry and Hull.

Now for the Timo Werner Award:  But first a quick reminder of who Timo Werner was/is. Once upon a time there was a young German footballer named Timo Werner. He showed lots of promise and was eventually signed by Chelsea where, for a while, he continued to impress and was even included in his national team. Then the gloss began to wear off. He began to have less and less impact on the games he appeared in. Chelsea finally got rid of him and he went back to play for RB Leipzig, from whence he came. Chelsea sent him back to Germany after two years for half of what they paid for him. In four years he could only score 11 goals and Leipzig realized that they couldn’t use him. He then went to Tottenham on loan. In 31 games (I don’t think this number takes into account how many times he came on as a sub). He scored all of two goals. If that wasn’t bad enough, it was the misses that buried him. Time and time again he would screw up sitting ducks in front of empty goals. There are videos of his antics at this point in his career, and they would be hilarious if they weren’t so tragic. Tottenham had many injury problems at this time I can only suppose that that was why he had as much playing time as he did. Whenever he took the field it was watching a train wreck running into a dumpster fire. Needless to say, Spurs didn’t pick up on his loan option and offloaded him back to Leipzig who dumped him like a bad habit to the San Jose Earthquakes.

 That is why we award the Timo Werner Award to the most useless player in the Premier League 2025/2026.

 There were two main candidates for the honor of the biggest waste of time for a player in the Premier League.

Milo Kerkez and Alehandro Garnacho, but there was a third candidate that made a strong run at the end of the season and taking the entire season into account, he made a pretty good argument for the award.

First off: Alehandro Garnacho: Chelsea bought this Spanish winger for approx $48 million at the beginning of the season from Manchester United. The fans at United had come to realize that he was all but useless and getting the price that they did for him was a major stroke of luck. Since he has been at Chelsea he has managed one league goal, not what you would call a great return for your investment. His style of play is somewhat similar to Werner’s efforts when he was at Tottenham. Run up and down the wing, get the occasional cross in but more often than not lose the ball before he can accomplish anything of note.

His market value is supposed to be around $40 million, good luck finding anyone soft enough to pay that much for this complete waste of space.

Second: Milos Kerkez: Liverpool bought him from Bournemouth where he had a certain amount of success. Born in Serbia, he has managed to play for the Hungarian National team. Maybe the system at Liverpool took some getting used too but he has been somewhat of an embarrassment. He is supposed to play in the full back spot, but you can often find him out of position running up and down the wings and not really achieving anything. Earlier on in the season his favorite move seemed to be the backwards pass to his goalkeeper and because of this his team-mates were very reluctant to pass him the ball. For some unknown reason he does find himself in goalscoring positions, but very rarely produces anything worthwhile. He has scored twice this year but the first one he was just at the wrong place at the right time and the ball bounced off him into the net. Three other notes. He’s not much of a defender; he gets beaten way too often. When he does lose the ball, more often than not, lots of time he lays on the pitch, throwing a tantrum, waving his arms like a kid that has just had his favorite toy taken from him. The third thing is his height; it is posted at 5’11”. If he is 5’ 11” then I’m the Queen of the Faries. If you see him standing next to all the other Liverpool players, they all must be 8ft tall. Over the months he has improved somewhat, therefore he doesn’t win the Trophy, but it was close.

And The winner: Brennan Johnson: Spurs unloaded him halfway through the season to Crystal Palace. Tottenham weren’t doing so great at that point so it would make sense for them to keep anyone who could be relied on to get them out of a jam. Johnson wasn’t that player. Palace thought he may be the answer to their lack of goals but I’m thinking that they had never seen him play. He may have been Spurs top scorer the previous year but that was a year when they finished 17^th in the table, one place above relegation. They managed to get approx. $45 Million for him and considering his performance so far that’s about $46 million too much. He has contributed absolutely nothing in his spell at Palace. In 18 appearances he has never scored, and that’s not a good stat considering he is supposed to be a striker. Also true to his form at Tottenham he doesn’t create anything when he does get the ball. At this point I don’t think you could give him away. As he didn’t join Palace until halfway through the season, he had to finish fast to overcome Kerkez and Garnacho but that was one accomplishment he did manage to pull off.

The Winner of The Timo Werner Award for the most useless player in the Premier League 25/26 goes to: BRENNAN JOHNSON, Crystal Palace.