As part of a new series here on 90minutes, we’ll be looking at all of this season’s promoted teams.
It begins with Leicester City, who were promoted from League One as champions after finally finding some measure of managerial stability.
So Gareth Barry finally moved from the club 'who's result I'll always look for first'. The fact that he has ended up moving to Manchester City for £12million raises inevitable questions about his motivation. If rumours were to be believed and logic dictated, it seemed likely that Aston Villa were going to have to cut their losses on a player who only had a year remaining on his contract. The most obvious target was of course Barry's long-term suitors of last summer, Liverpool.
Barry had explained last summer that a move to Liverpool was motivated by the ambition to play in the Champions League and to rise to the challenge of the next competitive level. This is a fair argument and one that could be grudgingly accepted in the PR stakes. When the transfer became increasingly strained Barry survived making disparaging remarks about the club and Martin O'Neill, and in the end he won back the majority of fans with his performances- even if the trust was no longer there.
The end of the season is here, Porto won the Cup of Portugal on Sunday and their manager Jesualdo Ferreira announced he’d be staying on for another two years.
More interesting than that however is the possibility of Sven Goran Eriksson turning up at Sporting.
That is what Sporting presidential candidate Paulo Pereira Cristovao is basing his campaign on, and it is likely to gain him some support considering Sven’s record when he was at Benfica.
Amidst all the lauding of Guus Hiddink and his achievements during four months at Stamford Bridge, let us not forget an altogether more morbid figure. Avram Grant achieved perhaps greater things during his own short tenure as Chelsea manager, but plaudits for the underwhelming Israeli have never been forthcoming.
There is no denying that Hiddink instilled renewed zeal into a Chelsea squad that had begun to flounder under Luis Filipe Scolari. The Dutchman has cemented a Champions League place for the Blues, taken them to within a whisker of a Champions League final and led them to their first silverware since the departure of Jose Mourinho.
Many millions of grown men, and some women, will have been lamenting the end of their respective football seasons in the last couple of weeks and I myself am no different. Surely after watching dozens and dozens of games, be it at the ground or on the TV, we should be taking stock and looking forward to a break?!
Unfortunately it just doesn't really work that way, instead I have already found that I'm looking for what football there will still be to savour over the summer break. So far it's not looking that bad at all, there are of course the upcoming World Cup qualifying matches for England and the other home nations, as well as everyone else in the next couple of weeks. These days we should at least be looking forward to England matches again with some optimism.