Archive for November, 2010

What We Learned From Prem Week 13


When You Are Tired Of Football, You Are Tired Of Life

True, I may not be completely tired, but I am somewhat exhausted. Three full weeks of Prem in 9 days has taken it out of me and, it would seem, the teams and players. How else can you explain the events of Week 13? How else can you explain that no one, not one team, managed to score 3 wins? The best attempt being  from mid-table mediocrities Bolton and Sunderland, who both took a commendable 7 points. And, yes, I know that the best teams should be used to playing weekends and midweeks, but there was something about having a full set of Prem matches midweek that seems to have piled on the pressure. And not in a good way.

The result? A plethora of nil-nils of various shapes and sizes and more draws than we’ve seen since the middle of October. Sure there were some upsets, but they too seem to be the result of overload as much as ambition on the part of the victors (and make no mistake there was ambition in places). But now we’ve got an international week and everyone can take a break as top stars pull out of ‘meaningless friendlies’ with an assortment of strategic niggles, knocks and pulls. Naturally, all will be fit again come next Saturday.

Evolution Or Revolution?

That said, it has been interesting seeing how teams have been developing over the course of the season so far. And this season that development has  seemed more apparent than ever. Just as teams grow into World Cups and European Championships, so teams in the Prem have to adapt and grow as the season progresses to take advantage of the strengths and weaknesses of both themselves and others. Take how Wolves have evolved from dour hack and kick merchants to vaguely pacey wingplayers as Hunt and Jarvis come into fitness and form. Or how Sunderland have adapted their play to the talents of Asamoah Gyan as Darren Bent has been injured. And if the story of this week is about anything its about the effects of these little revolutionary adaptations. Certainly those teams that are seizing the day are being rewarded.

Gimmie Games

Possibly the best example of both the exhausting effects of the last 9 days and the evolution of teams was the Chelski Sunderland tie. Chelski, fresh off an away slapping from the Liverpool Redsox and a home win against Fulham, looked like a spent force, the heart might have been willing but there was nothing left in the tank. And in some cases there was little evidence that the heart was there either. With Essien out of their midfield there appears to be little backbone there, Ramieres being somewhat spindly while Obi Mikel still appears more lumbering than lethal. Add to that a makeshift central defence and you’ve got a recipe for trouble. Still with The Drog, Anelka, Malouda, Cole, Bosingwa and Cech in the side they should still be formidable. And yet they were thoroughly bossed by a Sunderland team who’d been utterly destroyed by Newcastle earlier in the month. Playing two up front and harrying Chelski mercilessly, Sunderland showed that Chelski, like Arsenal, don’t appear to enjoy it when sides take the game to them, pressing them all over the pitch, denying them time and space in their own half. And with Onuoha’s outstanding ‘dribble through the defence’ goal we saw the first signs of a defensive collapse at Chelski.

Some have suggested that Chelski’s problems stem from their summer ship out of ailing and aging former greats, citing the presence of youngsters like McEachran, Kakuta and Van arnolt on the bench as evidence of their less capable extended team, but I disagree. Sure they’ve lost Bollocks, Deco, Joke Cole, and Carvalho, but it’s only the latter who seems to be genuinely missed, being the outstanding defensive mainstay alongside Titface for a number of seasons. The rest aren’t pulling up trees in their new clubs and seem to be spending more time on the treatment table than the pitch to be honest.

The real kudos has to go to Steve Bruce for tactically outsmarting Chelski with his attacking two up front line up and to Gyan, Onuoha and Wellbeck for taking their goals so well. Make no mistake Sunderland have got over the psychological damage of that Newcastle result and have inflicted considerable psychic pain on Chelski too.  Chelski’s next match, away to Boremingham looks like it could be pretty tasty.

The only sad thing for Sunderland was that Onuoha’s goal won’t be Goal of the Season as, astonishingly, it wasn’t even Goal of the Week. That was Bolton‘s second against Wolves. Now previously we may have given the impression that Elmander was a useless waste of space who couldn’t score if he was given an open goal, but here he gave an impression of Messi-like omnipotence as he danced his way through an apparently impenetrable box of four Wolves defenders, none of whom was more than a yard away from him, with some dazzling footwork before sliding the ball into the corner of the net. And with an Arsenal-like defence splitting threesome pass-pass-shoot move from Davies, Lee and Holden for their third, Bolton look like a team transformed. Another case of genuine evolution over the course of the season so far. Wolves, too, look far superior to the  side that was being savaged (and doing the savaging) earlier this season. Admittedly, it doesn’t seem to have done them any good as they still have the worst form in the league and are really down among the dead men, but they have just played all the big teams in the last month. With this form, all they need is someone to slot the ball into the net with something approaching regularity and they should be OK.

If Elmander’s goal was a treat, Stoke‘s first against Liverpool Redsox was a return to the primary school playground. A horrorshow, from Liverpool’s point of view, saw the ball ricochet around the penalty area as pretty much the whole Redsox team went awol, chasing the ball around the box like demented, unsophisticated eight year-olds as first one then another Stoke striker tried to gamely force it into the net. Eventually Pocket Drog Ricardo Fuller toe poked it in to pile on the misery for unambitious Uncle Wroy and his boys, leaving them just 3 points above the dropzone. How this drab, ineffective team beat Chelski is a real mystery.

No mystery to how Arsenal managed to beat Everton. As Phil Neville said, “we just couldn’t boss them”. This time Arsenal won, if not dirty, then certainly muddied and unbowed as they pressed Everton around the pitch and didn’t allow the home side to pressurise them. In the midst of this they took advantage of Everton’s defensive lapses. Their second goal, while not as classically Arsenal as Bolton’s third, was a masterpiece of close footplay, taking out the entire Everton defence in three lethal passes. Possibly the most interesting element of the whole match was the way Arsenal players kept going “Come On!” to their teammates, an indication that, to them, this match really mattered.

Tottingham seem to have got over their post-European blues (about bloody time) as they gave Fat Sam’s Real Blackburn a right good thumping. As they say Real were lucky to only concede four as Spurs missed a hatful of chances and a penalty and gave them two gimmie goals at the end to make Real feel less thoroughly spanked. The notion that Fat Sam might either, manage Engerland, or, successfully manage in Europe, seems like the height of folly and delusion. Oh wait, it was the height of folly and delusion.

Villa‘s own evolutionary project seems to be coming on apace, aided by injuries to useless lumpen forwards Donkey and Carew. Certainly Agbonlahor’s return and his link up play with Ashley Young seems to have sparked the pair into life. And aided by a cohort of new, young players, they gave Man U a seriously painful time before rather predictably giving away a two goal lead in the last ten minutes. When even your manager says, “When I saw them score the first, I knew they’d score a second”, it’s not a ringing endorsement of progress to date.

In the only other three point thriller (oh alright three point slumber), Wigan just about did enough to beat a West Brom team that doesn’t seem to know where it’s going. One week they’re great, beating Arsenal away and moving to 5th in the table, the next they’re playing poorly and losing to an ineffective also-ran side.  On this evidence, both teams look set to struggle.

No goals in the remaining three matches, but what a contrast in style, ambition and verve. West Ham‘s match against Blackpool was a masterpiece of ambition, character and enthusiasm over skill and effectiveness, with apparently 45 shots only 4 of which were judged to be on target.  Truly this was primo knockabout stuff, with Blackpool, as always, going for it and West Ham desperate for some kind of point-related lifeline. However, neither had the skill to really make an impact, and when they did, eventually, have shots on target, their respective keepers were more than up to the challenge.

In total contrast, Man City‘s dour draw with Boremingham was as tedious as the most dreary Italian catenaccio ever. You have to worry that, in a week when Steve Bruce dared to take the game to Chelski away from home and came away with three points, the height of Dullberto Mancini’s ambition seems to have been to take a point at home from Boremingham, who are themselves the very definition of unambitious. Admittedly, this is a man who threw away a top four finish last year when he lost at home to fellow challengers Tottingham in May by playing far, far too defensively. And having spent something in the region of a grazillion pounds revamping that team, he still finds that he has no significant attacking options beyond Carlos Tevez. Just think City could have been playing Inter Milan in the Big Cup this season if only Mancini had some bollocks.

Finally, Fulham‘s nil-niller at Newcastle was a case of both teams running out of steam at the end of this gruelling three match/nine day period. While exhibiting more skill and control than either West Ham or Blackpool, neither team could manufacture that killer blow. Once again, Fulham’s goose-shit green strip failed to do anything more than make them look anonymous and lost all over the pitch. Newcastle, meanwhile, missed the skill of the suspended Joey Barton, which is really damning them with faint praise.

Rob Green Save Of The Day

With exhaustion dogging the heels of every keeper, there wasn’t really any one standout goalline fuckup. Sure, both Wolves’ contribution to Bolton’s first, a spectacularly headed own goal, and Real Blackburn’s contribution to Tottingham’s third, were taken into consideration, but both appeared to be more the result of fine pressing from the attacking team than actual keeping catastrophes. No, the real winner has to be the entire Liverpool Redsox team for their comic efforts to stop Stoke’s first goal. As pretty much the whole team rushes about the box like extras in the under attack Star Trek command centre, now to the left, now to the right, Reina is left as little more than a spectator, feeling, as you would, that with about 9 of his own players slap bang in front of him the ball can’t possibly get through. By the time he sees it it’s in the back of the net.


Archive for November, 2010

What We Learned From Prem Week 12


If A Week’s A Long Time In Politics…

Then it’s an absolute age in Football. This week sees the Prem attempt to compress 3 weeks worth of fixtures into 9 days, with all the intensity of a small child stuffing too many sweets into its overstretched maw. Truly the Prem’s eyes are bigger than its stomach, but what the hell, next week’s an International week and we will be having no Prem, so best to stuff up on it now in the hope that we will be able to sustain ourselves over the barren wilderness of Euro 2012 qualifiers and friendlies.

The Prem Is Like A Rapidly Balding Old Geezer

The Prem after week 12. Hmmmm. Look at all that flabby white underbelly.

Formed in 1992, the Prem has entered its grizzly adolescence, but seems to be showing dangerous signs of advancing rapidly to some kind of toxic middle age. Most noticeably there seems to be something of a thinning on the top and a distinct bulge around the middle. This is due to an increase in what the new American owners of Liverpool have termed ‘Stodgeball’, overweight, flabby football that owes little to innovation, tactics or skill but is rather the side effect of clubs remaining in the Prem bereft of any ambition other than to avoid relegation. Stodgeball gives us untidy unwatchable matches between journeyman teams like Sunderland, Bolton and, it must be said, the New Liverpool, packed with little action and few moments of real joy. And like some self-conscious old duffer, the Prem is trying hard to conceal its rapidly growing paunch of mediocrity, in their case behind a wardrobe of extra large Super Sunday / Wonderful Wednesday branded sports attire. But as they say, the table never lies.

Just below that deadly layer of flab is what doctors call the ‘silent killer’, a layer of teams either struggling to come to terms with the division, say Blackpool, or barely adequate to hover above the relegation zone, boredraw specialists, ineffective in attack and relatively incompetent in defence. Content only that there are three teams marginally less able than themselves.

It’s Boredraws Ahoy!

For the first time this season it appeared that the entire Prem had locked itself into some kind of psychic constipation, unable to move beyond a torrid stalemate of attritional midfield tedium. And while a few games did manage to provide results – curiously enough many were resolved only in the last 10 minutes – there seems to have been an overabundance of draws this week. And as both Mans United and City are finding, draws aren’t going to be enough, you need to have the balls to try to win matches if you want to win anything. Just look at Tottingham, who have the perfect record, played 12, won 4, drawn 4, lost 4 and have significantly more points than if they had simply drawn all their matches. Man U are undefeated, but have only one more point than Arsenal, who have already lost three times, due to all those tedious draws they were snatching (or conceding) earlier in the season. Meanwhile, Boremingham, who with 12 points would actually be better off if they had drawn all their games (as their goal difference would be 0 rather than -3), sit just above the relegation zone.

Man U might consider a draw from a visit to Middle Eastlands and Man City a decent result, seeing as they were stuffed there a few years back, but that was before City went all nouveau riche on us and hit that embarrassing adolescence all developing teams hit when they feel that actually winning is somehow awkward and clumsy. Certainly if City are going to hold on to that fourth Big Cup place, they’re going to actually have to go out an try and win matches rather than being content with not losing them. Man U have to hope that both Chav Wanker and Valencia come back to something approaching fitness soon if they want to challenge for the top.

Arsenal continue to show all the signs of emergent schizophrenia. Following his shite performance against the big man of Newcastle, FlappyHanski showed that there is a great goalie in there by denying a forceful Wolves for the whole 94 minutes. And while he’s still not commanding his area in the way that the best keepers do, there was a vague sense of competence at the back of the Arsenal defence. Meanwhile, their attack is still operating on the principle that a return of one goal in 8 gilt-edged chances is somehow an acceptable return.

Chelski pushed on with a wholly average win over Fulham. Their paint by numbers win was marred only by Essien’s two footed leap at Clint Dempsey, who had previously elbowed Bosingwa in the head, and the continued presence of the useless Kalou, who must rival Arsenal’s Bentner for most irritating 4th choice striker. Surely Chelski have better players in their locker somewhere.

Tottingham continue to drag themselves further from next year’s Big Cup by managing to utterly dominate Sunderland before gifting them a goal and a point. It’s clear that even with a goal a game at home, Van der Vaart can’t camouflage Spurs’ defensive ineptitude. With Bale and the rest looking thoroughly contained by a barely adequate Sunderland team, that win against Inter is starting to look more and more like a millstone around Tottingham’s neck than a starting point for better things.

Stoke finally won. Although they only just managed to beat a tepid Boremingham, who are going to have to learn not to give away leads to their opponents before getting their act together (or not in the case of this match).

West Ham went 2 – 1 up against West Brom, before, yet again, realising that they are crap and conceding a goal. They seem to have a problem with the last 30 minutes of matches, conceding goals and games repeatedly. Although in their defence it must be said they also have a problem with much of the first 60 minutes of matches. They’re interesting because, like Wolves, you feel that there are 3 sides who are playing consistently worse football but with better results (I name you Blackburn, Wigan and Sunderland).

Speaking of Wigan, they managed to put the kybosh into the Liverpool Redsox story. You have to say that without Gerrard, Torres and Riena, Liverpool would be down and out among the dead men. They have a pisspoor back four, have hemorrhaged midfield creativity in the last two years (goodbye to Alonso and Mascherano, hello to Joke Cole, Poulson and Moreles) and have no one capable of deputising for Torres. They were lucky to scrape a draw here. In a continuation of the attendance malaise raised in Prem Week 11 Wigan’s stadium was barely two thirds full with 3,691 people fewer watching this match than the Championship match between  Leicester and Sheffield United.

Newcastle continued their fine record at home by losing to Real Blackburn. Their tactic of pumping it to the big man outdone by the fact that Fat Sam has more than enough big men of his own to mark and harry Carroll. Although obviously they didn’t bother to do anything sensible like mark or harry him for his goal. Newcastle did help them by having what can only be described as ‘a right pair of defensive fuckups’, which gifted Real their goals.

Everton continue to be their own worst enemy. They should have comfortably put Bolton to bed, but let them get ahead easily and then almost shot themselves in the foot by going down to 10 men, Fellani kicking out at Robinson after the latter had caught him in a nasty scissor tackle. Luckily for them they were able to claw a point back at the death.

Villa have to go down as the luckiest team this week. Despite being outplayed and outstyled for long periods by Blackpool, they managed to scrap a win from the jaws of drawdom with a last ditch set piece play. Blackpool continue to surprise, giving the impression that they are a team that not only enjoys their football, but is prepared to gamble on stylish backheels and through balls. They have a daring and ambition that Man City palpably lack. You wonder just what they would be like if Ian Holloway was in charge at Middle Eastlands. Maybe they’d have lost, maybe they’d have been stuffed, but maybe, just maybe, they’d have beaten the crap out of Man U.


Archive for November, 2010

What We Learned From Prem Week 11


Bad Weekend For The Capital

It’s almost become an annual fixture, it’s November, the clocks go back and the young shoots of promise that emerged so gloriously at Arsenal during the Carling Cup in October retreat back into their delicate wafer-thin shells for another year. Man U’s mid-range stars begin to establish themselves as serious contenders. And the top few continue to pull away from the also-rans.

Two things were clear this weekend. First the Mourinho Discipline is alive and well, proving unusually effective against two of the more talented sides. Both Liverpool and Newcastle pressed hard and denied their more skillful opponents the opportunity to play their game in midfield before retreating into a tight, impregnable defensive shells and winning the game on the break or with a well planned and executed free kick (from near the halfway line!).

Second, there is a very clear, massive gulf in interest between matches featuring the big teams (Man U, Arsenal, Chelski and Liverpool) and the rest. No fewer than six (out of ten) of the matches saw attendances of less than 27,000, with only one of them – Blackpool’s 16,094 – being close to capacity.  With over half the live audience watching only three matches (at Man U, Arsenal and Liverpool) and with only two of the remaining matches being even vaguely interesting, it’s clear that something is very wrong in the state of the Prem.

Hey Ho, It’s The Games

Half his hair is going white, the other half is staying resolutely dark. Chris Houghton demonstrates surprising dedication to the Toon

In probably the most predictable outcome of the weekend, a defensively inept team was outdone by close pressing and the dynamic work of a busy centre forward. But enough about Chelski‘s loss to Liverpool, this time we’re talking about Arsenal‘s lacklustre display at home to Newcastle. Having succumbed to The Drog’s bullying against Chelski, they promptly went into defensive incompetency against the free-running Andy Carroll, who is starting to look more and more like an intelligent and dangerous no 9. A truly appalling performance from a team at home who beat Newcastle 4 – 0 in the Little Cup only 11 days ago. From Arsenal’s point of view you can’t say this wasn’t coming as their previous matches against Birmingham and West Ham were hardly impressive displays, but when even Joey Barton can tactically outwit you it’s time to address the by now very familiar issues. Arsenal won’t win anything if their work off the ball is as sloppy as it was this week, if their defence is as useless as this and if their attack is as flimsy and ineffectual. Koscielny is going to have to shape up if he wants to continue at this level, having picked up his second red card of the season – this time a ‘take one for the team’ wrestle on Ranger, who had outpositioned him and would have been bearing down on goal. While the need for a genuinely world class keeper is more apparent than ever. Newcastle, meanwhile, are on a roll and aren’t going to get relegated this season. By the way, the best thing about Newcastle is the way that manager Chris Houghton’s hair is going grey in supercool Newcastle stripes.

Chelski on the other hand looked like a team who’ve lost the plot, or at least misplaced it on the road oop north. Unless there’s a really good reason, or you’re some kind of moron, you don’t leave The Drog on the bench for a key, statement match like this. Either he’s unable to play or you start him. And while Liverpool have been pretty tragic for most of the season, this week their two totemic players stepped up to the mark, Gerrard singlehandedly stuffing Napoli in midweek, while Torres emerged from his year-long hibernation to brutalise Chelski in much the same style that The Drog usually does to other, lesser sides. Two outstanding goals settled the game and Chelski looked completely bereft and unable to respond.  It used to be Arsenal who didn’t like to travel north, but now Chelski have lost two games away to Big Four challengers already this season and don’t look nearly as impregnable as they did a fortnight ago.

Man U‘s juggernaut just keeps on trucking, only this time it’s more like one of those trucks from Belgium that runs on potato fuel and trundles along the motorway at 45 spewing out pollution and holding up all the other traffic. Still it was enough to just about see off Wolves, who once again played a good game but were just too toothless up front to really do any damage. Man U have to prepare for the Manchester Derby on Wednesday, which looks like hard work for them while Wolves have got Arsenal at home on Wednesday, which should be a very interesting affair.


Man City’s close pressing game in midfield denied West Brom space and relied on patience to create the chances for Balotelli to score. It’s interesting to see how many of their balls into or around the box were unsuccessful.

by Guardian Chalkboards

West Brom, who’ve blown hot and cold so far this season, couldn’t hold out a dominating Man City. As the chalkboard above shows City dominated the midfield with their gargantuan players limiting West Brom to no shots at all, while Mario Balotelli put away two chances in the first half hour. He reminds me of an early stage Mike Tyson, he’s huge and relatively ungainly, but when he comes at you you just can’t stop him. And in much the same way that Tyson used to cruise through the first minute of a round before advancing like a tank on his opponent and obliterating him, so Balotelli waits a bit, then crushes your defence, and it’s game over. Sadly he seems to have inherited the same mental dis-equilibrium as Tyson and followed up his two goals with the sort of whining, petulant display that saw him sent off and will see him roundly loathed throughout English football (two dives in the box, some verbal abuse and a deliberate stamping).  More significantly for Man City, it means he will miss the Man U match on Wednesday, and that’s a big miss. If I were Mancini, I’d be having some serious chats with him and laying down the law.

Among the dreary matches which almost no one could be bothered to attend, let alone view on Match of the Day, Real Blackburn just about did for the unreliable Wigan, with Jason Roberts getting the goal that he should have scored against Chelski last week but was too afraid to. Blackpool led Everton twice before being immediately held back. Everton are going to have to learn that it’s worthwhile scoring goals before the other side if they want to progress up the table. West Ham led Boremingham by two goals before remembering that they’re supposed to be crap and letting two in. Fulham just about managed to hold a young, ineffective Aston Villa side with a late equaliser. And Sunderland sneaked it against Stoke thanks to two goals from Asamoah Gyan and the most blatant on the goalline handball since Dirty Suarez did his thing (this time against Gyan) in the World Cup courtesy of Cheating Crappermole. Stoke brought the game down with their own Crappermole clone Ryan Shawcross being sent off for another two incompetant challenges.

The only other interesting game saw Tottingham once more come to appreciate the psychological downside of the Big Cup. One day you’re at home giving a right good stuffing to the Kings of Europe, with stars in your eyes and that awful Champions League dirge ruining your ears, the next it’s a smelly coach trip to Bolton for a bloody scrap over three points in the Prem. And if you’re Gareth Bale, who ran yourself ragged in midweek to the applause of the good and the great of European soccer, it’s easy to appear in person, if not in footballing spirit, and be atrociously mediocre on the Saturday. The real danger for Spurs is that they won’t make it into the Big Cup next season on performances like this. And then it’s bye-bye Big Cup, hello more games like this.

Rob Green Save Of The Day

No challengers for this one, it’s a clear winner this week. Arsenal keeper FlappyHanski lived up to his made up name when he first came for, then paused, then attemtpted to go back and then jumped at Joey Barton’s long free kick into the area. It’s hard to believe that he is only 1cm shorter than Carroll and can use his hands when Carroll is so clearly almost a metre above him and heading the ball into his net. That’s three points that are going to hurt you Lukasz. But not as much as the headache you’ve just given Arsène Wenger.


Archive for November, 2010

What We Learned From Prem Week 10


Mind The Gap

Two themes manifest themselves this week. The first is ‘Class will out’, best illustrated by the late, relatively scrappy wins for Chelski and Arsenal and losses for Top Four challengers Tottingham and Man City. The second is that black is white, up is down, and right is wrong as manifested by both Man U’s morally indefensible second goal and Wolves’ win over Man City.

Prem week 10

Grinding out wins when you’re playing poorly is often cited as the hallmark of Championship (or Premiership) winning sides. Both Arsenal and Chelski pulled the points out of the hat by effective, attritional matches, thereby opening up a gap (along with Man U) over the rest of the Prem. It’s particularly interesting to look at the goal difference column in the table – only the top three have differences in double figures, while only three teams outside the top 5 even have positive goal differences – Newcastle’s boosted by their excellent thumping of Sunderland.

The tightness of the bottom twelve is illustrated by Liverpool’s leap to 12th – just two wins effectively pulling the reds out of trouble, and Everton’s elevation to 8th. Both were languishing in the bottom 4 only two weeks ago. Wolves have managed to pull themselves back into the mix thanks to their win, leaving West Ham in even more trouble. As far as relegation goes I’d happily take Blackburn, Wolves and West Ham to go down. Certainly anything that takes Fat Sam out of the picture can only be described as a good result.

However, the overwhelming impression from this week was that there weren’t any really standout matches, only Newcastle’s win showed any of the frenetic end-to-end kick and rush gameplay we’ve come to expect this season. All of which simply reinforces the view that the standard of play in the Prem has deteriorated significantly, especially compared to the best of the Champions League – certainly I haven’t seen a Prem match this season that compares with either Tottingham’s defeat to Inter or either of Arsenal’s home matches against Braga and Shakhtar Donetsk. You can argue that this just means that the Prem defences are harder to break down, but it’s sometimes hard to be bothered to watch.

What About The Games?

Chelski are looking more and more like total contenders. They can play stylish or they can play hardcore as they did against Real Blackburn. You just get a sense of solid capability running throughout the side, great defence, formidable midfield and, with The Drog and Anelka, a forward line that doesn’t seem to give in. And while Real were far, far better than they were against Liverpool, they didn’t have the cutting edge to really trouble Chelski. The first Chelski goal especially illustrated their versatility, a long punt from Cech, beautifully controlled by Maluda around the halfway line, was crossed for The Drog to head down to the onrushing Anelka to sidefoot in. Sweet, immediate and ruthless.

A ruthlessness Arsenal could well do with more of, their on-goal profligacy being something of legend. 13 shots on target for just one goal in return seems like an anaemic performance, but it doesn’t really tell the whole story. In this case it wasn’t so much Arsenal’s frivolity in front of goal, they have, after all scored 12 in their last 3 games, as the great performance from West Ham‘s Rob Green (who’d have thought eh?). But the pressure on West Ham’s goal, along with West Ham’s lack of firepower told in the end as Song headed in. The Hammers are looking increasingly like this year’s ‘too good to go down’ side, which would be a shame as there are plenty of teams who play less attractive fooball.

Man U might be having Chav Wanker related problems but they really don’t need too much help from refs. Tottingham gave them a bit of a game, but sadly didn’t ever look like menacing United, even before ref Clattenburg decided to let them have a patently unfair if vaguely legal goal (see below) . It was a bit demoralising to see a Spurs side, which on the face of it looked capable of challenging Man U, being overrun so comprehensively, none of their key players, Modric, Bale, Keane, or Crouch making any kind of impact whatsoever. Doubly demoralising to see Van De Vaart, Spurs’ outstanding player this season, being carted off with a hamstring injury.

Quite what Mick McCarthy said to Wolves this week is a mystery. The side that last week couldn’t score or defend properly and were a disgrace to football seem to have dispensed with the useless, incompetent challenges (that penalty aside) and ‘character building’ hoof-n-hopers in favour of fast, penetrating wingplay and great movement around the box. Which, along with the absence of Tevez from Man City, meant that they increasingly dominated this match and thoroughly deserved their win. It seems that while Wolves can’t get a point from the teams around them, they’re actually capable of taking apart the bigger teams. Who would have thought it, McCarthy’s a tactician and Man City are a one-man team. Are there three worse teams than Wolves in the Prem? On the basis of this performance, definitely yes. Are there four teams better than Man City? That’s a much bigger question. Now Wolves have shown other teams the way, it will be interesting to see how City perform against West Brom and then Man U in the next fortnight. Two more losses and it could be curtains for their Top Four hopes.

Premiership Wages 2008-09 season from the excellent Swiss Ramble

Down in the dumps of mid-table mediocrity, Fulham did for unpredictable Wigan with two class goals from Clint Dempsey, one of those relatively unheralded but dedicated gamechanging players. While Everton beat Stoke, who are fast looking like they’re running out of ideas. Certainly with Ricardo Fuller and Kenwyne Jones both being sub-10 goals a season strikers, it’s hard to see where their wins are going to come from. Equally, Everton only have two players, Cahill and Arteta who’ve scored more than once in the Prem this season. But top of the bores was Villa‘s utterly tedious goalless derby against Boremingham. Given Villa had the largest wage bill outside the top five only last year, it’s astonishing that they don’t have a forward line more capable than Heskey and Carew, who have a grand total of one league goal between them this season. How they are missing Agbonlahor.

How Liverpool are missing Fernando Torres. What’s that you say? He was playing against Bolton? Well you could have fooled me. Unless it was that imitation Torres we’ve been seeing since halfway through last season, the guy who looks like he’s been solely responsible for propping Liverpool up for a season and a bit and has been injured for the best part of a year, that Torres. And, yes, his nice backheel to set up Maxi Rodrigues for the goal was, well, nice. But Liverpool won more through the paucity of Bolton’s ambition than through any great skill of their own. Still grinding out wins when you’re not playing well is the hallmark of champions after all.

No one could accuse Newcastle of grinding out a result. They just hammered a very poor Sunderland side in the same way they mullered Aston Villa earlier this season. Landlord Superstar (and Captain) Kevin Nolan got a hattrick, while Shola Ameobi got two, one of them a cracking net-thrashing volley.  Sunderland didn’t seem to have the midfield ingenuity to deal with Newcastle’s core of Nolan, Carroll, Barton and Ameobi and were, once again, toothless in attack and defence.

Rob Green Save Of The Day

Green, again, had a good week, certainly keeping West Ham in the game against Arsenal until the 88th minute, although you could argue that he was badly positioned for the Arsenal goal. And there weren’t any spoons, slips or moments of arbitrary madness from keepers around the Prem either. So the Save Of The Day has to go to Hilarious Gomez of Spurs, who certainly didn’t see that Nani goal coming. That’s got to hurt.