A Piss-Poor Season Just Got Worse

Not content with having their worst start in 50-plus years, selling their two best players and recruiting a bunch of, frankly, second rate talent, Arsenal continue their spiral of death by losing to Norf London rival Spurs thanks to yet another tentative long range effort. You would have thought that after Danny Rose and David Bentley managed to plunk 30 yarders into the Arsenal net someone might have thought to close down Kyle Walker. But  no. Definitively out of the title race (that’s one of the four things Arsenal aren’t going to win this year), the team are going to have a challenge getting into Europe, let alone the Big Cup this season. Newcastle, currently in fourth, have over twice as many points as Arsenal.  And while making up 8 points isn’t impossible over the rest of the season, it’s a tough ask.

Mind The Gap

With the top seven all winning, we’re beginning to see the start of the gap between the better teams and the rest. So that’s seven teams who’ve all built an additional three point gap over Arsenal. However, it’s worth noting that at this stage of last season Liverpool were worse off, while three seasons ago Spurs had just two points from ten games. Mind you neither one of them managed to qualify for European football.

Games

Man U continued their inexorable progress by just about spanking Naarich. However, the latter were reasonable good, threatening Man U during the second half and moving beyond their agricultural challenging. Dropping Championship bruiser Grant Holt might have something to do with that. Man U seemed less interested in crushing Naarich than they were against Arsenal.

Newcastle have been quietly coming up on the outside. They’re still in fourth, although if Spurs win their game in hand they will probably take over on goal difference, and at this stage that should actually count for something. They have built an interesting new spine of largely French players and have dispensed with the English brutality of their Championship side, removing Carroll, Barton and Nolan. It will be interesting to see how Alan Pardew does given his previous track record of ruining West Ham. The most striking thing about their win at Wolves was how generous a player Leon Best is. Given he appeared to be the replacement for Carroll, he’s not playing the standard no 9 role of a big target man stuck in the middle of the pitch. Instead he’s also bombing down the wing providing crosses for Ba. So while he may not score 20+ goals this season, it’s a fair bet he’ll be directly involved in 30 or so.

Sunderland looked like getting a right pasting. Especially as West Brom were two up in less than 10 minutes. Then Wroy’s Boys gave Steve Bruce a let off, allowing Sunderland back into the match, which then just about petered out into a tedious draw. Steve’s plan of replacing Bent, Gyan and Henderson with a bunch of cold meat cast offs doesn’t seem to be paying dividends.

Everton‘s big match derby with Liverpool looked to be a cut above the usual kicking lumps festival, at least for the first 23 minutes. Then the ref inexplicably sent off Rodwell after Dirty Suarez did his thing of diving over Rodwell’s legs and playing the injured primadonna until his opponent was punished. After that it was all a bit predictable. Everton tried hard, but Liverpool were just a little too good for them. Henderson appeared to do his usual thing of being anonymous all match until everyone realised that he was actually on the subs bench.

Not content with pillaging most of Arsenal’s best players, Man City continue to steal what should have been Arsenal’s year (win a cup, make progress in the Prem) and give uppity tykes Blackburn a good taking out. Again it’s clear that whatever Aguero, Nasri, Dzeko et al do, it’s Silva who runs the show. Consistently the best, most influential player, he was good, but not at his best here. However, the strategy is clear, stop Silva and you stop City.

Say what you like about rubbish manager Alex McCleish, one of his achievements is to get Aston Villa‘s Agbonlahor back to something approaching his best. You might have thought that with both Young and Downing sold over the close season, Villa might struggle a bit. However, their loss seems to have freed up space for Agbonlahor to thrive. He helped defeat a nice Wigan side who are struggling once again to convert attractive football into points.

Spurs beat Arsenal. To be fair it wasn’t exactly unexpected and Arsenal played much better than anticipated, certainly way better than Liverpool had a couple of weeks previously, yet all this result did was reinforce the gulf in class between Arsenal and the Manchesters.

Stoke must be vaguely ruing their Europa League campaign. So far it’s been two group games won followed by two Prem away matches lost. This time they were beaten by a developing Swansea team, who look to be getting up to speed with the Prem. Five bookings for Stoke suggests a ref up to speed on current FIFA dictats.

QPR continue their attempts to become the Blackpool of 2011, what with playing attractive, engaging football and being humped 6 – 0 by Fulham. You suspect that the energy they put into their last couple of matches has weakened them. Maybe as Shakespeare suggests (albeit in Shakespeare In Love) once they have spent themselves where else did they have to go but down? Still this was a game where the likes of Barton, Tarabt and Wright-Phillips were eclipsed by Zamora, Murphy and, amazingly, Andy Johnson. Time for some squad building during the international weeks for the hoops.

Finally, Bolton continued their nosedive down the Prem table by shipping five against Chelsea. That’s not progress, that’s the sound of obliteration.