Another great weekend of Premiership football. Liverpool make top spot their own, Hull City and Aston Villa reinforce their European credentials and even Tottenham win a game. Let’s look at who’s hot and who’s not:
Loads of candidates for this award this week. Liverpool’s excellent win at Chelsea to end their long unbeaten home run and move Liverpool clear at the top of the table takes a lot of beating. Other potential winners are Aston Villa for their 4-0 win at Wigan, Hull City for yet another away win and cementing their third place and Sunderland for their first home derby win for a generation.
Arsenal, Manchester City and even Tottenham at long last, might also think they deserve a mention. Despite all that, the award has to go to Liverpool who have now absolutely announced themselves as a genuine threat to Chelsea and Manchester United (and Hull!) in the Premier League title race.
Obviously, all the ‘hot’ teams above beat other teams who by definition, are candidates for the ‘Not hot team’ award. However, somewhat controversially, I am going to give this to Manchester United this week. They are a great side and I love watching them. On Saturday, for the first forty-five minutes they gave Everton a total footballing lesson. They were simply outstanding. Despite that, they only took a 1-0 lead in at half-time and failed to kill the hosts off.
In the second half, Everton fought back and gained an unlikely point. If United are going to have any chance of retaining their title, last Arsenal last season, they have got to start turning their great football into goals and victories.
After a horrendous error in his last home game, West Ham’s Robert Green made two or three world class saves yesterday against Arsenal. He was starting to look unbeatable and a silly own goal was the only way past him. We can forgive him a slight rush of blood to the head when he raced out of his goal and conceded a late second goal. His performance was excellent and well worthy of this award.
There really weren’t any poor goalkeeping performances this week. The only keeper who I can think of to give it to is Scott Carson of West Brom. Partly because he let in three and partly because I haven’t quite forgiven him for letting that goal in against Croatia yet!
This hurts me. I really, really don’t like William Gallas. I don’t think he’s a great captain and I have often been critical of him before. The picture of him leaving a club in the early hours with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth last week put him under a bit of pressure.
Against West Ham, he was close to faultless and made that Arsenal defence look so much more solid. Credit where it is due!
Wigan’s Titus Bramble has long had a reputation for being a fine defender but being far too prone to making costly mistakes. The reason for that reputation is his long and growing history of making costly mistakes! For 99% of games he is a very, very good defender. Then, in a moment of madness, he so often throws it all away.
He gave away the penalty against Villa on Sunday with a needless tackle and Villa went on to win 4-0.
Marouane Fellaini had a difficult start at Everton. The club were in a bit of turmoil, the manager wasn’t certain to stay and the results on the pitch were poor.
The twenty year old Belgium international cost a fee of around £4 million rising to £15million, and the fans were not too sure what they had got for their money.
His second half headed goal to gain a point against Manchester United on Saturday has gone some way to justifying his purchase.
This award goes to Bolton’s Gavin McCann. You are 1-0 down against a side with no confidence, without a win all season and with a brand new manager. Your team are getting on top and it seems that it is only a matter of time before the equaliser comes. What you don’t need at that point is one of your midfield men who has already been booked to fly into a ridiculous late tackle and get himself sent off. With ten men, the team go on to lose 2-0. I’m sure Gary Megson has said his piece to his midfield man!
Another difficult one to award this week. Marlon King scored one and made one for Hull, Adebayor completely changed the game for Arsenal when he came off the bench and, of course, Robinho bagged a hat-trick.
I’m giving this week’s title to Aston Villa’s Gabriel Agbonlahor who scored one goal and made two in their 4-0 win. He really must be knocking on Fabio Capello’s door along with his team-mate Ashley Young.
Whilst he did nothing particularly wrong, he certainly did nothing particularly right either. Nicolas Anelka is not good enough to lead the attack for Chelsea if they have genuine double winning ambitions.
Liverpool defended really well at Stamford Bridge but their job was so much easier marking Anelka than it would have been if Didier Drogba had been on the pitch.
Who else should have been included this week?
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