Who’s Hot and Who’s Not – Premier League Round 14

They might just get into the top four. Yesterday Aston Villa had a great 3-2 win at their main rivals for fifth place, Everton. They did so with style, determination, and a real spirit and fighting quality.

Make no mistake that this is a good side. Arsenal, you better keep looking over your shoulder!

Middlesbrough sometimes look really good but they are only four points off the drop zone and with only one win in six, none in the last four, they are in danger of sliding into a relegation battle.

To take the lead at Hull with ten minutes left and then contrive to concede twice was pretty poor. I think they could be in trouble.

Just a short while ago Chelsea keeper Petr Cech was fairly universally accepted to be the best goalkeeper in the world. Then a knee in the head from the opposition and a boot in the face from a team-mate, followed by a horrible clanger at Euro 2008, left him looking a shadow of his former self.

This season, Cech has slowly but surely set about restoring his own confidence and his best form and he is once again right up there with the best.

I don’t want to pick on Scott Carson because he seems like a very nice man and he is obviously a very talented goalkeeper. He makes some great saves and at times looks to fully justify his position in the England squad. The fact is, however, that he just has a howler in him at any time.

Carson is the goalkeeping equivalent of Titus Bramble. Week in, week out he produces 89 minutes and 59 seconds of excellence and 1 second that costs his side a goal.

The mistake he made against Portsmouth really was a schoolboy error. He got away with it this time, but he often doesn’t.

He is a commanding figure at the back and then he popped up in injury time to follow in Michael Carrick’s shot that hit the post. The rebound he gleefully despatched into the back of the net may be an incredibly important goal when the season draws to a close.

For the second week running I give this award to Manchester United’s Serbian centre-half Nemanja Vidic.

One of the best defenders in the Premier League this season has been Everton centre-half Phil Jagielka. He has been excellent and he has making a strong case for an international call up. Yesterday he had one of those nightmare moments that every defender has at some point.

Everton had fought back from conceding an early goal in their crucial game with Aston Villa. Thy had pulled level and were looking like going on to win. Then the ball falls to Jagielka who decides to pass the ball back to his keeper. He just didn’t see Ashley Young. It was a perfect through ball. The rest, as they say, is history.

Did you see the goal Chelsea’s Portuguese midfielder Deco scored at Bolton? Need I say any more as to why he deserves this award?

Before the start of the season, I had my doubts as to whether Deco would be ‘robust’ enough to deal with Premiership football. He has certainly proved that he is. World class.

Some players get into such a downward spiral that it is almost impossible to get out of it. I am worried that Arsenal’s Emmanuel Eboue could be in that sort of position.

He is apparently a very popular player in the dressing room, but he is a long way from being popular with the Arsenal faithful at the Emirates.

He came on as a substitute on Saturday and then got subbed himself later on. He had a bit of a nightmare, but the booing and jeering that he received from his own fans will hardly have helped him.

Unfortunately, Eboue really was pretty poor. His excellent tackle on team-mate Kolo Toure as he burst forward may well have been the final straw for many.

I know he isn’t a striker but he had to get one of the ‘Hot’ awards this week. Aston Villa’s Ashley Young goes from strength to strength. His elevation to the full England team on a regular basis can only be a short time away. We all know he has pace and an excellent delivery from set-pieces, but he also scores goals.

The two he scored at Everton yesterday were both excellent finishes and owed much to his pace and movement. His manager Martin O’Neill described him as a genius and said he is World class. That may be a little over the top but he is pretty good!

£23 million. Twenty two games and four goals. Robbie Keane could only find a place on Liverpool’s bench on Saturday and bearing in mind the fact that Fernando Torres is out through injury that is a pretty amazing fact. Did he get on when Liverpool toiled for seventy minutes without scoring a goal? No.

At the moment Keane has cost about one million pounds a game and six million pounds a goal. He really doesn’t have too many challengers for this title at the moment.

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