| Sep 01 |
What We Learned From Prem Week 3Holy Cow! We Actually Learned Something! Yes. In contrast to the last couple of weeks, where the opening skirmishes only revealed the bleeding obvious – Wigan and West Ham are in deep, deep trouble; Blackburn, Birmingham, Wolves, Stoke and Sunderland are Championship teams hoping to prolong the inevitable relegation for another season playing unattractive, clumphumper football; the top three are head and shoulders above the rest – this week provided a few genuine ripostes to the status quo. The Battle For Fourth Is Hotting Up (Again) With Man City losing to Sunderland, Mancini’s safety first away policy is starting to look ever more ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as Carlos Tevez’s outstanding balloon over the bar when faced with the openest of open goals. Man City certainly don’t look like the unstoppable juggernaut we all thought they’d be when they signed half the eligible footballers in the world over the summer. Only Tottingham‘s unsurprising loss to goal-shipping Wigan saved City’s blushes. At this rate they’re both going to be feeling the heat from on again, off again teams like Villa and, er, Bolton. Oh and by the way Ya-Ya Toure is enormous. That European Hangover Is A Bitch  Rapid Vienna fans demonstrate a level of wit and organisation far beyond their team's on pitch performance. Not just for Villa, who were comfortably outplayed by Rapid Vienna for the second year in succession and failed to qualify for the Euro Little League, but for some of those who actually won their qualifiers. Step forward both Man City and Tottingham, who’ve moved into the proper first stages of the Little and Big Cups respectively. Spurs, in particular, are learning that the euphoria of a midweek Euro rave (and their 4 – 0 spanking of the Young Boys was certainly euphoric) is quickly met by the bowel-loosening lurch of a weekend Premiership defeat (in this case at home to double six nil losers Wigan). Still, if you want to play with the big boys… Have Arsenal Finally Grown Up? Usually an Arsenal trip to Blackburn means only one thing. An ignominious defeat and a motorway journey filled with the sounds of Arsene Wenger bemoaning the kick-tastic defending style of his opponents (which actually sounds like two things but they’re clearly related). This time, however, not even the full might of Fat Sam’s legion of cloggers could defeat him and Arsenal ground out a valuable and stylish win. Admittedly the defence still looked shaky, especially for the Blackburn goal, where all but one of the back four were well out of position, but it’s still points gained where previously they’ve been dropped. If this continues Arsenal will start looking the business. Will No One Rid Me Of This Turbulent Priest? With a round dozen bookings (that’s almost a team’s worth), only two goals and precious little good football, Wolves and Newcastle set new standards for on pitch kicknology. Now Newcastle may be coming in on the back of a 6 goal hammering of Villa, but they’re no total football outfit and it was a shame that Wolves should play a home match in such dismal fashion. This isn’t ‘committed defending’, whatever that is, it’s just shite, late, aggressive lunging at opposition players in the vain hope of either intimidating or injuring them out of the game. The sad thing is that there are at least three teams markedly worse than either of these two no hopers. Villa Might Not Be Fucked After All Having lost another star midfielder, been pounded at Newcastle and dumped out of the Little League (so much for finishing sixth last season), you might be forgiven for thinking that Villa‘s season is all but finished. However, a well played win against Everton suggests that not everything is over, although it might be for the boys in blue. Not A Lot Learned From Man U‘s win over West Ham, Chelsea‘s win over Stoke, Blackpool‘s draw with Fulham (suggests that Blackpool have a bit of hope at home, while Fulham haven’t lost their away resilience), or Liverpool‘s win over West Brom. While the only interesting thing about Bolton‘s draw with Birmingham was which Scottish manager was going to explode first over their team’s poor performance. Leave a Reply |
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Palace Blog
Halfway between creative working and working creatively. Are you simply the things you like or are you more? Can you be more creative by changing what you do? Random acts of senseless beautality. That's what I'm interested in.
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