Something Of An Own Goal Methinks

What do you give the man who has somehow alienated everyone? Aside from playing badly, public drinking, smoking, whoring and pissing in the streets, what has Wayne Rooney done for us recently? How about calling his teammates useless and his club unambitious? How about questioning the amount the club is investing in new talent before demanding that, fuck that he’d actually prefer it if they spent all their money on him? Greedy, insensitive, arrogant and condescending, Rooney managed to piss any remaining reputation he had up the wall, while somehow performing the most unbelievable U-turn in history. As he so charmingly put it, ‘Later Wankers’. He’s got to hope that his previous talent hasn’t gone west along with all his other qualities.

It’s All Coming Together

It looks like the Prem is becoming a Top 6 and a lumpen rump of stunning inadequacy

Arsenal’s excellent win over Man City, along with Man U’s win over Stoke has condensed the top of the table, while six points separates seventh from the bottom of the table. It seems that none of the ‘second string’ teams really has the gumption, the cojones or the ambition to do more than wring out regular draws and the occasional win with the central aim of remaining in the cash rich, talent poor league that the Prem has somehow become.

Looking at the teams that make up seventh downwards, I was curious as to how many genuinely talented players there were, players who can both change a game and are exciting to watch. The list is pretty sad and really bloody short. Sunderland have Asamoah Gyan, Villa have the emerging Marc Albrighton, Everton have Arteta and Cahill, Blackpool have Taylor-Fletcher and Varney, and Liverpool have a whole stable of malfunctioning would-be-goods. Aside from that it’s all journeymen and no hopers held together with the occasional adequate defence or keeper. Certainly if I was one of the top five, I’d be pretty sure of a continued European campaign come the 2011-12 season.

Bring On The Games

Over-hyped prima donnas with delusions of grandeur flatter to deceive, yet somehow conspire to continually let you down. But enough about Man City, let’s spend a bit of time considering Arsenal. Having effectively qualified from their Big Cup group with 3 matches to go (with 3 wins, 14 goals for, 2 against), they’ve had a minor hiccup in the league, with defeats to Chelski and West Brom and this was definitely a must win match for them, especially since their awful record against top 4 teams is what scuppers their title winning credentials. Their 3 – 0 victory away from home to a team they lost to last year is both a statement of intent and an indication that Plan Wenger might actually accomplish something with the kids sometime soon.

Equally, it pricks the bubble that is Man City’s title hopes. Having beaten Chelski at home they were looking like the number one challengers, now they’re looking more and more like a second tier World Cup side, who are practically unbeatable once they’re ahead, but very poorly set up to actually chase a game. To me the key point of the game was not Arsenal’s ability going forward, or City’s inability to change the game with their wealth of talent, but Arsenal’s ability to keep a clean sheet. That’s not to say that their defence has shed any of its apparent frailty, just that this week they played well and didn’t make any stupid mistakes. Fabianski was, if not outstanding, at least effective.

Man U‘s ‘team of wankers’ (© Rooney) somehow managed to conjure a win over a staggeringly inept, hugely unmotivated Stoke side. I can remember years when teams would raise their game against Man U, especially at home, but that’s obviously not the case anymore. Stoke were unbelievably poor, not one of the four defenders hanging around the petit figure of Javier Hernandez bothered to get their feet off the ground to challenge him for the first goal. Instead they seemed content to mill about aimlessly and watch him head the ball, salmon-like into the net. Equally they are toothless upfront – if your main goal threat is Tuncay you are in deep, deep trouble believe me. Meanwhile given that this season they usually manage to extract draws from winning positions, it was interesting that Man U went on to win this match. It’s also interesting that Man U’s recent form, which is seen as ‘a bit of a wobble’, is just as good as Arsenal’s, which apparently suggests that the latter are realistic title contenders. Another case of perception outweighing reality.

Chelski carried on carrying on. Wolves were never going to trouble them and despite having a number of shots from outside the box they didn’t do anything to force Chelski to move beyond 2nd gear. Like so many teams around them the limits of their ambition seemed to be to ‘gain a draw’ and once they’re a goal down they rarely make it up. Wolves’ fundamental  problem is that they are just incapable of scoring, while also being unable to adequately defend.  Chelski’s great challenge was to wake up for long enough to put Wolves to bed. 2 points from the last seven matches is a great return for Mick McCarthy’s boys, so much so they could actually rival the performance of his Sunderland team that was relegated in 2003 with a total of just 15 points.

Everton failed to capitalise on their good win over Liverpool at Spurs. Still a draw wasn’t too bad given they were without Arteta, who is their sole genuinely creative player and that Tim Howard once again gifted their opponents an easy goal – that’s 5 points his blunders have cost them. For Spurs it was handy that they could count on Van De Vaart playing following his Big Cup suspension to ensure they avoided another post-European slump. He certainly manages to elevate their performances in a way that players like Crouch, Defoe, Bale, Lennon et al don’t.

Sunderland and Villa just proved that neither of these sides are going to be significantly challenging for anything other than mid-table mediocrity this year. Sunderland are the draw specialists, in a season that seems to be filled with more of them than usual and they were gifted an own goal, while Villa simply have no genuine attacking threat. Thoroughly dreary.

It’s no coincidence that Newcastle‘s kit looks increasingly like a jail uniform as another one of their players emerges from pokey. After being bailed for yet another assault charge on the condition that he lives with Kevin Nolan (surely a cruel and unusual punishment if ever there was one), Andy Carroll couldn’t conceal Newcastle’s absence of real attacking threat. Sure, he set up his housemaster for the first and scored the second, but West Ham are looking less defensively capable by the match. It seems that club owners Gold and Sullivan’s plans to get a free stadium after the Olympics could be scuppered by the very real chance they will be relegated imminently.

Boremingham taught Blackpool a valuable lesson in Prem survival, showing them exactly what they will need to live up to if they want to succeed in this division. Like Hull before them, Blackpool play a nice game in the right way, but they are incredibly naive sometimes. Certainly their gift of a second goal, scored while defender Adam was faffing around in his own penalty box, was an abject lesson in when to play the ball and when to simply hoof it out of the area. Still they’re not in the drop zone yet.

Another badly executed scissor tackle from behind succeeded in crippling the defender’s opponent and taking them out of the game. This time it was Bolton midfielder Muamba’s lunge on Wigan‘s McCarthy, which saw the latter taken off for ankle ligament damage. Another tortuous, skill free draw the result.

If we learned anything from West Brom‘s win over Fulham it was that Fulham’s goose-shit green away kit is almost as abominable as Everton’s perky pink one. Meanwhile their lack of forwards (all of whom are still injured thanks to dangerous tackles) isn’t really helped by the return of Andy Johnson. At most a 10 goals a season striker, he looked painfully out of form (not that he had much anyway).

Finally, Fat Sam really enhanced his Engerland manager credentials with a stunningly inept performance at Liverpool. Deprived of their two ‘big men’, Samba being suspended and Ryan Nelson being ill, Real Blackburn looked staggeringly one dimensional and utterly devoid of threat. They ceded almost total possession to Liverpool and barely had an attack, let alone a shot even if they did somehow manage to get Carragher to score an own goal for them. More than any other team, Blackburn sum up the lack of imagination, skill and ambition that seems to categorise the Prem this season. Liverpool were there for the taking, but Blackburn simply couldn’t be bothered and if this is the limits of Fat Sam’s coaching abilities, then he’s got a relegation dogfight coming, while being a cert for the national coach’s position.

Rob Green Save Of The Week

Everton’s Tim Howard came close, with a misguided leap at a cross which failed to connect and gifted Spurs a goal. As for a second week did Man U’s Van De Saar, who took a long stroll to the corner flag, only to hoof the ball to Stoke’s Delap and present him with an open goal (sadly Delap is no Alonso and his shot went well wide). But the winner is West Brom’s Scott Carson, who leaped to his right to spectacularly save an incoming shot from Zoltan Gera, turning it onto the post with a fingertip save, only for the ball to ricouchet off the post onto his arse and bounce into the net.

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