by Glenarch of the Glen Mon Oct 27, 2008 12:43 pm
The Premier League Weekend Winners And Losers
Thoughts on a weekend that proved Liverpool really could win this....
Winners
The New League Leaders
Genuine title contenders.
Liverpool
Liverpool's display was a masterclass in match-management, a lesson in how suffocate opponents, in exploiting and revealing weaknesses, in the power of discipline, in refusing to yield the initiative.
Entertainment in football can take many different forms. Sunday's game would have been subdued viewing for those who have bought into the modern-day, TV-dictated definition that an entertaining game of football is a game of numerous goalmouth action and endless end-to-end breaks. This was a throwback, a reminder for those who can appreciate the skill of controlling as a game as an artform that football works best as a contest. It's not just about how you play; how you make the opposition play matters just as much. Liverpool's performance was a demonstration in how to make good on a piece of slight fortune and win. As such, it was close to perfection.
That Xabi Alonso's 10th-minute shot required a deflection to make its transformation from hopeful punt to match-winning strike is undeniable. Yet, with eighty minutes still on the clock, Chelsea had ample time in which to make their response. Their stage was set; either they scored or they lost. Simple, really. And yet despite the clarity of that knowledge, they managed to create a grand total of one chance. One.
A lucky win? Forget it. A boring win? Forget about football if you couldn't appreciate its quality.
Rafa Benitez
The key to Liverpool's victory was their organisation, discipline and the absolute belief that they could repel whatever Chelsea would throw at them. Tactically, they were yard-perfect, from Steven Gerrard's liberation behind Robbie Keane, to the use of Albert Riera and Dirk Kuyt to nullifying Chelsea's hitherto rampaging full-backs. Now we know why the Dutchman was omitted in midweek despite three goals in his previous two matches - Benitez was saving him for the task of making Ashley Cole the brattish, prattish, self-absorbed, spoilt, obnoxious garden-gnome lookalike he actually is.
No doubt, the phrase 'tactical masterclass' will be bandied about in praise of Benitez. More accurately, this was a triumph for the 4-2-3-1 formation that has become Liverpool's starting point and been an integral factor behind their best-ever start to a Premiership season. It works because it plays to Liverpool's strengths and disguises their faults, and it worked on Sunday because one of its by-products is the easy deployment of two of the three into a second bank of four (which is the long-winded way of saying that a 4-2-3-1 can be seamlessly morphed into a 4-4-1-1 as and when the circumstance demands).
For Benitez, the lay-out could not have been better. Not only were Liverpool set up exactly as he wanted, but so too were Chelsea.
"Chelsea have full backs going forward all of the time, but we demonstrated you can go forward and create something," he explained afterwards. "They will have problems behind their defenders because they go forward all the time."
With Gerrard thus able to find and exploit space on either flank, John Obi Mikel was made redundant and irrelevant. Instructed since the start of the season to hold station in front of his two central defenders, he found himself marking fresh air.
He was not the only Chelsea player to endure a chastening experience, though. Put on the spot, they could not even come up with any questions let alone answers to the quandary Liverpool presented. To state they lacked imagination would be a grave understatement.
In Scolari's mitigation, the identity of Chelsea's substitutes - Carlo Cudicini, Branislav Ivanovic, Paulo Ferreira, Alex, Franco Di Santo, Scott Sinclair and Juliano Belletti - provided limited scope for maneuver or alteration. Yet the pathetic, gutless display of Florent Malouda damned Scolari as the fair price he deserved to pay for his arrogant claim in the summer that he could fix the Frenchman in a way that Avram Grant and Jose Mourinho could not. From that boast followed the failure to buy the creative forward that his team is now in dire need of - even at £35m, it was mistake to judge Robinho as overpriced because of his value as the final piece in the Chelsea jigsaw - and the regular sight of Malouda in a Chelsea shirt no matter how badly he performs.
Steven Gerrard
Dear Steven, now do you realise that you don't have to be a central-midfielder to be the best player on the pitch?
Daniel Levy
The easy thing to do was nothing, to sit back and wait in hope rather than expectation, to wallow in the delusion that Tottenham, even as a side with just two points from seven games, were too good to go down. The hardest thing to do was admit he was wrong; wrong to appoint a man who could not communicate, wrong to muddle the management process with the interference of a Sporting Director, wrong to assure White Hart Lane staff just two weeks ago that Juande Ramos had his full confidence.
Levy must have known how his decision to sack Ramos - on the eve of his one-year anniversary and a must-win fixture against Bolton - would be interpreted by a hostile media: knee-jerk, reactionary, proof of his own failure. But Levy has fronted-up and owned up, both in words and deeds, to his own mistakes and the reality of the club's predicament. Such has been the danger of their delusion that the public acknowledgment Tottenham are in the middle of a relegation fight from which they have no divine right to escape is cause for celebration.
To go forward, Tottenham have had to go backwards. Redknapp is not a Top Four manager; never has been, never will be. But he is a canny operator, a firefighter, a galviniser. He is more likely to keep Tottenham in the Premiership than Ramos was. He is the short-term fix to what, it will be hoped, will be a short-term problem.
Next year's problem can wait. The problem that needed addressing is this year.
Losers
Wayne Rooney
Footballers kissing the badge is generally about as cynical as politicians kissing babies. Like a chairman's vote of confidence, it is generally tends to be the harbinger of a split rather than a declaration of everlasting loyalty. Rooney's reaction to the heckles of the Goodison Park crowd after his booking was revealing in how little value he placed upon the ritual. The badge wasn't kissed because he wanted to declare his love for his current club, it was kissed only because he wanted antagonise the crowd still suffering for his rejection. Has Rooney really become so removed from the processes of being a football fan that he felt it necessary to hurt them further? It was a cheap act, one that demeaned the shirt and revealed an aspect to his personality that can only be described as repugnant.
Tackling
Did we miss a memo? Has there been a directive passed by UEFA or FIFA that has outlawed the act of tackling? Kicking the kickers out of the game is one thing but the crackdown on tackling that officialdom has taken upon itself to introduce in the past two weeks is quite another. The shame is that it has taken the dubious bookings from incidents involving two of the league's leading stars, Steven Gerrard and Cristiano Ronaldo, for the issue to be raised. The clue, no, the warning, that a crackdown so severe that it threatens to be more dangerous than the dangerous tackling it is apparently designed to eradicate was underway occurred last week at the Riverside when Middlesbrough's Gary O'Neil was cautioned for the crime, in the words of The Guardian's match report, 'playing football'.
'There's not anything amiss with his tackle on Alex, but referee Dowd doesn't like it and flashes yellow,' the newspaper noted. Expect that complaint to become a familiar one before the authorities realise what path they are set upon. Football is not a non-contact sport and tackling is one of its skills. For the game to lose that aspect would be a crime.
Dowd, on duty this weekend at Upton Park, has taken to the crackdown with the relish of a true zealot. As Carlton Cole's tackle was the type that can cause serious injury, there should be no argument with his decision to dismiss the West Ham forward in injury-time. But his work beforehand was a frightening glimpse of the game that officialdom is developing. As Andy Gray remarked in commentary, "Every time a tackle has been made, it's been given as a foul." And almost every time a foul was given, a yellow card followed.
And that's the real problem with this crackdown. Responding to dangerous tackles with a red card is right; what's wrong is the frightening frequency that yellow cards are being issued for innocuous fouls and that players are then just another innocuous foul away from being banished from the field of play.
Pete Gill
Home
wrote:Roman Pavlyuchenko 
You're all the fucking same, weirdos 
