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Premier League Weekend Winners And Losers
Posted 01/12/08 09:43EmailPrintSave
The pressure is mounting on the Chelsea boss. And it is showing...
Winners
Arsene Wenger
Having claimed - with good reason - not to have seen whether Arsenal's equaliser was offside, the Arsenal manager will no doubt be derided by the tedious band of email writers who still find amusement in his selective myopia. Perhaps they ought to instead applaud the Arsenal boss for pretending not to hear the vile terrace abuse to which he is subjected at too many grounds on too many afternoons. Its existence is one of the ugliest stains on the game and it is to Wenger's unqualified credit that he refuses to make the sort of fuss that Sir Alex Ferguson produced when the Emirates crowd last November committed the heinous crime of mocking him as the soundalike of a Scottish television detective.
There can be no worse insult that the one endured by Wenger. To quote The Guardian, 'it places the ultimate slur on his name' and the chanting could clearly be heard throughout coverage from Stamford Bridge on Sunday. It requires a very dark sense of humour to appreciate the irony of the poison dripping 'from the lips of young supporters who look barely out of their teens and are accompanied by their proud fathers'.
Wenger's eyesight might be poor but it is the blind eye that football has turned to this outrage which is unforgivable.
Robin Van Persie
Van Persie has a cultured left foot and a crude right boot. It makes for a lethal combination.
The ability to score goals with either foot is a rare one but then Van Persie is a rare talent. As they were the main players this weekend, and play in a similar role, a comparison between the goalscoring records of Van Persie and Rooney makes for interesting reading: 35 in 65 starts for the Dutchman, 57 in 127 for the Scouser. Even the far greater number of substitute appearances made by Van Persie - 32 to Rooney's 17 - does not adequately explain the vast discrepancy in acclaim.
One of the reasons, of course, is that Van Persie has spent too much of his fragmented career on Arsenal's overcrowded treatment table and thus disappears from view. Yet that lack of robustness is also a reason in itself to delay judgement on Van Persie. Frank Lampard and Cristiano Ronaldo, for instance, are considered great players partly because they miss so few games. For all his undoubted talent, Van Persie cannot be compared to the league's best until he finally proves he can withstand the demands of a full season.
Johan Djourou
Arsenal have kept a clean sheet in seven of the nine matches Djourou has started this season.
Everton
Victory, though, was overpriced with Yakubu now ruled out for the season just days after it was confirmed that James Vaughan required more surgery on his knee. Louis Saha is also facing a spell on the sidelines after being carried off at White Hart Lane with a hamstring injury that he aggravated on Monday night at Wigan.
Moyes can console himself with the thought that risking Saha as Yakubu's tenth-minute replacement still made sense, but not with the state of Everton's finances. "Replacing players like Yakubu and Saha is not going to be easy but we are going to have to look at what is available in the loan market," was as bleak a statement as any other uttered this weekend.
Bolton Wanderers
The 'miracle' of November wasn't pulled off by 'Harry Houdini' but by the Bolton side that were left rooted to the bottom of the table when Tottenham beat them on October 26. Since then, Bolton have won four of their last five matches and now sit in the top half of the table - seven places above Spurs.
Chris Kirkland
If only he could have stayed fit. A glorious and heavily-capped future has passed him by but on his day he remains one of the finest goalkeepers in the English league. And it's not as if England are currently blessed with a plethora of quality shot-stoppers - a sad reality that events at the deserted JJB served to highlight.
While Kirkland did more than anybody to win the game for Wigan, Scott Carson's careless fumble gifted Wigan the corner from which they scored their undeserved winner. It was the 147th goal to be conceded by Carson in his 93rd Premier League outing, a record that ought to bar him from international duty.
Sir Alex Ferguson
Unbeaten in 13 matches against teams managed by his former players since a Blackburn Rovers outfit under the charge of Mark Hughes beat United 4-3 in February 2006.
Wayne Rooney
If past behaviour is any guide to future events, and psychologists make a tidy living from claiming it is, putting what remains of your mortgage on Rooney scoring against Sunderland next weekend should defy the credit crunch.
Beginning our case study in April last year, Rooney scored eight in eight. Then none in ten between May and October. Then nine in nine before being injured in November. None in six at the season's start was followed by nine in seven and then, before this weekend, none in seven. Now at one in one, Sunderland beware...
Manchester United
Hanging on for a victory in a match that they should have won by a landslide may yet prove the turning point of their season. The champions are required for at least a week in Japan later this month for the Champion Clubs Cup so dropping points and falling further behind was unthinkable.
Fulham
Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool are the only teams in the league with a better defensive record than Fulham this season, but only West Brom have scored fewer goals than the Londoners.
Losers
Phil Scolari
"All the people here know that all season I've never said anything against the referee, but today it's different," announced Phil Scolari as he prepared to begin a diatribe against officialdom that was broadcast not only to Sky but then to the BBC and finally reached top gear an hour later in the post-match press conference. The difference, some might say, is that Chelsea lost - something they had only previously done so once in the league beforehand.
Having kept up his Everyone's Best Friend routine for four months, the facade cracked on Sunday. Arsenal's equaliser may have been offside but what "killed" Chelsea was their inability to produce a single shot on target during the final 80 minutes of the match. A generous interpretation of Scolari's rant - which included the reply of "maybe" when one mischievous hack asked the Brazilian if he thought the linesman's mistakes were intentional - is that he was trying to deflect attention away from his side's own failings. But having seen their side fail to produce a single attack of note against Liverpool, and collect just a solitary point from three home fixtures against their Big Four rivals, Chelsea fans will not be fooled for long.
Chelsea
Arsene Wenger's suggestion on Sunday night was that Chelsea's dismal home form - they've dropped 12 points at Stamford Bridge already - is a hangover from the surrender of their four-year unbeaten record. "Remember when we went 49 games unbeaten and then lost, we couldn't win again for five games. It looks like a sort of charisma goes when you lose a long record," he mused.
The problem with that explanation is that Chelsea had won just one of their three matches at Stamford Bridge before the defeat to Liverpool in October and can highlight the draw with Wigan in April as they reason they did not win the title last season. Whatever the reason for their decline, it began long before their unbeaten run actually ended.
Cristiano Ronaldo
Ronaldo had twice previously been dismissed during his United career but neither was quite as strange as this.
While the laws of the game did not oblige Howard Webb to brandish a yellow card, neither does it preclude the option of a booking. The incident should be seen in a wider context, not least Webb's recoil at Ronaldo sarcastically applauding his first caution. He could - perhaps should - have been dismissed for that reaction alone and it must have been a factor as the referee considered whether a free-kick was sufficent punishment for his handball.
Ronaldo deserves little sympathy therefore, although naturally there was plenty forthcoming from Sir Alex Ferguson. United seem blind to Ronaldo's faults and Ferguson ends the week seemingly guilty of hypocrisy. Having raged against the alleged "systematic" fouling that Ronaldo endured in Spain on Tuesday night, no fewer than four United players were cautioned for fouls committed on Shaun-Wright Phillips this Sunday.
Gareth Bale
Still yet to be part of a victorious team in a Premier League match 15 months after joining Spurs.
Tottenham Hotspur
The smart money was on Spurs finishing the weekend just five points behind their north London rivals. Instead they are 11 adrift and only separated from the relegation zone by goal difference. A trip to West Ham is next, followed by the visit of the champions. The honeymoon is over, Harry.
Titus Bramble
All three of the clear-cut chances West Brom had at Wigan were the direct consequence of a Bramble error.
Blackburn Rovers
Four successive defeats and nine matches without a win. Good performances matter not when your team is second-bottom in the table.
Aston Villa
The argument can be made that - although he missed them all - the chances spurned by Gareth Barry validated the decision to use a 4-5-1 formation even at home to a side that had previously collected just two points on their travels all season.
It certainly excited John Motson with the MoTD commentator still obsessing over Barry's efforts to score a 50th career goal even as the ball ran along the crossbar. Yet the stats Motson neglected to mention were how many of those goals had been scored from the penalty spot and how many games Barry has played during his career - 337. He is not a goalscorer and those stats spell out why a 4-5-1 was the wrong system of choice.
The absence of John Carew limited the options available but it wasn't as if there were no other striking alternatives available in the Villa squad. Marlon Harewood might have his detractors but his Premier League record of 22 goals in 95 games indicates that he was a far likelier scorer than Barry in a game in which it was clear that just one goal would be sufficient to collect three points. Instead, he spent the entire match watching on as an unused substitute.
West Brom
"The games against Stoke and Wigan will be critical to our season" - Ishmael Miller, speaking on November 17 before the Baggies' defeats at the Britannia Stadium and JJB.
Hull City
The surprise of the season have become predictable. After four wins on the bounce, the next three games brought three defeats while their last three matches have all ended in a draw.
Pete Gill
Posted 01/12/08 09:43EmailPrintSave
The pressure is mounting on the Chelsea boss. And it is showing...
Winners
Arsene Wenger
Having claimed - with good reason - not to have seen whether Arsenal's equaliser was offside, the Arsenal manager will no doubt be derided by the tedious band of email writers who still find amusement in his selective myopia. Perhaps they ought to instead applaud the Arsenal boss for pretending not to hear the vile terrace abuse to which he is subjected at too many grounds on too many afternoons. Its existence is one of the ugliest stains on the game and it is to Wenger's unqualified credit that he refuses to make the sort of fuss that Sir Alex Ferguson produced when the Emirates crowd last November committed the heinous crime of mocking him as the soundalike of a Scottish television detective.
There can be no worse insult that the one endured by Wenger. To quote The Guardian, 'it places the ultimate slur on his name' and the chanting could clearly be heard throughout coverage from Stamford Bridge on Sunday. It requires a very dark sense of humour to appreciate the irony of the poison dripping 'from the lips of young supporters who look barely out of their teens and are accompanied by their proud fathers'.
Wenger's eyesight might be poor but it is the blind eye that football has turned to this outrage which is unforgivable.
Robin Van Persie
Van Persie has a cultured left foot and a crude right boot. It makes for a lethal combination.
The ability to score goals with either foot is a rare one but then Van Persie is a rare talent. As they were the main players this weekend, and play in a similar role, a comparison between the goalscoring records of Van Persie and Rooney makes for interesting reading: 35 in 65 starts for the Dutchman, 57 in 127 for the Scouser. Even the far greater number of substitute appearances made by Van Persie - 32 to Rooney's 17 - does not adequately explain the vast discrepancy in acclaim.
One of the reasons, of course, is that Van Persie has spent too much of his fragmented career on Arsenal's overcrowded treatment table and thus disappears from view. Yet that lack of robustness is also a reason in itself to delay judgement on Van Persie. Frank Lampard and Cristiano Ronaldo, for instance, are considered great players partly because they miss so few games. For all his undoubted talent, Van Persie cannot be compared to the league's best until he finally proves he can withstand the demands of a full season.
Johan Djourou
Arsenal have kept a clean sheet in seven of the nine matches Djourou has started this season.
Everton
Victory, though, was overpriced with Yakubu now ruled out for the season just days after it was confirmed that James Vaughan required more surgery on his knee. Louis Saha is also facing a spell on the sidelines after being carried off at White Hart Lane with a hamstring injury that he aggravated on Monday night at Wigan.
Moyes can console himself with the thought that risking Saha as Yakubu's tenth-minute replacement still made sense, but not with the state of Everton's finances. "Replacing players like Yakubu and Saha is not going to be easy but we are going to have to look at what is available in the loan market," was as bleak a statement as any other uttered this weekend.
Bolton Wanderers
The 'miracle' of November wasn't pulled off by 'Harry Houdini' but by the Bolton side that were left rooted to the bottom of the table when Tottenham beat them on October 26. Since then, Bolton have won four of their last five matches and now sit in the top half of the table - seven places above Spurs.
Chris Kirkland
If only he could have stayed fit. A glorious and heavily-capped future has passed him by but on his day he remains one of the finest goalkeepers in the English league. And it's not as if England are currently blessed with a plethora of quality shot-stoppers - a sad reality that events at the deserted JJB served to highlight.
While Kirkland did more than anybody to win the game for Wigan, Scott Carson's careless fumble gifted Wigan the corner from which they scored their undeserved winner. It was the 147th goal to be conceded by Carson in his 93rd Premier League outing, a record that ought to bar him from international duty.
Sir Alex Ferguson
Unbeaten in 13 matches against teams managed by his former players since a Blackburn Rovers outfit under the charge of Mark Hughes beat United 4-3 in February 2006.
Wayne Rooney
If past behaviour is any guide to future events, and psychologists make a tidy living from claiming it is, putting what remains of your mortgage on Rooney scoring against Sunderland next weekend should defy the credit crunch.
Beginning our case study in April last year, Rooney scored eight in eight. Then none in ten between May and October. Then nine in nine before being injured in November. None in six at the season's start was followed by nine in seven and then, before this weekend, none in seven. Now at one in one, Sunderland beware...
Manchester United
Hanging on for a victory in a match that they should have won by a landslide may yet prove the turning point of their season. The champions are required for at least a week in Japan later this month for the Champion Clubs Cup so dropping points and falling further behind was unthinkable.
Fulham
Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool are the only teams in the league with a better defensive record than Fulham this season, but only West Brom have scored fewer goals than the Londoners.
Losers
Phil Scolari
"All the people here know that all season I've never said anything against the referee, but today it's different," announced Phil Scolari as he prepared to begin a diatribe against officialdom that was broadcast not only to Sky but then to the BBC and finally reached top gear an hour later in the post-match press conference. The difference, some might say, is that Chelsea lost - something they had only previously done so once in the league beforehand.
Having kept up his Everyone's Best Friend routine for four months, the facade cracked on Sunday. Arsenal's equaliser may have been offside but what "killed" Chelsea was their inability to produce a single shot on target during the final 80 minutes of the match. A generous interpretation of Scolari's rant - which included the reply of "maybe" when one mischievous hack asked the Brazilian if he thought the linesman's mistakes were intentional - is that he was trying to deflect attention away from his side's own failings. But having seen their side fail to produce a single attack of note against Liverpool, and collect just a solitary point from three home fixtures against their Big Four rivals, Chelsea fans will not be fooled for long.
Chelsea
Arsene Wenger's suggestion on Sunday night was that Chelsea's dismal home form - they've dropped 12 points at Stamford Bridge already - is a hangover from the surrender of their four-year unbeaten record. "Remember when we went 49 games unbeaten and then lost, we couldn't win again for five games. It looks like a sort of charisma goes when you lose a long record," he mused.
The problem with that explanation is that Chelsea had won just one of their three matches at Stamford Bridge before the defeat to Liverpool in October and can highlight the draw with Wigan in April as they reason they did not win the title last season. Whatever the reason for their decline, it began long before their unbeaten run actually ended.
Cristiano Ronaldo
Ronaldo had twice previously been dismissed during his United career but neither was quite as strange as this.
While the laws of the game did not oblige Howard Webb to brandish a yellow card, neither does it preclude the option of a booking. The incident should be seen in a wider context, not least Webb's recoil at Ronaldo sarcastically applauding his first caution. He could - perhaps should - have been dismissed for that reaction alone and it must have been a factor as the referee considered whether a free-kick was sufficent punishment for his handball.
Ronaldo deserves little sympathy therefore, although naturally there was plenty forthcoming from Sir Alex Ferguson. United seem blind to Ronaldo's faults and Ferguson ends the week seemingly guilty of hypocrisy. Having raged against the alleged "systematic" fouling that Ronaldo endured in Spain on Tuesday night, no fewer than four United players were cautioned for fouls committed on Shaun-Wright Phillips this Sunday.
Gareth Bale
Still yet to be part of a victorious team in a Premier League match 15 months after joining Spurs.
Tottenham Hotspur
The smart money was on Spurs finishing the weekend just five points behind their north London rivals. Instead they are 11 adrift and only separated from the relegation zone by goal difference. A trip to West Ham is next, followed by the visit of the champions. The honeymoon is over, Harry.
Titus Bramble
All three of the clear-cut chances West Brom had at Wigan were the direct consequence of a Bramble error.
Blackburn Rovers
Four successive defeats and nine matches without a win. Good performances matter not when your team is second-bottom in the table.
Aston Villa
The argument can be made that - although he missed them all - the chances spurned by Gareth Barry validated the decision to use a 4-5-1 formation even at home to a side that had previously collected just two points on their travels all season.
It certainly excited John Motson with the MoTD commentator still obsessing over Barry's efforts to score a 50th career goal even as the ball ran along the crossbar. Yet the stats Motson neglected to mention were how many of those goals had been scored from the penalty spot and how many games Barry has played during his career - 337. He is not a goalscorer and those stats spell out why a 4-5-1 was the wrong system of choice.
The absence of John Carew limited the options available but it wasn't as if there were no other striking alternatives available in the Villa squad. Marlon Harewood might have his detractors but his Premier League record of 22 goals in 95 games indicates that he was a far likelier scorer than Barry in a game in which it was clear that just one goal would be sufficient to collect three points. Instead, he spent the entire match watching on as an unused substitute.
West Brom
"The games against Stoke and Wigan will be critical to our season" - Ishmael Miller, speaking on November 17 before the Baggies' defeats at the Britannia Stadium and JJB.
Hull City
The surprise of the season have become predictable. After four wins on the bounce, the next three games brought three defeats while their last three matches have all ended in a draw.
Pete Gill
