So, Manchester United get beaten by Citeh on their own patch for the first time in about thirty years, and assistant manager Carlos Queiroz is straight on the excuses. Apparently, the poor hard-done-by Man United players were worn out after their painful international exertions - Wes Brown, Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic and Cristiano Ronaldo were all over-tired and restless, apparently. No mention of Richard Dunne, Martin Petrov and Gelson Fernandes' appearances for Ireland, Bulgaria and Switzerland, then. Or Joe Hart's fanatastic game for England U21s. Just those poor Manchester United players, all sore and grouchy at having to play two games of football in a week.
The game finished 2 - 1, but in reality Citeh deserved to win by the two-goal lead they had up until Michael Carrick, who is still the most overrated player in world football, stroked in a consolation goal that, in an indication at just how poor the red half of Manchester had been, was celebrated like a cup-final win. Benjani Mwararararawari got himself very tenuously on the scoresheet by getting the faintest of touches on a Martin Petrov cross-cum-shot that looked goalbound long before the Zimbabwean flicked out a dreadlock for the final touch, after Darius Vassell stabbed in at the second time of asking to turn the game for Man City, a team who rapidly look like they're regaining the devastating form they showed at the beginning of the season after that little blip over christmas. In contrast, United looked overawed by the pomp and ceremony of the Munich anniversary and were badly outclassed, surrendering what could be three massively important points in the race for the title, with Arsenal now two clear points ahead with a game in hand going into their monday fixture with Blackburn.
Another club that could have benefitted from United's failings was Chelsea, but their 0 - 0 draw with Liverpool gave no hint that we were watching two of the pre-season favourites for a title race. Avram Grant's side might have crept a point closer to United, but United will surely not have too many more off days, and games are rapidly running out for Grant to haul his side back into the title race. With 12 games remaining at the end of this weekend's fixtures, Chelsea really needed to win this game against a woefully out of form Liverpool side to stay in the realistic race for the title and, while they are still very much involved in the race, they must definately now be considered only third favourites, and really need to avoid any more off days, particularly against Arsenal at the end of March, to avoid being in the potentially embarrassing situation of having to form a guard of honour for United two games from the end of the season.
As much as I could criticise Chelsea, it does take two teams to make a bad game and Liverpool more than did their fair share. As I said about Chelsea, they really need to start winning games, especially against the teams around them in the table. It's all very well thumping Sunderland 3 - 0, but when you can't pick up maximum points against a team like West Ham, you really are struggling to justify your £60m summer outlay on a team expected to challenge realistically for the title; with all due respect to West Ham, they are the kind of team that title challengers should be beating. But I'm getting sidetracked. Liverpool might have an excuse for their poor form in this game, seeing as they were without the mercurial Fernando Torres, as well as with a defence stretched tighter than a drum skin meaning the increasingly nervous-looking Martin Skrtel was left trying to keep tabs on Nicholas Anelka all game. Rafa Benitez pointedly dodged questions after the game about Liverpool's ambitions being reduced to just aiming for 4th place, but that is realistically the best they can hope for now, as nobody really expects Chelsea or Manchester United to stop grinding out at least half-decent results, and while there are still lingering doubts about Arsenal's ability to last the pace, with a 16 point lead over the red side of Merseyside, nothing barring a complete collapse will see the London club fall below their northern rivals by the end of the season.
For the blue side of Merseyside, however, things could hardly be rosier. While what should have been an easy win against a Reading side in the middle of a 7-game freefall turned into a scrappy victory won with a lucky header by no-nonsense utility man Phil Jagielka, the result does mean that the best Liverpool can do with their game in hand is draw level on points, meaning that the battle for Merseyside bragging rights is now a straight fight to the finish, with the boys in royal blue definately being the form team.
Speaking of form teams, you couldn't get much further from that than Reading. They now have now lost every league game they have played this year and while Everton are showing winning form in beating teams while playing badly, Reading are only managing half of that, and it's not the good half. With Liverpool, Arsenal and Spurs still to play, as well as a crunch game against their main relegation rivals Birmingham City to come in the middle of March, it really doesn't look good for Steve Coppell's team, who have really struggled this year after being last season's surprise package, and it looks like their only hope of staying up could be finding a team that are performing even worse than they are. After seven straight defeats and racing into the second month of the 2008 without a league win since the new year that might seem like no mean feat, but thankfully for Coppell and co, there's always Newcastle United.
King Kev's Tyneside revolution has, now more than ever, fallen flat on it's arse. There's no journalistic gloss, no media foundation that can be brushed over Newcastle's continued painful struggles. Keegan's promise of swashbuckling, gung-ho attacking football has come to nothing and they appear even worse now than they were under Sam Allardyce's tutelage - unsurprising really, as, after all, Allardyce made a career out of coaxing awful defenders into slightly less-than-awful performances, while Keegan's lack of defensive nous notorious, and Claudio Cacapa is the worst defender on Tyneside since Jean-Alain Boumsong, and appears to embody the worst of both the lanky Frenchman and his former Tyneside colleague Titus Bramble. A 4 - 1 defeat to Aston Villa was no more than they deserved for an absolutely dire performance, and they probably didn't even deserve their opener, stabbed past Villa's goalkeeper by Michael Owen, desperate to impress after maybe finally realising that being Michael Owen isn't going to be enough on it's own to warrant a place in a real international manager's plans.
It was at the other end where the real action took place, however. John Carew is the sort of giant hulking beast written about in Norse mythology, and the Norweigan international scored a hattrick to prove to everyone that a team who's defence consists of Claudio Cacapa and the utterly confidence-shattered Steven Taylor doesn't deserve to stay in the Premier League, regardless of how many of their fans insist they are 'too big to go down'. I'm not sure how much time Keegan is going to get or how long his legend will keep the Geordie faithful off his back, or how long he, given his tendency to walk away from jobs that do not go his way, will choose to stay around and let his star over the Tyne become even more tarnished. Can you hear them crying out for Shearer yet? If they aren't yet, they soon will be, with Man United and Liverpool to play in the next three games. Then again, Keegan could turn it all around with victory over one of them, and if he beats Liverpool, a prospect not entirely out of the question given their recent form, Villa would have a chance to go 5th and above the Merseysiders, a position they would no less than deserve given their excellent form of date.
The only other interesting result of the weekend, with Arsenal playing tomorrow, was West Ham's 1 - 1 draw with Birmingham. An uninteresting game in terms of the ball-playing action, it was an exciting game for all the wrong reasons, a dubious penalty and a red card. The result I have no qualms with, neither team did enough to justify 3 points but nothing to warrant going away with nothing, and 1 - 1 neither flattered nor embarrassed either team. The controversial points were, well, the things I mentioned above. I have a mate who is a massive West Ham fan and he was absolutely incensed that James McFadden was given a penalty for his stumble in the box under a tug from Lucas Neill, calling referee Mark Clattenburg every name under the sun, but the fact is that Neill did have a handful of his shirt and, with the rules as they are, that's a penalty. You can't get away with any kind of contact in the box and what a player as experienced as Lucas was thinking doing that right under Clattenburg's nose was anybody's guess.
The other incident was Lee Bowyer's red card for a studs-up challenge late in the game. I didn't see the incident for myself, but both Alan Curbishley and the popular press seem to be saying that the dismissal was rather harsh. Harsh or not, I find it hard to feel sorry for Bowyer in this case, as he has for many years been a nasty little oik, from being up in court for affray to having a punch-up in the center circle with Newcastle and now Hammers team-mate Kieron Dyer. He has a reputation that goes before him and it is not an undeserved one, and I doubt anyone would have any sympathy for Joey Barton if he was harshly punished for a borderline tackle next week. If you don't want to be thought of as a dirty player and a nasty piece of work, try spending a few years not being a dirty player and a nasty piece of work before you start complaining about borderline decisions going against you; after all, if most players go in studs-up, it can be dismissed as an accident, or a momentary lapse of judgement, while players like Bowyer, Barton and Chelsea's Michael Essien have proved with their consistent behaviour that their intention is to kick, stamp and hurt opposition players as much as possible. That's just the way it is.
The game finished 2 - 1, but in reality Citeh deserved to win by the two-goal lead they had up until Michael Carrick, who is still the most overrated player in world football, stroked in a consolation goal that, in an indication at just how poor the red half of Manchester had been, was celebrated like a cup-final win. Benjani Mwararararawari got himself very tenuously on the scoresheet by getting the faintest of touches on a Martin Petrov cross-cum-shot that looked goalbound long before the Zimbabwean flicked out a dreadlock for the final touch, after Darius Vassell stabbed in at the second time of asking to turn the game for Man City, a team who rapidly look like they're regaining the devastating form they showed at the beginning of the season after that little blip over christmas. In contrast, United looked overawed by the pomp and ceremony of the Munich anniversary and were badly outclassed, surrendering what could be three massively important points in the race for the title, with Arsenal now two clear points ahead with a game in hand going into their monday fixture with Blackburn.
Another club that could have benefitted from United's failings was Chelsea, but their 0 - 0 draw with Liverpool gave no hint that we were watching two of the pre-season favourites for a title race. Avram Grant's side might have crept a point closer to United, but United will surely not have too many more off days, and games are rapidly running out for Grant to haul his side back into the title race. With 12 games remaining at the end of this weekend's fixtures, Chelsea really needed to win this game against a woefully out of form Liverpool side to stay in the realistic race for the title and, while they are still very much involved in the race, they must definately now be considered only third favourites, and really need to avoid any more off days, particularly against Arsenal at the end of March, to avoid being in the potentially embarrassing situation of having to form a guard of honour for United two games from the end of the season.
As much as I could criticise Chelsea, it does take two teams to make a bad game and Liverpool more than did their fair share. As I said about Chelsea, they really need to start winning games, especially against the teams around them in the table. It's all very well thumping Sunderland 3 - 0, but when you can't pick up maximum points against a team like West Ham, you really are struggling to justify your £60m summer outlay on a team expected to challenge realistically for the title; with all due respect to West Ham, they are the kind of team that title challengers should be beating. But I'm getting sidetracked. Liverpool might have an excuse for their poor form in this game, seeing as they were without the mercurial Fernando Torres, as well as with a defence stretched tighter than a drum skin meaning the increasingly nervous-looking Martin Skrtel was left trying to keep tabs on Nicholas Anelka all game. Rafa Benitez pointedly dodged questions after the game about Liverpool's ambitions being reduced to just aiming for 4th place, but that is realistically the best they can hope for now, as nobody really expects Chelsea or Manchester United to stop grinding out at least half-decent results, and while there are still lingering doubts about Arsenal's ability to last the pace, with a 16 point lead over the red side of Merseyside, nothing barring a complete collapse will see the London club fall below their northern rivals by the end of the season.
For the blue side of Merseyside, however, things could hardly be rosier. While what should have been an easy win against a Reading side in the middle of a 7-game freefall turned into a scrappy victory won with a lucky header by no-nonsense utility man Phil Jagielka, the result does mean that the best Liverpool can do with their game in hand is draw level on points, meaning that the battle for Merseyside bragging rights is now a straight fight to the finish, with the boys in royal blue definately being the form team.
Speaking of form teams, you couldn't get much further from that than Reading. They now have now lost every league game they have played this year and while Everton are showing winning form in beating teams while playing badly, Reading are only managing half of that, and it's not the good half. With Liverpool, Arsenal and Spurs still to play, as well as a crunch game against their main relegation rivals Birmingham City to come in the middle of March, it really doesn't look good for Steve Coppell's team, who have really struggled this year after being last season's surprise package, and it looks like their only hope of staying up could be finding a team that are performing even worse than they are. After seven straight defeats and racing into the second month of the 2008 without a league win since the new year that might seem like no mean feat, but thankfully for Coppell and co, there's always Newcastle United.
King Kev's Tyneside revolution has, now more than ever, fallen flat on it's arse. There's no journalistic gloss, no media foundation that can be brushed over Newcastle's continued painful struggles. Keegan's promise of swashbuckling, gung-ho attacking football has come to nothing and they appear even worse now than they were under Sam Allardyce's tutelage - unsurprising really, as, after all, Allardyce made a career out of coaxing awful defenders into slightly less-than-awful performances, while Keegan's lack of defensive nous notorious, and Claudio Cacapa is the worst defender on Tyneside since Jean-Alain Boumsong, and appears to embody the worst of both the lanky Frenchman and his former Tyneside colleague Titus Bramble. A 4 - 1 defeat to Aston Villa was no more than they deserved for an absolutely dire performance, and they probably didn't even deserve their opener, stabbed past Villa's goalkeeper by Michael Owen, desperate to impress after maybe finally realising that being Michael Owen isn't going to be enough on it's own to warrant a place in a real international manager's plans.
It was at the other end where the real action took place, however. John Carew is the sort of giant hulking beast written about in Norse mythology, and the Norweigan international scored a hattrick to prove to everyone that a team who's defence consists of Claudio Cacapa and the utterly confidence-shattered Steven Taylor doesn't deserve to stay in the Premier League, regardless of how many of their fans insist they are 'too big to go down'. I'm not sure how much time Keegan is going to get or how long his legend will keep the Geordie faithful off his back, or how long he, given his tendency to walk away from jobs that do not go his way, will choose to stay around and let his star over the Tyne become even more tarnished. Can you hear them crying out for Shearer yet? If they aren't yet, they soon will be, with Man United and Liverpool to play in the next three games. Then again, Keegan could turn it all around with victory over one of them, and if he beats Liverpool, a prospect not entirely out of the question given their recent form, Villa would have a chance to go 5th and above the Merseysiders, a position they would no less than deserve given their excellent form of date.
The only other interesting result of the weekend, with Arsenal playing tomorrow, was West Ham's 1 - 1 draw with Birmingham. An uninteresting game in terms of the ball-playing action, it was an exciting game for all the wrong reasons, a dubious penalty and a red card. The result I have no qualms with, neither team did enough to justify 3 points but nothing to warrant going away with nothing, and 1 - 1 neither flattered nor embarrassed either team. The controversial points were, well, the things I mentioned above. I have a mate who is a massive West Ham fan and he was absolutely incensed that James McFadden was given a penalty for his stumble in the box under a tug from Lucas Neill, calling referee Mark Clattenburg every name under the sun, but the fact is that Neill did have a handful of his shirt and, with the rules as they are, that's a penalty. You can't get away with any kind of contact in the box and what a player as experienced as Lucas was thinking doing that right under Clattenburg's nose was anybody's guess.
The other incident was Lee Bowyer's red card for a studs-up challenge late in the game. I didn't see the incident for myself, but both Alan Curbishley and the popular press seem to be saying that the dismissal was rather harsh. Harsh or not, I find it hard to feel sorry for Bowyer in this case, as he has for many years been a nasty little oik, from being up in court for affray to having a punch-up in the center circle with Newcastle and now Hammers team-mate Kieron Dyer. He has a reputation that goes before him and it is not an undeserved one, and I doubt anyone would have any sympathy for Joey Barton if he was harshly punished for a borderline tackle next week. If you don't want to be thought of as a dirty player and a nasty piece of work, try spending a few years not being a dirty player and a nasty piece of work before you start complaining about borderline decisions going against you; after all, if most players go in studs-up, it can be dismissed as an accident, or a momentary lapse of judgement, while players like Bowyer, Barton and Chelsea's Michael Essien have proved with their consistent behaviour that their intention is to kick, stamp and hurt opposition players as much as possible. That's just the way it is.
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