Hello all, we hope you've had a good bank holiday weekend. We are back up to full strength this week after last week's staff shortages so we've got a lot to review from this weekend's action...
Balls-ups
Our main talking point this week has to be the abnormal number of goalkeeping and defensive errors we've seen in the Premier League since the start of the season. Several of the Premier League's most experienced custodians like Petr Cech, David De Gea and Rob Green (can I really place him in that sentence along with those names?!) have found themselves on the receiving end of criticism from fans, managers and the press alike for misjudging long range shots or crosses, whilst we've seen Skrtel and Collins send woefully short backpasses to their respective keepers. Is it sheer coincidence that these keepers are all making dreadful mistakes at the same time or is there something everyone is missing? Well, we think the latter. Specifically, we think the ball is to blame. The new Nike Maxim ball looks as though it will take some getting used to and is swerving all over the place. Several strikers and midfielders are trying their luck from innocuous looking distances and it is really causing goalies to panic and parry what seem like straight forward catches, or in some cases inadvertently they've even ended up help divert the ball into their net. Saturday’s game at Villa Park saw both Shay Given and Tim Howard appear to misjudge the flight of the ball in mid-air and end up letting in tame shots they would usually have snapped up. Rob Green let in a really harmless daisy cutter from Michu, while Adam 'Butterfingers' Federici has let in 2 howlers already this season from fairly innocuous shots on goal, and Petr Cech’s mistake was in the same game as Federici’s second mistake of the season. Meanwhile David De Gea and Pepe Reina both lost themselves in the flight of crosses to allow their opponents to score an absolute gift. These are not all bad goalkeepers and there have been an extraordinary amount of errors for such a short period of time. Therefore, the common factor would seem to be the new ball.
Chelsea: Genuine title contenders?
Chelsea have started the season like a house on fire and as many pundits have remarked, Roman is finally getting the exhilarating football he has apparently craved at Stamford Bridge for so long. Eden Hazard looks magnificent, and it seems more and more likely he will be the next Premier League world superstar after Cristiano Ronaldo and Thierry Henry. Fernando Torres seems to have hit on some form, and he must be carrying through the confidence he gained from his golden boot winning exploits at Euro 2012 with that tremendous 2 goal haul. Juan Mata was a class act last season but now he has some equally gifted and classy team-mates Chelsea look incredibly potent going forward. However, I don’t want to come off as biased but I am really not that impressed with them defensively. They conceded 2 against Reading and looked on the rack in that game for a period. They kept a clean sheet against Newcastle, but as far as I could tell, Newcastle had some very decent chances, which you would normally expect Ba and Cisse to put away. Papiss Cisse in particular had 2 very good chances and had he been sharper this could have been a very different result. I think Chelsea could come undone against more clinical teams really as David Luiz always looks like he has a mistake in him, while John Terry looks like he’s over the hill now. With Victor Moses going in to sit on the bench, Marko Marin still not playing and Daniel Sturridge in reserve though, Chelsea appear to be going with the mantra ‘attack is the best form of defence’ so irrespective of whether it works or not, it should be bloody exciting at the Bridge this season!
Stoke City RFC have a non-controversial game v Arsenal!
Is it me or do Stoke save their very roughest for Arsenal? Stoke fans, players and management alike appear to have a vendetta against Arsenal and their combative style turns into borderline GBH. I am sure it is this fixture which leads to Stoke being frowned upon so much by other clubs and the football purists. I remember coming across this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGmJrfAAKyE a while back - this game is usually a carbon copy of it. These bully-boy tactics have paved the way for a player with absolutely zero football ability, Andy Wilkinson, to play regular Premier League football and 'shine' on occasions like this. Once again, this brute who Pulis has clearly groomed to play 'the Stoke way' was flying in to tackles, some reckless and most needless, and, like team mate Robert Huth, deserved his customary yellow card. Though for all their full-bloodedness, the rest of the Stoke team weren't as fiery as usual for this one and didn't look like they could score in a month of Sundays. Fortunately for them, Arsenal were reduced to hopeful long punts that went miles wide or over the bar. There were only the two bookings mentioned, 14 shots in total (Stoke managed just three and no corners) and the game finished a bore 0-0 draw.
Championship pacesetters
Early days and all that, but Blackpool have made an extremely impressive start in the Championship this season. Ipswich were their latest victims this weekend, who they demolished 6-0 at Bloomfield Road on Saturday. Nouha Dicko has had the same impact he had when on loan at Blackpool from Wigan last season, whilst Tom Ince has shown what a class act he is in the opening three games. Promisingly, Ince has also started to show the consistency he struggled to find last season. Blackpool fans will be hoping he is still a Tangerine on Saturday morning. Next up in the league for the Seasiders is a tough trip to the King Power stadium to take on Leicester City, where I expect they'll be given a more thorough examination of their promotion credentials.
Usual roundup:
Similarly to Chelsea I think Manchester United’s season will be chock full of attacking excitement, but defensive openness. The summer signings have been mainly attacking and Shinji Kagawa looks like a real bargain at £12m and an absolute class act. His partnership with RVP up front for United this season should be really exciting and I think that those 2 signings are sending a message to Wayne Rooney. For years he has been indispensable and when fit, has played. He has been United’s only top class player in reality since Ronaldo left and he has perhaps become lackadaisical due to this. He doesn’t look like the hungry Rooney of old (unless of course you count the extra few pounds he seems to have put on this summer!), and now he will have to perform week in week out, or he can be replaced by players at least as good as him. I hope he responds well to the message rather than sulking but only time will tell. His injury lay-off could be a good chance for him to regroup and come back stronger, but he will probably have a real fight on his hands when he gets back just to get in the starting XI.
A marked improvement for QPR this week, who recovered sufficiently from their drubbing last week to gain a point at Norwich, traditionally a ground on which they have had some awful luck over the years. Whilst I wasn't at the game (probably a blessing), I gather that yet again Grant Holt gave the QPR defensive duo of Clint Hill and Anton Ferdinand a torrid time and both were given yellow cards. Clint Hill struggled so much that Hughes saw the need to replace him with Onuoha whilst Anton Ferdinand's yellow card was specifically as a result of Holt's standard tactic of dragging the man to ground with him when he falls over and convincing the referee he was fouled. The only surprise this time around was that Holt didn't score a 99th minute winner against us!
Oh, and a message for Chris Hughton if I may: Yes, it was a foul on Cisse for the penalty, and yes there was encroachment on Zamora's behalf, but how many encroachment incidents go unspotted every week? It seems to me that the fuss about encroachment only ever surfaces when the rebound is tucked away by an onrushing attacker. So seeing as the rule is not properly policed, I don't really see a problem. However, you can guarantee that because Mr Hughton kicked up a fuss this week, some poor bugger in League Two next week is going to have to retake his spot kick because the FA will have sent out a memo to referees to watch for it this week.
Union Berlin went down 2-0 to 2. Bundesliga new boys SV Sandhausen. It's not been a great start in the league for the boys from Köpenick and the same travel sickness bug suffered last season seems to have carried into this one. Next week: home to Hertha in the Stadtderby. It doesn't get any easier!
And the less said about Crewe's game at Brentford, the better!
What we learned this week:
- Everton are flying
- Whilst they are good at creating chances, Southampton's defence is a huge cause for concern
- Wigan's summer recruits seem to be very shrewd, particularly Arouna Kone.
- Swansea's result v QPR wasn't a one-off, but Sunderland promise to provide a sterner test next week
- City look vulnerable at the back - Sparky take note!
- Zonal marking is a hated system. No-one seems to like it, so why do managers play it?
- MK Dons can't keep 11 men on the pitch, whilst the real Wimbledon have shipped 11 goals in 2 games. Sort it out Dons!
