Arsenal’s Dismantling of Porto
Brilliant stuff from Arsenal, who scored a goal for every technical mistake made by the referee for that goal.
I just got round to watching the highlights of the way they took Burnley apart on Saturday – breathtaking.
Match report from GoonerTalk here.
If Arsenal go on to win the Premier League and Champions League, you’ll find no complaints from me.
LINK: King Kenny is our Chuck Norris
From Empire of the Kop:
2) Every goal scored in football goes on his record.
All that power and I still have to look up how to spell his last name every blinkin’ time!
Chris Waddle on Theo Walcott
Harsh words from Chris Waddle in the Daily Mail:
I have watched Walcott for a number of years and there are no doubts he has strengths to his game. Well, he has one strength in particular: his terrific pace.
But why does he not use it more? Why does he not get more of the ball? You can only look at his movement and conclude it is not good enough.
He proved he can cross and deliver a ball against Burnley at the weekend. But why does he not do that consistently? I stand by my assessment that he doesn’t yet have a football brain.
My personal feeling is that Walcott hasn’t had the time to develop fully. He lost a lot of games by moving to Arsenal when he should have been getting another 50 or 100 games under his belt at Southampton. It’s amazing to think that he only made 21 appearances for the Saints.
Since then – four years and two months – he’s only started 38 games for the Gunners (less than a single Football League season). Waddle goes on to call Wenger “one of the best teachers in the world”, but I can’t see how Walcott is going to develop if he doesn’t play many games.
Liverpool’s Soul-Crushing Defeat to Wigan
All around them, teams are gutting out wins when they really need them. Man Utd v Wolves was a prime example – three points is three points, no matter how shabby the performance.
So when Liverpool went and did the opposite against Wigan, well, I can only imagine how deflating that must be.
The Guardian sums up Liverpool’s plight:
The Anfield club would have reclaimed fourth place with a win. Instead, a seventh away defeat of the Premier League campaign left them sixth, a point behind Tottenham Hotspur in the final Champions League place but having played one game more than Spurs, two more than Manchester City and three more than Aston Villa.
They make the assumption that Liverpool will be back in the Europa League next season, which is a little dangerous when Everton are coming up on them like a freight train (and with one game in hand, for the record).
Quality vs Excitement
This season’s Premier League is turning out to be the most exciting for a long, long time. It’s also the lowest quality display, among the front-runners, that I can remember.
Arsenal were inconsistent pushovers for the first few months. You can’t say Man Utd are strong in either attack, midfield, or defence. Chelsea looked invincible for a good while but have been stuck in second gear since Christmas.
Don’t get me wrong – relatively-speaking they’re better than the rest and deserve to be at the top. But you get the feeling that the league-winning side from any of the past 10 years would wipe the floor with this lot.
And yet…this season has been a real vintage. I’ve watched more games than I have for ages, as anyone can beat anyone.
Will the Premier League’s administrators learn anything from this. Say, that a closer level of team ability leads to better entgertainment? I shan’t be holding my breath.
They’re more likely to claim that their hands-off policy of letting market-force dictate is working. But that isn’t what is going on here. The rich teams are just having a bad year. Next year one of them will get their act together and win the league by 15 points and only lose once in the process.
But I won’t be watching.
Jamie Carragher Doesn’t Want to be the New Sami Hyypia
Jamie Carragher is prepared to walk away from Liverpool at the end of the season when his contract expires.
“The club will give me a new contract if they want to,” he told the Sunday Times. “If not, it doesn’t matter, I’ll still play my best and if I have to move then I’ll move, no problem. It wouldn’t bother me.”
I wonder if he has the cautionary tale of Sami Hyypia in the back of his mind. Liverpool received offers for Hyypia in the August 2008 transfer window but turned them down cold. On September 8th, Hyypia found out that he was left out of the 25-man Champions League squad, which pretty much wrecked his last season with the Reds.
Shaun Wright-Philips in Spin Control Mode
Following his dad’s intervention yesterday, SWP is trying like crazy to restore his tarnished image:
“I try not to get personally involved because I just want to concentrate on giving 110 per cent for City to make sure we get that fourth place in the Premier League,” he told The Sun.
“But it does hurt. It is disappointing. And I repeat, it’s nothing to do with money or me being greedy.
“One thing that I definitely don’t want to do is get into how much other players earn at this football club.
“Obviously, I know there are players here who earn more than twice what I do. But that’s not the issue for me.
His side of the story is that he’s happy to sign a five-year deal, but the club put the talks on ice after Mancini was brought in.
Shaun Wright-Philips vs Ashley Cole
Okay, to be fair, SWP has allowed his dad to do the talking, but let’s compare:
“They [City] called him in and he wanted to sign his deal, sign for the rest of his career so he can be settled and get ready to go [to the World Cup]. But there’s these people like Marwood and Cook mugging him off, treating him like a youth-team player and not someone who wants to be there because of what he thinks Manchester City can do.”
Versus:
When I heard Jonathan repeat the figure of £55k, I nearly swerved off the road. “He is taking the piss, Jonathan!” I yelled down the phone. I was so incensed. I was trembling with anger. I couldn’t believe what I’d heard. I suppose it all started to fall apart for me from then on. I’d trusted Mr Dein to push the deal through.
SWP still has two years to run on his current deal. He’ll be 30 at that point and no doubt losing a bit of pace. If I was City, I’d spare myself the aggravation of dealing the Wright-Philips family and just see the current deal out.
One thing you can say about Ian Wright though – despite his fame and fortune, he’s never lost sight of the value of money. He’s a clip of him going to war with a London traffic warden over a £100 parking ticket.
embedded by Embedded Video
YouTube Direkt
Manchester United’s Striker Shortage – Bad Planning or Bad Debt?
Manchester United’s chief executive, Dave Gill, on the resources at Alex Ferguson’s disposal:
“We are looking at players all the time, the money from Ronaldo is sitting there in the bank account, we have been clear on that.”
Twenty-four hours later, one injury-prone striker is injured.
With Danny Welbeck on loan at Preston and unable to cut short his season-long spell at Deepdale, Sir Alex Ferguson has just Wayne Rooney and Dimitar Berbatov available as senior strikers.
And with Rooney doubtful for tomorrow’s trip to Wolves with a knee injury and Berbatov struggling with a long-term knee problem, the negative Owen bulletin could not have come at a worse time for Manchester United.
So did Alex Ferguson simply forget to buy enough striking cover for the season? Or is this money in the bank, as many suspect, a fiction to mollify the agitating fans?
This is Dave Gill’s explanation:
He’s a Scot, he wants value for money.
Just as well they didn’t hire an Irish manager or he no doubt would have lost the money to a conniving leprechaun.