People flocked, understandably, to the Bet365 Stadium at the weekend in the vague hope of seeing history made.
Of course, every journey made recently has been a step into the unknown as it is never truly known whether the potential record breaker is playing. He has been in and out of the side, his best days are behind him, but there is still the general feeling he can do some kind of job when required.
He played but he failed to score. Yes, Peter Crouch let his public down and failed to score his 100th Premier League goal. It was lucky Wayne Rooney popped up or all those fans would have had a completely wasted journey.
Yes, Wazza scored the goal that finally means Sir Bobby can stay at home in the warm rather than be in the stands on permanent standby to pull out his “well, it was going to get broken eventually and boy am I happy for the lad” face.
Rooney’s 250th United goal was rather nice and it saved United’s blushes after Juan Mata had scored at the wrong end. You see, Jose, this is what happens when you ask Juan to do the defensive side of the game. Rooney released a tribute video on social media after the game that, frankly, looked like Sir Bobby had used all his technical know how to knock it up on Powerpoint.
There is a rumour doing the rounds, admittedly started by me, that the Etihad has a gypsy curse affecting all goalkeepers. It’s even got to Hugo Lloris now. The normally reliable Spurs captain made two incredibly rare blunders within ten minutes of each other to give Pep hope that his whole “I am not good enough for City” routine might get filed under “successful reverse psychology.”
Lloris was another mistake short of having a five-year-deal slapped under his nose by Pep before the final whistle was blown. But then the other Etihad curse kicked in. The curse of “not killing the bloody game off.” OK, Sterling was pushed in the back by Walker and it was the first time since Teresa May became PM that Sterling hasn’t nosedived and sure, it was a penalty. But City, boys. It is not compulsory to have to concede within 90 seconds of something going against you.
It happened against Chelsea when De Bruyne hit the bar and it happened here again. Spurs saw the light and got themselves level. Suddenly Jesus was arisen, but the linesman was clearly atheist as he correctly, if not disappointingly, ruined all the headlines of the next day in ruling the goal out for offside.
Someone needs to get hold of Claudio Ranieri’s dilly ding, dilly dong bell and ring it very loudly in his ears. Claudio not tinkering leads to silverware. Claudio tinkering leads to impending doom. In the last few games Leicester have tried a back three, a false front two and, more recently, a midfield diamond, all to no avail.
Southampton swept past them, leaving the ” Champions” in an actual relegation dogfight. Maybe it is time for Claudio to discreetly step aside and let someone come in and save the day? I am not being over dramatic.
Leicester’s European adventure is bound to end against Sevilla and can you imagine that side picking themselves up and digging in again to ensure a mid-table finish? I think not. After the game Ranieri suggested the fans should blame him for the defeat. Claudio, I think they were one step ahead of you.
David Moyes issued the bizarre rallying cry of “new signings won’t make any difference!” before Sunderland’s miserable defeat to West Brom. Mind you, he probably knew he’d be announcing Joleon Lescott within the next few days so you can see where he was coming from.
Sunderland have a number of problems, none of which can be solved by bringing Lescott to the club. Unless, of course, the problem is solving the “how many former Everton players can I sign before somebody starts asking questions” conundrum.
The Stadium of Light is starting to resemble Goodison Park circa 2009 right now. And they weren’t that good then, let alone now. Sunderland had zero fight, unless of course you count the right hook Djilobodji landed on Darren Fletcher.
I was under the weird impression that Palace had recruited Big Sam to save them from relegation. They still haven’t won under the former England manager and already rumours are going round that losing the England job might have done more damage to the Allardyce aura than first thought.
Bringing in Little Sam hasn’t made any difference either, and I am pretty sure signing Patrick van Aarnolt isn’t going to paper over too many cracks. Could Sam actually lose the England job and get Palace relegated all in the same season? I don’t think even Smug Al could have managed that.
Everton were pretty good in beating Palace at Selhurst Park and Ross Barkley put in the kind of performance that smacked of clear jealousy towards all the attention Tom Davies has been getting.
As you will have detected, I am not exactly a football expert but even I have crunched the numbers and worked out that if you plan to win the Premier League for the first time in a generation, letting Swansea score three times against you isn’t going to help. Kloppo can call them all in for “clear-the-air” talks as often as he wants, but it’s not going to be enough.
Swansea were much improved, only conceding twice rather than the customary three of four and Paul Clement looks like he might be living up to the praise heaped on him by Manuel Neuer. A Spaniard called Fernando scoring twice at Anfield, it was just like old times for the Scousers.
Payet, in his own way, seems to have turned West Ham’s season around in a way nobody quite expected. Since officially downing tools and refusing to step foot on the pitch rather than downing tools on the pitch as he has been all season, West Ham have won twice. Andy Carroll scored another two goals, which means he is certain to be injured next weekend and miss the rest of the season.
If you judge a player by his goal celebrations you could believe that Diego Costa is quite happy at Chelsea. His hand gestures would suggest that everything that has been said recently has just been silly talk, and there was no way he was interested in earning £1m a week, or whatever it was, in China.
Interestingly, if you listened to all the punditry prattle when Marco Silva took over at Hull you would have believed he couldn’t speak a word of English. Judging by his regular five minute briefing with players on the sidelines at Stamford Bridge, I would say we have all been duped. Mind you, they still lost so it might be more about what he was saying in English I suppose.
It was Arsenal’s turn to have me scribbling out most of what I had written about them in the previous ninety three minutes at the Emirates. Granit Xhaka now has more red cards than goals or assists this season and if Fellaini had put in the injury time challenge that Coquelin managed having been brought on to see the game out then social media would have imploded.
Sean Dyche must have thought it was a job very well done when they equalised, until Ben Mee tried to kick Koscielny’s head into Row Z rather than the ball.
For me, the FA missed a great opportunity by banning Arsene Wenger for pushing the 4th official. Imagine Jose’s next press conference if they had let him off.
Go on, imagine.
There is a new FM book out on sale, edited by the supremely talented Alex Stewart and has a foreword from his arch enemy (in the FM sense only) Iain Macintosh – it is an anthology of all kinds of FM writing with contributions from some of our very own FootballFanCast writers (Lee Scott and myself) as well as excellent pieces from others too. 10% of all the sales goes to the mental health charity CALM, which is doing fantastic work. Anyway, if you like James’ FM updates on here then you will love this as much. Go and spend £4 on it which, as I understand it, is less than a large coffee in Costa now. You can get it here.
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