Firstly, I have to apologise for the column being late this week.
Due to strong winds I was not able to write my normal column and this one of the reasons I will not be going to Wembley this season.
Fortunately, it was only the FA Cup last weekend so we can get through that pretty quickly as – you’re all thinking it – nobody really cares about it anyway. Especially not the managers picking teams.
Wolves devised a cunning plan to beat Liverpool at Anfield – Defend well and put a couple of whippets up front. This is the kind of managerial genius that once had Scotland as the birthplace of all the finest British managers. Sir Alex, Bill Shankly, Jock Stein, George Graham and now, yes, Paul Lambert.
Pochettino didn’t seem too bothered by the cup either, until it looked like Wycombe were about to cause a sensational shock. Suddenly it became quite important to Spurs and they recovered from 2-0 down and then 3-2 down to save themselves quite the embarrassment. Funny that, what potential humiliation and a loss to a League Two side can do for you. You had to feel for Gareth Ainsworth, he had devised a system that had made the “Beast” look more of a threat than Vincent Janssen after all.
Chelsea, Arsenal, Middlesbrough and Man City all eased through in a relatively stress free manner, some with strong teams selected, some without. Mind you, it mattered little if you were playing a Southampton side mentally measuring up their Wembley suits or Palace, at that point incapable of winning for Big Sam. United also won, playing their 250th consecutive FA Cup tie on television as their way of doffing their caps to Wayne Rooney’s record goalscoring feat.
We should probably mention Sutton United too, but it’s not as if they beat a Premier League side or anything. And they weren’t playing on a real pitch, so can that count? Well, it will definitely count if they can beat Arsenal in the 5th Round!
Let’s move on to where the real action was hiding. The Premier League reappeared days later, showing us all why managers are reluctant to put full strength sides out in the cup when they have a table-topping clash a matter of hours later.
I think we can safely say that Steve Bould is currently failing his Arsenal manager audition. Any credit he may have got for taking Southampton apart was quickly spent as Watford raced into a 2-0 lead at the Emirates. There is a certain charm in how Arsenal can continue to be “just three players short of winning the title” and be so gloriously consistently inconsistent. I guess the problem is, Arsene has no clue as to which three players he is short of.
The biggest game of the night was at Anfield where Kloppo hissed after Costa missed his penalty, “nobody can beat us, nobody!”
Jurgen, my dear boy. Swansea beat you. Wolves beat you. Southampton beat you. Hell, if Plymouth had decided to move out of their own half there is every chance they might have beaten you too. Now, I don’t know a great deal about football or goalkeeping, but I do know that you massively increase your chances of saving a free kick if you are watching when it is taken.
Sure, Mignolet saved a penalty and all that, but had he saved the penalty AND watched the free kick then Liverpool might have won. As for the wall? My word. A wall like that does not deserve Champions League football.
Somebody clearly thought it was a good idea to play matches on the evening of Deadline Day. The only winner in this scenario was Jim White, who managed to sneak a couple of hours off in the evening. Deadline Day itself was as dull as the Spurs and Sunderland fixture. There was, as expected, a lot of hype and, as expected, very little end product in either affair. Still, Jack Rodwell adopted a novel approach to try and end his winless hoodoo. Start, but then try and get sent off. After nearly 100 games without a Sunderland win, he is getting desperate.
I wonder if the Leicester board are starting to think new contracts with big pay-rises all round was a foolish ideas? A late defeat at Burnley leaves the champions three points off the relegation zone with teams beneath them in far better form. Swansea City, for example. Paul Clement has got them doing quite well, hasn’t he? Mind you, the other question is whether Southampton will win again before the League Cup Final, their minds did seem elsewhere.
Hell, even Big Sam is now in better form than Leicester. His Palace side finally got him three points in beating Bournemouth.
Jose, in a rare case of making a fair point, claimed he is treated differently by officials. Considering some of the antics Kloppo gets away with, or the passion shown by Conte, that a blind eye is turned to you can almost see where he is coming from. Jose was getting more and more agitated by the refereeing in United’s dismal 0-0 draw with Hull, and was told repeatedly to “sit down, be quiet and behave” by what can only have been a primary school teacher.
That said, this is classic Jose – distracting everyone from the fact that United have had 250,000 shots on target against Hull, Stoke and Burnley this season and failed to score. It’s ok, though, because Zlatan and Pogba are great for the social media bantz.
Football fans all over the country, mainly because Crouch has played for most of their clubs, rejoiced as the lanky one notched up his 100th Premier League goal and cranked out the robot. Crouch’s body might need WD40 to get through a game nowadays, but the dance was as smooth and rust free as the day we first saw it. Stoke drew with Everton, not that anyone is ever going to remember that.
Following his West Ham debut, I just wonder if Jose Fonte is feeling a little regretful when he reminds himself he could have been leading a team out at Wembley later this month. There’s nothing like a 4-0 spanking in which you give away a penalty to help your new fans feel that was £8m well spent.
[ad_pod id=’Shoot-Xmas-Survey’ align=’left’]
[ad_pod id=’playwire’ align=’center’]