goodfootballerornot

Villarreal 0-0 Man Utd :  Man U continue their season off after doing so well last lear.  Another draw for them and a pretty lame effort.  Shocking high tackle on Ronaldo.

Arsenal 1-0 Dynamo Kiev : Pretty poor stuff from the team supposedly playing the best football in Europe who had to rely on a late Bendtner goal.  Some relief for  Wengers squeaky bum for now.

Aalborg 2-1 Celtic : Habits are hard to break, particularly for Celtic trying to win away in the competition.  They also loose out on the UEFA cup too.  Still, since they are so appallingly bad that’s not unreasonable.

Everton doing thier bit to keep the table tight.  Poor stuff from the “best league in the world”.  Football quality low, interest high as its a real competition so far this year.

Tottenham 1-0 Blackburn:  Aaron Lennon showed he can play well for extended periods of time, well in the same game at least.  He completely embarrassed Martin Olsson who was sent off for trying to tackle a player who was so much better than him.  Gomes made it through without cocking up, well he didn’t concede a goal.  Still looking nervy and less than convincing.  Blackburn tried to make something and should have done better.  Its not clear if the squad lacks a player of sufficient quality to raise them or if Paul Ince isn’t up to the job at this level. Thanks to the tight point situation Spurs charge up the table but no one is safe in the bottom 10 or so.

Sunderland 0-1 West Ham:  Roy Keane will, I’m sure, take a piss on the respect campaign from a great height after having a couple of penalty decisions go badly against them.  Still is Cisse had put his chances away then it shouldn’t have been  a problem.    West ham will be very happy with the win, as will Zola who could have seen himself sacked soon if he didn’t get a result soon.  The little Italian has made steps to putting something that resembles a defence into the team but they offer precious little up front.  With no money to spend it would seem its going to be difficult.  For all Sunderlands spending there’s little to show for it really and even less in terms of progress over last season.  Maybe if Keane had less players to choose from it would focus his choices and the minds of those in the squad.

This season is looking to be one of the most dramatic for some time with only 8 points separating 20th from 7th and 6th to 3rd only 3 points apart.    A two horse race at the top but there’s a new runner in contention.

Aston Villa 0-0 Man Utd : Tight stuff and not too many real chances.  Villa lost an opportunity to beat a misfiring Man U who would have benefited from Rooney being part of the England squad as Capello seems to have a positive impact on his game and he really needs an upturn right now .

Chelsea 0-0 Newcastle: Newcastle parked the bus and would be much happier with the result than a baffled Scolari.  A better result for Toon.

Liverpool 0-0 Fulham:Liverpool were lucky as they played poor and Chelseas failure to get round the Newcastle bus was unexpected.  A wasted opportunity.

Man City 3-0 Arsenal : The good half of the Man City Schizoid team showed up to make Arsenals week end as bad as it could have without them having more injuries.  The praise heaped on the way Arsenal play thier football is looking extremely misguided.

Middlesbrough 1-3 Bolton: Undone by 2 early goals Borough never really got back into the game.  Bolton were Bolton.

Portsmouth 2-2 Hull: Unlucky for Porsmouth as they were on course for a deserved win until a rather unfortunate own goal.  Encouraging for Tony Adams who just needs a bit of luck to get the results coming in.

Stoke 1-0 West Brom:  A late winner for one of the two Championship sides playing.

All in all a case of missed opportunities and some fairly poor performances all round.

Very good indeed for the England B team as its been called.  Forget the debate on can Lampard and Gerrard play together, can Scott Carson play for England without stuffing up big time!  The Captain quite rightly took the blame for the shambles as he should have cleared it, but why is he so feted by the press?  He is neither our best player or a great ambassador for the sport yet the press as a rule view him as being the best thing about.   Sadly a sign of the backwards nature of thinking about the game here where its more important for a player to have blood on his shirt and a bandage on his head rather than being able to think, keep the ball and pass well.  Something that came up again when Argentina played Scotland, Terry Butcher a player from who JT could have been cloned was commenting on the hand of god, Maradona quite rightly said, who?  Who indeed.

Still good stuff allround and maybe some of the first team might get dropped and give them a much needed kick in the arse.

Despite only being 6 points behind the league leaders Arsenal were in crisis and according to some Wenger should be replaced.  A strange situation for such a successful manager to be in, especially one who can count well enough to know that 6 points doesn’t make you out of touch.  The problem all the teams have is can anyone take points off Chelsea and Liverpool?

The game itself was marked by some pretty lousy refereeing, Howard Web did his best to not give any penalties, despite there being a possibility of at least 3.  United were undone by Rooney having a bad day at the office and a real lack of quality in central midfield.  Rooney spent the first half shooting wide and for the second when he was shoved to the left as provider some of his crosses left a lot to be desired.  Ronaldo, supposedly the best player in the world and looking nothing of the sort, missed some chances and his assists were not the standard they should have been.  Berbatov doesn’t look like 32 million well spent and for the cost of Man Us attack verses the comparatively weak Arsenal defence they looked short of being the best.

Arsenal played thier usual game and Nasri providing more attacking bite than they have produced for some time.  Wenger may know, but they still don’t look that convincing either.

Fergason has a real problem in that he has seemingly made no provision for replacing Giggs or Scholes, or if he has none of the supposed replacements look up to thier high standard.  That 32 million would have been better spent on a decent central midfielder, Deco springs to mind.

A great derby game, hell just a great game.  Bentlys blinding goal kicked off a roller coaster of a game which had Spurs unfairly down 4-2 until the 90th minute when Jenas scored a brilliant goal followed by a surprising equaliser.

Lots of talk of the naievity of the Arsenal squad and how age lost them the game, lets analyse that shall we;

Woolwich team

Almunia, Sagna, Silvestre, Gallas, Clichy, Walcott, Fabregas,
Denilson, Nasri, Van Persie, Adebayor

Average Age: 24.6

and here’s the spurs team

Gomes, Hutton, Corluka, Woodgate, Assou-Ekotto, Bentley, Modric,
Jenas, Huddlestone, Bale, Pavulychenko

Average age: 23.8.

So in fact the Spurs “Kids” played a good game and made a stunning late comeback.

Spurs appear to play better with 10 men, unfortunately not so with only 9.

The early penalty was justified, but the card was not understandable at all.  Yes Bale did a rubbish tackle and hacked the guy down, but it wasn’t malicious, just bad play.  A lucky equaliser was perhaps only fair in terms of their subsequent performance and domination but were always going to have problems after the 2nd goal and red card.

Having Hutton back is a bonus for Spurs, he just needs some practice as his crosses are often poor.  Woodgate looks slow and the unfortunate Corluka looks to be a good buy.  Spurs however are deficient in midfield, no enforcer, hell no tackler!  Modric is visionary but tackles like a girl (David Bently).  Huddleston needs to be played with him as he can at least do a defensive play breaking role.  With Lennon on the left not getting the ball or seemingly able to deliver a cross and Bently doing the same on the right Spurs few forwards are struggling to get any sort of service.   For someone who wants to be David Beckham, Bently also appears to have picked up the bad old Beckham habits of not tracking back, run or just plain not putting him self about enough.  Being subbed for an injured Pavlyuchenko (Known as Pav from now on!) is really a reflection of how poor he is.

Defensively Spurs are shaky, have a keeper carrying injuries as they don’t trust their backup keeper and a Captain who’s career is likely to be over sooner rather than later.  They have also sold all their players who compensated for this by scoring lots of goals.

Spurs and Newcastle are currently being used as prime examples of why the sporting director doesn’t work.  This is just so much bollocks and is a poor journalism.  What doesn’t work is a shit sporting director or a sporting director operating from a different city!

Stoke look like a Championship side and one who should have put more past a desperate Spurs team and if Spurs don’t start winning soon they will be in the Championship.

Depressingly its business as usual for the Prem.  All of the “top 4″ won, with scary good score lines for Chelsea and Man U.

Boro were spanked in the second half and although Chelsea were fortunate for a couple of them Boro had no response apart from capitulation, loosing 5-0 at home is not very good is it. Man U also turned in a far superior second half performace than thier opponents, doing West Brom 4-0.  Everton should be rather annoyed at converting a 1-0 lead at half time to a 3-1 loss, but it does fit thier current form.  Liverpools run of playing badly and winning, with some luck in the form of a Wigan red card, continued with a late 3-2 win over Wigan.

The teams with a shout of breaking into the Champions League spots, Villa and Portsmouth, managed a fairly rubbish draw together, hard fought it might have been but a win is required for the top 4.  Villa who have looked at times like a top 4 team, until they got rolled over by Chelsea, will regret thier lack of scoring here I’m sure.   Jermaine Defoe showed why he won’t get a start for England, we have better play makers and more accurate shooters.   By the end of today Hull, of all teams – come on be honest your thinking the same, could be in the top four with a draw against West Ham and frankly they have a very good chance of doing so.

Later today Spurs play Stoke for Ramos job and anything other than a win must spell the end for him.  Loosing will leave Spurs deep in the shit with only 2 points, no confidence and the players wondering who will be managing them in a couple of weeks.

A cracking, fast-paced match between two under-achieving former greats.

These two teams met in the Champions League last year. Marseille beat Liverpool at Anfield, only to be hammered 4-0 by Liverpool at the Stade Vélodrome. Since then, Marseille have lost Samir Nassri to Arsenal and Djibril Cisse to Sunderland, but bought the highly promising Hatem Ben Arfa from Lyon. Plus coach Eric Gerets has had more time to drill his team and shape it to his liking.

This was never going to be another roll-over. The Marseille team is full of fast, technical attacking players. So what if most of them are roughly the size of a half-pint glass? Put them against a lumbering holding midfielder like Lucas Leiva, and things could get interesting …

The name of the game was clear from the word go. Marseille were going to attack, attack and then attack some more. Probably a wise call, too, because defensively they looked like they could’ve used Titus Bramble to tighten things up at the back. Liverpool, on the other hand, had for some reason decided to abandon the system that has worked so well for them over the last few seasons in Europe, namely keeping things tight and making life difficult for the opponent. Could be that the players could still feel the effects of the tolling game against Manly United on Saturday. A few of them certainly looked a bit leggy, no one more so than Javier Mascherano, who is normally so quick to the tackle. And Robbie Keane, who presumably left Spurs to play Champions League football, might have felt a bit disappointed starting on the bench …

Marseille certainly had Liverpool on the backfoot from the start. With their lightning-quick wingers and attackers and smart use of space, they were constantly creating problems for the Liverpool backline. And after about 23 minutes they reaped the rewards of their approach. Benoit Cheyrou, the brother of former Liverpool not-so-great Bruno Cheyrout (according to Houllier “the new Zidane”) and by the look of things the brother Houllier should have signed, played a fantastic through ball to the Marseille skipper, Lorik Cana. Carragher played him onside, Reina hesitated a bit coming out, and BANG!, 1-0 to Marseille.

Somewhat undeservedly, Liverpool were back on level terms 3 minutes later. Torres stole the ball from the Marseille not-so-holding midfielder and played the ball to Kuyt who played a neat pass to the path of the onrushing Steven Gerrard. With two defenders in front of him and from a somewhat difficult angle, a goal didn’t look very likely, but the Liverpool skipper produced a simply fantastic finish to chip the ball to the back corner of the net with the Marseille keeper left without chance.

Six minutes later, Liverpool were ahead. Babel controlled a long ball, which Marseille’s version of Djimi Traore missed entirely, and feinted and drew a foul by the hapless centre-back inside the box. A clear penalty. Gerrard stood to take the penalty and buried it via the right-hand post. He then had to re-take the penalty, slotting it coolly in the same corner of the goal.

For the rest of the game, Marseille huffed and puffed and managed to look fairly dangerous without actually producing much. Reina made a few great saves, but Liverpool also had a couple of chances, especially Babel, who should have scored at least one. Gerrard and Torres were eventually withdrawn, and even Robbie Keane got a taste of the action for the last 5 minutes or so. Marseille could’ve nicked a deserved equaliser at the death, but once again Reina made a good save to deny them.

For Marseille, Cheyrout was the outstanding perfomer. Hatem Ben Arfa showed a few good touches and also a Zidane-esque nasty side to his game, but faded and was substituted. For Liverpool, Gerrard with his two goals has to be the star man, but Pepe Reina also deserves some credit, and Carragher looked solid after a slack start. Lucas Leiva looked like he was about to press the self-destruct button throughout the second half, and was probably lucky not to get a second booking or cause a penalty.