Category Archives: Premier League
Southampton: A not-so scary story
There aren’t any monsters living under your bed, Friday the 13th is just a date like any other and The Exorcist was just a movie. Heads don’t really spin around like that.
In short, you don’t have to be scared. What initially seems unfamiliar and daunting can be overcome and eventually enjoyed if you just allow yourself to be a little braver and take control of the situation.
Southampton are proving that at the moment.
Following early run-ins with the big beasts of the Premier League, the Saints have slowly begun to acclimatise to their surroundings and are now even starting to look comfortable.
Brave losses to both Manchester clubs and a 6-1 hammering at Arsenal was a tough beginning to life at the top level for boss Nigel Adkins, but he and his side have recovered and come up with some eye-catching football in recent weeks. They’ve only lost one of their last six games.
That defeat came at Anfield at the beginning of the month when some Saints followers felt that their Merseysider boss Adkins showed Liverpool a little too much respect on the way to a 1-0 reverse. And so just when they were in danger of looking intimated by the division again they came up with last weekend’s 1-0 home victory over Reading, possibly their most important result of the season.
It was a win which lifted Saints out of the bottom three and into 15th, a highest position of the season so far.
Of course it is far too early to suggest that this is form that will see them pull away from the relegation zone and enjoy safety in their first top flight season since relegation from the Premier League in 2005 – they subsequently had a spell in the third tier of course – but what it does show is that Adkins and his side aren’t in danger of being completely overwhelmed by the top division, and nor should they be.
There were a few weeks back in August and September when that looked to be the case though, but crucially Southampton have been beating the teams around them this season.
Aston Villa, QPR, Newcastle and Reading are the four sides who Adkins’s men have seen off to pick up 12 points which were as crucial for Saints to claim for themselves as it was to prevent their opponents from taking them.
Given that their weekend fixture with Chelsea has had to be moved into the New Year due to the Blues’ Club World Cup involvement this seems like the perfect time for Southampton to take stock of their campaign and look to move forward again.
A home fixture against Sunderland when they return to action on December 22nd is another opportunity to beat one of those other teams around them, and Adkins will doubtless be looking to prolong the good feeling amongst his players during this gap without a match, a gap which he says will help them given that it provides the chance for captain Adam Lallana to recover from a knee injury without missing a match.
Others such as Rickie Lambert, Jason Puncheon and Nathaniel Clyne – all impressive in recent weeks – won’t be given time off during Southampton’s break but will instead be encouraged to keep working hard and keep proving that they, Adkins and the club have nothing to be scared of as they continue to go through life in the Premier League.
They are still likely to be involved near the foot of the table come May – even the most optimistic of Saints fans would probably agree to that – but any extra confidence they pick up along the way is sure to stand them in good stead when the wins suddenly get more vital and three points can feel like six.
That’s not a situation to be scared of though, and luckily Southampton know that now.
@Mark_Jones86
Norwich: Standing on the shoulders of giants
Norwich City have beaten Arsenal and Manchester United this season and are currently on the same amount of points as Liverpool. They haven’t so much snuck up on the Premier League’s big boys as gatecrashed their party entirely.
It wasn’t always like this of course. There was genuine concern in Norfolk at the end of September and beginning of October when Luis Suarez, Fernando Torres and Eden Hazard cut Chris Hughton’s side apart as Liverpool and Chelsea beat them 5-2 and 4-1 respectively.
They were results which left the Canaries second to bottom of the Premier League with three points from seven matches, still winless and still licking their wounds from a 5-0 loss at Fulham on the opening day. A long, uncomfortable campaign beckoned for Hughton in his first season in the Carrow Road hotseat.
Yet the transformation since then has been nothing short of remarkable.
It started with the home win over Arsenal in mid-October, finally a first three points of the campaign and what looked a pretty decent platform to build upon. It’s proved to be the most solid.
The victory over the Gunners was the start of an eight-match unbeaten league run – nine if you count the Capital One Cup win over Tottenham – which has seen the Canaries concede only four goals. As QPR and Reading – their partners in the relegation zone in those uncomfortable early weeks – have failed to escape the bottom three, Norwich have soared up the table with the talk in Norfolk now concerning just whether Hughton can deliver a top half finish.
The most memorable of those eight unbeaten games surely came against Manchester United last month, when Anthony Pilkington’s winner underlined the quality within a squad which has largely been drawn from players in the lower leagues.
Pilkington, Bradley Johnson, Robert Snodgrass, Wes Hoolahan and Grant Holt have all served their apprenticeships away from the limelight – literally in the case of Holt who had spells at Workington, Halifax, Barrow and Singaporean club Sengkang Marine during his early years as a footballer, years in which he subsidised his income by working in a factory.
It’s been a long road to the top for him and for Norwich, who often impressed under Paul Lambert last season of course as their back-to-back promotions were topped off with a campaign which never saw them in serious relegation trouble.
Yet when Lambert went to Aston Villa there were concerns that Hughton would struggle with what is still largely the Scot’s team, with those concerns playing out on the pitch in the opening months of the season.
Things still aren’t perfect of course. The win over Sunderland on Sunday was only the second time all season after that Liverpool loss that the Canaries had scored two goals in a league game, whilst they are still to record a win away from home – something that they’ll be looking to put right at Swansea on Saturday.
It is their fine home form which is driving things forward at the moment though, with that Sunderland win opening up a seven point gap between them and the relegation zone. More importantly, there are only seven points between them and third-placed Chelsea.
Such heights might have to remain in the ‘dizzying’ category for some time of course, but there is no sense that Norwich are trying to run before they can walk as their impressive campaign continues.
Just where it will take them remains to be seen, but you get the sense that the club’s fans are more than happy to just enjoy the ride at the moment. Relegation fears shouldn’t be completely dismissed just yet, but they can surely be forgotten about over the busy Christmas period.
Their last two fixtures of a 2012 which has shown that they are not afraid of the big boys are at home to Chelsea and Manchester City.
The pair have been warned.
Swansea: More than just passing through
As he pressed the flesh of pretty much everyone in sight at the Liberty Stadium on Sunday, there was a sense that Brendan Rodgers was a little more bothered about his return to Swansea City than his old club were.
Already faced with the embarrassment of seeing his Liverpool side lower in the table than the club he left for the Reds in the summer, Rodgers seemed determined to greet old friends with a fixed smile on his face, hugely laudable behaviour of course but perhaps also that of a man who was desperate to show that he had left for greener pastures in the summer whatever the league table says.
Ultimately Rodgers’ Liverpool were the better side in South Wales, particularly in the first half, and if anyone was going to claim the three points then it probably deserved to be them, but once again Swansea showed just what a valuable addition to the Premier League they have been since their promotion under Rodgers 18 months ago.
Luis Suarez still had his moments but ultimately he was shackled by Chico Flores and Ashley Williams – perhaps the Uruguayan’s unofficial biographer – in a more impressive manner than anyone has managed in the past six weeks, and if it makes a change to start off discussing a Swansea performance by focusing on their defence then maybe that will soon change if the centre-back pairing and full-backs Angel Rangel and Ben Davies continue in the manner that they have been.
That the focus so often shifts further forward is down to Swansea’s vibrant attackers and their protection of the ball of course, with Michu and Pablo Hernandez looking lively and Wayne Routledge and Nathan Dyer troubling Pepe Reina with a fine shot and a boot to the face respectively.
That was a rare ugly moment in a match that the purist would have loved had there been any goals, and one which again showcased Swansea’s commitment to possession.
In this day and age of endless tactics-based debate it is quite uncommon to find a club who are solely committed to playing a certain way regardless of who the manager is.
There is nothing revolutionary about the way that Swansea have gone about their game in recent years – although at times Rodgers would have you believe there is – but instead their approach symbolises a club who are comfortable with their pleasing image and want to stick to it.
Football pub bores will go to great lengths to tell you that it was of course Roberto Martinez who started off this Swansea culture of possession being nine tenths of the football law, which would be quite interesting if everyone didn’t know that already.
Under chairman Huw Jenkins, the Swans have protected this philosophy through the promise of Martinez, the wobbles of Paulo Sousa, the results of Rodgers and now the current regime of Michael Laudrup, perhaps the most laid back manager in the Premier League and certainly the one who can boast the best playing career.
Whilst that alone doesn’t guarantee success in the top job of course, a healthy eye for a good player certainly does, and Laudrup has demonstrated that in abundance during his brief tenure with the signings of the likes of Michu, Hernandez, Ki Sung-Yeung and Jonathan de Guzman.
Stationed in the top half of the table ahead of Wednesday’s meeting with the still upwardly mobile West Brom, Swansea appear to be perfectly placed to continue with the rapid progress they’ve made during their time in the top flight.
They’ll have their tough times of course – not least with trips to Arsenal and Tottenham and a home game against Manchester United before Christmas – but Swansea certainly don’t look like becoming involved in a relegation battle at any point this season, something that they were tipped to do under Rodgers and even under Laudrup by some.
The current Liverpool boss will have his own moments in his still new job, but the side he left behind will go on enjoying themselves for some time yet.
Swansea are doing much more than just passing through the Premier League.
Chelsea: The impossible job
There goes another one then, and this one has got the Champions League trophy to negotiate over in the divorce settlement.
Roberto di Matteo joins Claudio Ranieri, Jose Mourinho, Avram Grant, Big Phil Scolari, Carlo Ancelotti and Andre Villas-Boas on Roman Abramovich’s big managerial scrapheap, with the Russian having apparently grown tired of a boss who finally delivered him the trophy he prizes above all others six months ago.
But the Munich memories have faded, with the FA Cup final win over Liverpool apparently a mere footnote in Abramovich’s relentless thirst for success.
They were triumphs which should have bought Di Matteo the time to build and mould a squad in his image, but he always had that air of temporary boss about him; the assistant who stepped into the breach at the club’s hour of need and got lucky.
At most if not all other clubs that would have bought him space and leeway, but Chelsea ceased being like other clubs when Abramovich walked through the door in 2003, with the Russian’s thirst for success never apparently satisfied – much like his approach to riches off the field.
Di Matteo arguably paid the price for losing the same players that Villas-Boas was asked to help Chelsea move away from, with John Terry, Ashley Cole and Frank Lampard all missing from many of the last few matches for all manner of reasons. Chelsea looked spineless without them, and none more so than in Turin on Tuesday night when their Champions League fate was snatched out of their own hands.
Ultimately that’s perhaps what Di Matteo looked like to Abramovich – spineless. A former boss of MK Dons and West Bromwich Albion who doesn’t bring the CV and glamour to job that Pep Guardiola would.
The Russian will undoubtedly move for the ex-Barcelona boss now – although Rafael Benitez would make an interesting and sensible alternative – but whoever enters Stamford Bridge next will undoubtedly be aware of just what the consequences are if they don’t impress the main man.
Abramovich has created a ruthless atmosphere in his corner of West London; home to what has long been the impossible job.
QPR: The 2005 club
If this was 2005 then Queens Park Rangers would have one of the best squads in the Premier League, and surely wouldn’t be bottom of it.
Cast your minds back to the middle part of the last decade, and Djibril Cisse had just recovered from the first of his broken legs to help Liverpool clinch Champions League glory in Istanbul by scoring a penalty in the shootout.
Park Ji-Sung’s livewire performances had helped steer PSV Eindhoven to the semi-finals of that competition and earned him a move to Manchester United in that same year, whilst Andy Johnson had just finished as the second top scorer in the Premier League and the top scoring Englishman thanks to 21 goals for Crystal Palace.
It was in the summer of 2005 that Shaun Wright-Phillips – that bright young hope of the England team – made his staggering £21million move to Chelsea, whilst in Italy the goalkeeper Julio Cesar transferred to Inter Milan and would go on to claim five Serie A titles and the 2009/10 Champions League.
Back in England, Kieron Dyer’s on field spat with Newcastle team-mate Lee Bowyer wasn’t keeping him out of the England squad, whilst Ryan Nelsen was just about to begin his seven-year stint of solidity at Blackburn Rovers and Bobby Zamora was scoring the goals which helped earn West Ham promotion from the Championship. In Portugal, Jose Bosingwa had established himself as Porto’s and eventually his country’s first choice right-back, with the thoughts which crossed his mind ones which would have been as far away from Loftus Road as possible. QPR fans might say they still are.
Mark Hughes – establishing himself as a solid, respected manager at Blackburn in 2005 – wouldn’t have been thinking about QPR too much back then either, with his managerial destiny no doubt better suited for one of his former clubs like Chelsea, Everton or even Manchester United. His early experiences as Wales boss had set him up for a shot at the big time at club level. It simply wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Yet laying all of QPR’s present problems – no wins from 12 league games, bottom of the table with the worst goal difference in the Premier League, a set of increasingly angry and disillusioned fans to name but three – at the door of the manager is simply wrong, with more than a few of 2005’s men needing to take a long hard look at themselves in 2012/13.
There’s no doubt Hughes will eventually be sacked if QPR’s form doesn’t improve dramatically and quickly – and an away game at Old Trafford this weekend following on from the miserable loss to Southampton last Saturday doesn’t suggest that that is coming soon – but whilst the Welshman has made mistakes during what is likely to be less than a full year in charge, he has been let down by his players too.
Admittedly signing men whose CV highlights all come a long way down the Employment History section wasn’t a wise move from Hughes and owner Tony Fernandes in the first place, but you’d have thought that these same players wouldn’t want ‘Premier League relegation’ listed on that same document. It seems some don’t care.
Others such as Adel Taarabt and Jamie Mackie – an Exeter City player in 2005 – still appear willing to give their skills and effort respectively to what is appearing to be an increasingly desperate cause, but QPR need everyone on board as they do exactly what Hughes said that they’d never need to do again after narrowly staying up last season, and battle relegation.
The club are undoubtedly in much better financial health than they were seven years ago when they were staving off demotion from the Championship, but ask a QPR fan if he preferred those days of watching the efforts of the likes of Marc Bircham, Kevin Gallen and Paul Furlong compared to today’s team and there is only likely to be one answer.
Those same fans would scarcely have believed that those star players of 2005 would one day represent their club.
They should have been careful what they wished for.
West Bromwich Albion: Some forward thinking
Have you heard the one about the Irishman, the Belgian and the Nigerian? Premier League defences have and they’re growing increasingly sick of it.
It’s no joke that West Bromwich Albion are performing so well in this campaign though, and with early season optimism now giving way to mid-season reality there appears to be a real belief that Shane Long, Romelu Lukaku, Peter Odemwingie and an increasingly impressive supporting cast can fire the Baggies to new heights.
Just how high those highs can get depends on what happens over the next few months of course, but with pre-season hopes of successfully fighting relegation now morphing into desires of a top half finish (even Europe?) then The Hawthorns is fast becoming a good place to be.
Roberto di Matteo will be back there on Saturday 21 months after losing his job as Baggies boss, and whilst his sacking seemed more than a little harsh at the time it is yet further evidence that this is a club who are not afraid to make brave and bold decisions both on and off the pitch.
Behind the scenes, sporting and technical director Dan Ashworth undertakes a role the like of which isn’t all too common in the Premier League, and would become less so at the end of the current season were he not involved in appointing his successor before his heads off to take up a similar role with England.
A former player, Ashworth is a savvy operator who has gone about improving West Brom’s fortunes since being appointed to the role in late 2007. When things looked in danger of unravelling under Di Matteo, Ashworth stepped in and appointed Roy Hodgson to steer the side to mid-table. Eyebrows might have been raised when he chose Steve Clarke as Hodgson’s replacement following his departure for England, but so far so very, very good.
And why shouldn’t it be? Clarke was an experienced player at the top level and has learned his coaching trade under the likes of Jose Mourinho and Kenny Dalglish. That Ashworth and West Brom had the bravery to give him his step up to become a No. 1 is a decision that has so far been richly rewarded.
The likes of Ben Foster, Gareth McAuley, James Morrison, Claudio Yacob and Youssouf Mulumbu have all impressed as the Baggies have picked up six wins in their opening 11 games to sit fifth in the table above fancied teams such as Tottenham and Arsenal, but it is those three attackers mentioned earlier who appear to epitomise everything about this forward thinking club.
Long, Lukaku and Odemwingie have each scored three goals in the league this season, and although when combined that only just puts the three of them ahead of the division’s top scorers Luis Suarez and Robin van Persie – who each have eight apiece – they have been invaluable contributors to a team who appear to fear no-one.
There will of course be tough challenges ahead – not least Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United before the turn of the year – but there is nothing to suggest that West Brom should go into any of those games with an inferiority complex. Everton, a club who West Brom are currently on the same points as and beat at The Hawthorns in early September, are often lauded for the workaholic way that they tackle every game, so why not the Baggies too?
As well as hard work, Clarke’s rotation of his three forwards has been key to their success, and there wasn’t a hint of dissent when Odemwingie was dropped to the bench for last weekend’s visit to Wigan just a few days after he’d scored twice against Southampton.
The options will be limited against Chelsea at the weekend due to Lukaku being unable to face his parent club, but Long, Odemwingie and their team-mates will be working as hard as ever to deliver against the European champions.
Clarke will demand nothing less, and’s that’s no joke.
Wigan: Sticking up for the little guy
Here in Britain we love a good sporting underdog, someone we can get behind and support even in the face of tremendous adversity.
Examples include Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards, a quite spectacularly bad ski jumper who competed at the 1988 Winter Olympics, as well as any number of British tennis players who have tried and failed to win Wimbledon over the years. If you’re lucky and you’ve plied them with just the right amount of alcohol, you can even get a supporter of one of Liverpool’s fierce rivals to admit that a hint of a smile crossed their face when Djimi Traore, Igor Biscan and the like were parading the European Cup around Istanbul after the Reds came back from the dead to beat AC Milan in 2005. They’ll later deny it of course.
All of those were one off, sometimes once in a lifetime moments though, but it seems as though we are a little less welcoming of our more regular underdogs.
Take Wigan Athletic, a club who have only been part of the league system in England for 34 years and come May will have spent the last eight of those years in the top flight. Theirs should be a heart-warming tale of the success of a locally-backed club from a town whose population could fit inside Wembley Stadium, but for many it isn’t.
Wigan ‘don’t deserve’ to be in the Premier League apparently, with their place supposedly blocking the path of other, ‘bigger’ clubs who haven’t produced the results, consistency or quality of football that the Latics have over their stay in the top flight.
Attendances at both home and away matches are often flagged up as one of the key reasons for this belief, with the latest example of it coming last Saturday when a low amount of Wigan fans made the trip to North London for what turned out to be a terrific 1-0 victory over Tottenham.
The same jokes were wheeled out as photographs of the away end at White Hart Lane did the rounds over social media, as fans of other clubs pointed out that they would of course have taken far more fans to such a big game, thereby proving that they were more deserving of a top flight place than Wigan. Jealousy could be detected in the words.
The fact that this was occurring just a couple of weeks after a survey into the price of football which led to many proposing a potential fan boycott of matches due to astronomical ticket prices was an irony apparently lost on many, but as Wigan received the same criticisms they always do off the pitch, on it Roberto Martinez and his team pulled off another spectacular result.
Last season it appeared certain that many football fans would get their wish to see Wigan return to ‘where they belong’ – perhaps to be replaced by the yo-yoing Birmingham or West Ham – but wins at Anfield, the Emirates Stadium and at home to Manchester United and Newcastle spectacularly turned that around, with this latest win at Tottenham coming off the back of a home victory over West Ham and really invigorating the campaign for Roberto Martinez and his men.
Since Wigan’s promotion to the Premier League in 2005 only the seven ever-presents in the 20 year history of the revamped league – namely Arsenal, Aston Villa, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United and Tottenham – as well as Fulham and Manchester City have managed to stick around in the top flight with them, with plenty of other clubs falling away, yo-yoing between the leagues or never coming back up.
The Latics have had their moments when they’ve looked like joining them of course, but the fact that they haven’t is a curiously uncelebrated underdog story which still continues; a diverse story which includes characters such as Paul Jewell, David Unsworth, Emile Heskey, Charles N’Zogbia, Hugo Rodallega and of course Martinez himself.
There might be other heroes this season – Ben Watson, Franco di Santo or Arouna Kone perhaps – but even if there isn’t then surely it is high time to acknowledge this story, and pay tribute to an underdog who can produce a pretty fierce bite.
Every dog has its day, and Wigan have had eight years’ worth of them.
Isn’t that achievement worth celebrating, no matter how many people are watching?
Tottenham Hotspur: Quietly confident
The attention was largely elsewhere during a madcap Sunday which could quite accurately be described as ‘Super’ due to the drama on show, but Tottenham Hotspur didn’t let that distract them from achieving their goal.
On England’s south coast, Spurs rather quietly slipped into the top four with a 2-1 win over Southampton that might not have done much for the home side’s prospects of avoiding relegation, but certainly served as a huge boost to the ambitions of the visitors at the other end of the Premier League table.
The win was Tottenham’s fifth from the last six league outings, with any doubts over manager Andre Villas-Boas following a winless first three games now firmly placed in the past.
That run of a loss at Newcastle followed by home draws against West Brom and Norwich even saw a few of the more reactionary Spurs fans call for Villas-Boas’s head and the return of good old Harry Redknapp, but the results since mid-September have now surely got any remaining doubters off the Portuguese’s back.
The task now is of course to keep on impressing, and going into a November which includes fixtures against Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool it will also be important to stay calm and not let results go to their heads.
Staying quietly confident might just be the best thing for Villas-Boas and Spurs right now, and so not for him the bullish and always inaccurate cries from Redknapp that his side were ready to challenge for the Premier League title.
The manner that Chelsea took the game away from them in their 4-2 win at White Hart Lane a week and a half ago showcased that Tottenham’s squad isn’t quite on a par with the top sides in the division just yet. Finishing just below them is a different matter altogether though.
In Gareth Bale, Moussa Dembele, Aaron Lennon, Gylfi Sigurdsson, Clint Dempsey, Jermain Defoe and Emmanuel Adebayor there are the raw attacking materials for a serious tilt at the top four from Tottenham, with qualification for the Champions League surely more than just a pipedream during a campaign in which a good cup run would also strengthen Tottenham’s claims to be considered amongst the big boys.
Reaching the Champions League quarter-finals in 2010/11 perhaps led to some people behind the scenes at Tottenham deciding that the club should run before they could walk, and with Redknapp eventually paying the price for such an increase in expectations then maybe it’d be wise for Spurs fans to just take each game as it comes right now. When you have a talent such as Bale on your hands though, that is easier said than done.
In these times of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo it can be easy to overlook other talents and compare them to that star duo – comparisons which they will always lose out in.
However, Redknapp’s recent claim that Bale is the best British player in the Premier League is probably a correct one in terms of recent form, and if the Welshman can keep on inspiring his side then the sky could well be the limit for Tottenham – so long as that sky falls just below Chelsea, Manchester United and Manchester City that is.
Like it or not that is where Spurs are right now, but that is a terrific base from which a young manager can build and look to improve as he establishes himself at a club who are slowly beginning to take him to their hearts.
Spurs and Villas-Boas shouldn’t mind that they’re not the centre of attention as long as they keep winning.
Leave it to others to decide when the quiet confidence deserves to be shouted about.
Chelsea: Three is the magic number
For Chelsea fans, the good things are coming in threes.
The club have won three of the last eight Premier league titles, there’s only been once this season when they didn’t take three points from a league game, and they’ve only conceded three goals at home and three goals away during their unbeaten first eight league fixtures.
Key to that success has been the terrific trio of attacking midfielders who appear to have the fate of their side at their feet.
In Juan Mata, Eden Hazard and Oscar the Blues possess the kind of talents that the rest of the Premier League can only dream of owning.
They don’t come cheap of course – with the trio costing around £80million to unite – but with Mata the oldest at 24 and Hazard and Oscar both just 21 it’s not inconceivable to believe that they’ll all be strutting their stuff at Stamford Bridge for the best part of the next decade. If you’re a Chelsea fan and that didn’t get you licking your lips then I suggest you might like to try another sport.
All three stars have taken the spotlight at some stage already this season, with Hazard shining in his first weeks in English football, Oscar delivering a scintillating Champions League debut at home to Juventus and Mata currently enjoying the limelight thanks to a series of impressive displays and goals over the past few weeks.
The Spaniard had a restricted beginning to 2012/13 following a 12 months which saw him complete his debut Premier League campaign, become an FA Cup and Champions League winner, score in and win the Euro 2012 final and then compete for his country at the Olympic Games, but now his true quality is shining through and Chelsea are reaping the benefits.
The manner in which his two goals transformed last weekend’s 2-1 deficit at Tottenham into a 3-2 lead had a kind of quality about it that you often only associate with championship winning teams, and if Chelsea carry on like this for much longer then it surely can’t be long before they are installed as favourites to win the league ahead of the Manchester clubs.
The chance to get one over on one of them comes on Sunday when Manchester United visit Stamford Bridge for probably the biggest game of Hazard and Oscar’s fledgling Chelsea careers so far.
The Belgian and the Brazilian might have been playing second and third fiddle to Mata’s leading man in recent weeks, but all three have the quality to decide a game which, given United’s recent defensive problems, looks to be Chelsea’s for the taking regardless of their Champions League loss in Donetsk on Tuesday night.
The attacking nature of his trio might have led Roberto di Matteo to occasionally rein them in, but the platform provided by the solidity of John Obi Mikel and the energy of Ramires behind them allows Chelsea’s fab three to be let off their leashes. It is a setup which means that the pressure to score goals isn’t suffocating Fernando Torres the way it used to do, whilst it’s also made Frank Lampard realise that he might as well start getting comfortable on the substitute’s bench.
Di Matteo has fielded the three stars in matches at Arsenal and Tottenham this season, and so a home game against Sir Alex Ferguson’s side isn’t likely to see him abandon the approach.
Beat United and Chelsea suddenly go seven points clear of them, whilst increasing their opponents’ league defeats this season to three.
There’s that number again. Chelsea fans won’t tire of seeing it throughout the season.
By the end of it though, if their star trio can keep on performing there is every chance that they’ll see their team at number one.
Manchester City: If it ain’t broke don’t fix it
There is a sense of irony that it took a home match against Sunderland for the Manchester City of late 2012 to finally start looking like the Manchester City of earlier in the year.
The Mackems were the only team to leave the Etihad Stadium with more than a cup of tea and a sense of regret in the Premier League last season, with late March’s 3-3 draw serving as the only home league match of 2011/12 that City didn’t win.
They would have experienced defeat back then had first Mario Balotelli and then Aleksandar Kolarov not struck in the final five minutes to earn a point which ending up proving vital in the title race, but there was only one way that the meeting between the same two clubs a week-and-a-half ago was going to go once Kolarov scored a trademark free-kick just five minutes in.
The Serbian was playing in a City team which was made up entirely of players who picked up league title winners’ medals last season, with first Sergio Aguero and then Gael Clichy emerging from the bench to make it a lucky 13 champions on show for Roberto Mancini.
Only after James Milner had made it 3-0 with his deflected free-kick did the City boss turn to one of his summer recruits, with Jack Rodwell climbing off the bench to enter the contest after the 90 minutes were up, ensuring that he didn’t have time to make the kind of error seen in the matches against Southampton and Borussia Dortmund earlier this season, when stray Rodwell passes led to opposition goals.
This isn’t singling out the former Everton man, but City’s troubles at the start of the campaign seem to have stemmed from their desire to integrate summer signings into their plans.
In a transfer window which saw Chelsea buy Eden Hazard, Arsenal bring in Santi Cazorla and Manchester United acquire Robin van Persie, City – fresh from a first title in 44 years and no doubt determined to build upon it – signed Rodwell, Javi Garcia, Scott Sinclair, Maicon and Matija Nastasic.
Garcia, an expensive arrival who lists Real Madrid and Benfica on his CV, is undoubtedly a fine player whilst Nastasic, at just 19, showed immense promise at Fiorentina, but neither were signings to get City fans out of their seats, whilst Maicon’s best days are as far behind him as Gareth Bale was a couple of years ago, and Rodwell and Sinclair are young talents who aren’t likely to get the playing time at City that they would have got elsewhere.
Last season – right to the very last kick of it – was of course one of perfection for Mancini, City and their fans, and in the task of improving upon perfection City might just have come up short. They’re not alone in that though of course, it happened with The Godfather sequels as well.
This particular Italian figurehead has seemed to have complicated things for himself in the early weeks of the season, with the signings of Nastasic and Maicon in particular seeing Mancini switch to using a back three instead of the back four which saw City to success last season.
The result has been uncertainty at the back whatever way City line up, with two goals conceded in both of their first two league games of the season against Southampton and Liverpool, three against Real Madrid in the Champions League and four as they exited the Capital One Cup at home to Aston Villa. Only the heroics of Joe Hart kept Borussia Dortmund down to one in the Champions League two weeks ago, as the defence in front of him resembled an absent Polish roof letting everything through.
Mancini’s mood after that match indicated that he was ready to abandon the back three experiment, and so it proved when City looked back to their old selves against Sunderland as they kept a first clean sheet of the season.
Going back to improve in the future seems to be the way forward for Mancini, and whilst his summer signings can’t be written off as duds just yet, the boss might just have to make them work a bit harder for their places in his plans.
Those who were in them last season deserve that at least.
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