King Kenny & Star Stevie: So Kenny started the way it was expected; a routine loss to Manchester United. What he didn’t expect was Gerrard’s horror show to continue. Liverpool’s Captain and face, Stevie himself got red faced when he fluffed a penalty vs Blackburn (as my fantasy captain that was a 20 point swing) and then saw red in the big game Sunday. It’s nice to blame Hodgson for every crime on earth, but I wonder when fans will star questioning the likes of Torres, Stevie, Johnson….the entire squad!
Money can buy me trophies: I’m bored of hearing how Man City are splashing money, spoiling the league and attempting to ‘buy’ trophies. Same chatter I heard when Roman took over Chelsea. Today Chelsea are perceived as amongst the best in the world and few believe they ‘brought’ any of their trophies. What I pray and wish everyone prays is that every club gets owners like Roman or Sheikh Mansour. Liverpool included, Almeria included, Catania included. Let’s make this game even bigger.
Coach Couch: a few coach moments towards the end of 2010, bugged me:
- Arsene Wenger admitted that the blame for Arsenal’s draw vs Wigan Athletic rests with his boys. Finally! The last time he admitted the same was when Xavi had sent a wrong pass!
- Benitez is sacked, Hodgson should have been sacked long ago (wasn’t sacked when my mind was being troubled!!!) and Houlier is due to be sacked – what’s the lesson to be learned? Leave your answers in your comments below, if you so wish.
- Jose Mourinho’s press conference on Dec 19th 2010 was symbolic. You seldom find a manager walking into post-match session with a piece of paper detailing 13 mistakes made by the referee against Real Madrid, after a hard fought win over Sevilla. This was more a direct hint towards the referee wanting Real Madrid to lose, than he being incompetent in a cold December fixture. It helped recall that before the ‘El Classico’, Jose had mentioned that he hopes “the officiating will be fair”. Guess these are all bits of the puzzle which make up Jose’s winning formula – creating team unity based on an ‘us vs them’ mentality, playing mind games with the officials and more. Still at end of the day there’s no way we can stop Jose from his self proclaimed assessment of himself faring 11 on 10 for his record in 2010! And deservedly too.
How biased and unfair is the FA: While we are on Arsene Wenger’s team (which drew vs Wigan), we need to mention they didn’t have eight regular starters. Then how come the FA chose to ignore this, despite, a month earlier, catching Ian Holloway’s collar for not fielding the regular line up. Sir Alex Ferguson has got away every other month fielding a second string team, where as Wolves paid a huge fine for the same crime a year ago. Call it double standards or plain hypocrisy!
How biased and unfair is the media: Samuel Eto wins the treble with two successive clubs in two successive seasons, his career resume is nothing short of the best of the best, so how come his name hardly ever gets mentioned amongst the best in the world?
La Liga GW 18 wrap-up: Barca won… yawn… 4-0…yawn… Messi scored…yawn…Real Madrid, then won… yawn….came from behind…yawn… 4-2… yawn… Ronaldo scored hattrick… ok, yawn…. trail Barca by 2 points… yaaawnnn. What a league, even the 3rd placed team is unable to compete with the 2nd placed team, eleven points behind already!
Sign off with Stat of brilliance: Barcelona started the year with a hard fought 2-1 win over Levante. However in that match midfield general Xavi completed 156 passes, more than the entire Levante team put together! Safe to say, he is the best all time central midfielder and we are lucky to be around in an era to see him dazzle.
Have a great week ahead!
Related posts:
Lesson to be learned is EPL coaches aren’t aggressive enough, they are cast in orthodoxy, Massimiliano Allegri last night played about 4 strikers pulled old ass Seedorf for Cassano, and pretty much had Abate, Thiago Silva, Gattuso and even Pato tracking back playing defense down 3-1, even went up for a moment before coming out with a point. The point is sometimes you have to do whatever it takes to get players to buy into what you’re doing…and truely put the responsibility on their shoulders. Many EPL coaches hand cuff players and then blame them like they had a hand on their own destiny. Looks like Everton is being forced into a bit of this type of play. And they have the personnel to make a late season run, if an Arteta can get heallthy and the Asia Cup players come back in one piece.
The only person worth questioning on Sunday was Howard Webb. The performance of the Liverpool players was much improved from what we’ve seen, but when the referee is so very clearly biased for one side there’s little that can be done. The stats indicate that United win something like 69% of games when Webb is officiating, compared with 30-49% when he takes charge of Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal games.
And of course Chelsea bought the trophies that they’ve won.. where would they be without Abramovich’s money? Winning zilch, like they always were prior to his takeover. And if every club had sugar daddy owners, all that would happen would transfer fees and wages would inflate ridiculously, and the richest out of the richest owners would win. Exactly the same scenario as right now, except with far more money across all levels..
I like what former Liverpool player – John Barnes told last week that he thought the Liverpool players were able to get away with playing badly because they knew Hodgson – undermined and lacking authority – would get the stick if and when it went wrong.
He added: “If the players feel that if they don’t perform, no one’s going to question them, then subconsciously, do they have to perform?”
And that means the focus will shift onto the players. It is the players – the very ones who hid behind Hodgson during those disastrous last six months – who will from now on be in the firing line.
@Tom – Berbatov dived, but I would like to see some citation on the Webb winning percentages (oops forgot this was the internet).
you’re comments…yawn