Sunday, September 25, 2011

The Premiership Saturday

The Premiership table is beginning to take familiar shape with five of the top six now from the anticipated front runners. Only Newcastle United currently exceeding all expectations and dispatching Blackburn Rovers yesterday are bucking the trend with Arsenal currently finding themselves in mid table after their September horriblus.

Stoke City continued their excellent early season work with a hard earned point at home to the Champions who proved a little toothless without the so far superlative Wayne Rooney. Tony Pulis backed by his board is moulding his Stoke side into far more than a kick and rush side, they should achieve a strong finish in the Premiership this season.

Arsenal enjoyed a comfortable win against a Bolton team that must now be having some serious concern about their Premiership well being. Bolton had an excellent season last year but since their hammering in the FA Cup semi final by Stoke results have been on the slide and they find themselves rooted to the bottom of the table. Whilst it is still relatively early days, they need to start winning some points very soon and next week they host Chelsea.

Chelsea themselves earned a comfortable 4-1 home win against Premiership novices Swansea. It was a day marked again for the ups and downs of the headline printing Fernando Torres who scored a well taken goal before being shown a red card for an awful lunge at Mark Gower. Torres is however continuing to look sharper and another goal will help his cause and confidence.

AVB must grasp this as an opportunity to employ some forced rotation and with Drogba fit again it may work out to his advantage. Torres will certainly start in Valencia this week but he has proven throughout his career that regularly playing two games a week is beyond him.

In the battle below the top three, Liverpool got their season back on track with a home win against Wolves and Spurs doomed Wigan to yet another home defeat to increase the pressure on the highly likeable Roberto Martinez.

Fulham and West Brom earned a point each which didn't really suit either of them and Manchester City beat hard working Everton with Balotelli getting on the score sheet again. Bayern Munich await them this week in the Champions League and the test however will next weekend to see how they follow that tie.

The headlines currently seemed to be reserved for criticism for Torres and the man who replaced him, Andy Carroll. It is to the chagrin of both their respective managers and whilst the two do appear to be improving, it is only goals that will provide the antidote to those headlines. After all, strikers are bought to score goals, with the exception of Emile Heskey of course - No Nonsense.
 

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