Ten Things for Friday

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Columnist Ed likes to yell to make sure his points are heard:

• I’m sitting here watching Bolton v. Arsenal and wondering why I’m doing so.  It seems that Wigan manager Roberto Maritnez is in the stands, as is Rafa Benitez, the latter of whom I expect is maintaining some visibility in hopes of getting another gig.  It’s got to be boring leaving the game once you’re in it, plus it’s a bit tougher to make the big bucks.  Just ask Mark Hughes.  It would be too brash to say that Benitez doesn’t know what he’s doing.  Clearly he’s had success with Liverpool, as well as other teams throughout Europe.  However, his last season with Liverpool was simply painful.
   
• Chris Foy has got to be among the worst referees in the league.  Alex Song visibly grabs the arm of someone on Bolton for a good 30 to 40 yard run, no card.  In fact, for 37 minutes, it’s hard to get any call at all.  But then, Bolton’s Mark Davies flops, and Thomas Vermaelin gets a yellow card.  I’ve seen too many poor performances from Foy.  It's time to relegate him.

• Who was it that kept talking about how Theo Walcott was just as good as Gareth Bale?  Oh, that’s right, it was the boss-man, FOF, who likes to make that very point and speak of how Bale is over-rated.  This usually comes right after some kind of diatribe/lament about how unfair the press is to Manchester United 'keeper David De Gea.  Well, one would hope that another season of Bale dominance and Walcott’s barely showing up should finally dispel that myth.  And one might be thinking just how similar DeGea and former Spurs' goalie Huerelho Gomes are appearing to be.

• United has a lot of top-tier strikers and wings.  And that’s pretty much all they have.  It will be interesting to see if that’s enough to get them the title.  City’s slippage since the departure of Ya Ya Toure has allowed United to work its way back up top.  But can they stay there?  Can either Manchester team?  If so, it’s not because they’re so good, but rather because the top challengers – Spurs in particular – are still a player or two away themselves.  I should add that I’m tired of hearing about the insurmountable leads of City or United.  Right now, it’s at least a three horse race, as there’s more parity in the top six than there’s been in recent memory.  A good thing for the EPL.

• Spurs' win at Wigan is big, not because Wigan is good, but because it shows that Spurs have galloped past the angst of the injustice at the Etihad.

Planted by the Potters: Stoke City 2 - Spurs 1

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James makes a return to these pages, in search of the silver lining in Spurs' weekend's loss to Stoke:

Spurs' fantastic league run had to end some time.  And in gazing at the schedule through the last few weeks there were two games that popped up as troublesome:  Chelsea at the Lane next week and our trip to the Britannia last Sunday, a notoriously difficult place to play for reasons that are well known. The "cold Tuesday at Stoke" expression seems particularly profound after the events of last weekend.

Although the location, support and weather are clearly factors in Stoke sitting 8th and for Pulis never having been relegated despite negligible budgets and talent levels, the main reason for Stoke's recent success is their Neanderthal style of play in a league that, overall, is evolving from the hoof and throw mentality.  But not the Potters, who not only employ the style but seem to happily embrace it. This is so even for their fans, who are famous for chanting "we only score on throw ins" and taunted Spurs at the end of the first half on Sunday with "2 nil to the rugby team."

Of course none of this is a surprise for those that follow the Permiership and certainly not for Harry Redknapp and his Spurs.  But there they were in the first half looking like they were continually trying to play chess in the middle of a game of checkers.  Credit to Stoke who came out ready to play, vastly more so than the Lilywhites.  They consistently beat Spurs to loose balls, bullied them all over the pitch and took full advantage of Spurs' sloppy marking (the second goal was the otherwise sublime Scott Parker's worst moment so far in a Spurs' shirt) to race to their first half lead.  Even when Spurs made the occasional counter attack, it appeared that a cross would come aimed haphazardly at Adebayor in the box surrounded by four red and white striped trees.  It was during the first half of this game that I realized how short a team Spurs are, particularly without Dawson and King in the back, while, for some reason, Gallas and Kaboul, for all their virtues, seem genetically unable to get more than six inches off the ground.  Stoke took full advantage of this in the first half and did all the annoying things the Potters do - one could read whole chapters of "War and Peace" while Shotton dried the ball with his special ball-drying shirt during any one of the hundred throw ins Stoke executed.  

Yes, But Can They Do it on a Cold December Night in Stoke?: Week 15 in the EPL

Lots of 10am Kickoffs on Saturday meant the inability to really watch and concentrate on more than one game at a time -- and loyal readers of this space might have a hunch that it was the Manchester United match that got the closest view.  Consequently, this column is a bit more focused on Sunday's action than is typical:

o Steve Keane looked dressed for a funeral yesterday on the eve of his one year anniversary at the helm of Blackburn, wearing a gray suit, silk rep tie and black overcoat as he stood stolidly on the Stadium of Light's sideline. The Manager could have been forgiven for thinking his choice of dress was appropriate, as he was just about in the process of laying the "sack Steve Keane" movement to rest before his side gave up an 85th minute equalizer and a 93rd minute winner at the Stadium of Light -- a result that was extremely harsh on the visitors and that may well lead to Keane's own demise.

o Keane may have lost the Blackburn fans, but he clearly hasn't lost the locker room, as evidenced by the way his boys threw their bodies around the box in a determined effort to keep Sunderland out of the net -- especially in the game's second half, a 45 minute rampage that saw the Black Cats throw wave after wave of attacks at Rovers.  The two late goals will mean even more calls for the Keane's head, though, and one can perhaps find fault with the team's increasingly deep lying positioning, which left Yakubu more isolated than Robinson Crusoe, and gave the impression that Roves were more interested in hanging on to their early lead than they were in trying to finish the game off with a second goal.

Of Peter Pan and Supermodels: EPL Week Eight in Review

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o Mario Balotelli's overhead kick aside, Manchester City looked a bit pedestrian in the first half without Kun Aguero and David Silva in the lineup against Villa on Saturday. Not that you couldn't say the same thing about Manchester United earlier in the same day, with Wayne Rooney, Nani and Chicharito on the bench. I guess these stars really do earn their paychecks...! City pulled it back around in the second half, and Aston Villa never looked as if they were in the contest after the break. The stage is now. set for quite the Manchester derby next weekend, but the  question is which Roberto Mancini-led team will show up: the cantennacio, defensive-minded one, or the more attack-minded side that has featured more often this season.....

o I'm beginning to think Baltotelli's hairdo is a stick-on strip  It changes much too often to be real.

o Owen Hargreaves limped onto the pitch for the Sky Blues on Saturday without pulling a muscle in the process. Will wonders never cease....?

o Alex McLeish had Villa looking in form on Saturday; or rather, that should be he had them looking in the same form that he had Birmingham City last season. Hope the Villans fans didn't get overly excited about their undefeated start.

o I thought I'd heard just about everything in an English accent, until I heard the commentator during the Chelsea - Everton game refer to the Blues' owner as Ro-MAN Ab-ra-MO-vitch.  I don't speak much Russian, but isn't that a case of putting the accent on the wrong syl-LA-ble?

Flattened

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For all the highs this United side reached mid-week versus Schalke 04 in the Champions League, the weekend represented a cruel comeuppance, as the team managed to hit a new low only five days later.  Mailing in an insipid, uninspired performance in which they never really got out of third gear, Manchester United lost 1-nil to Arsenal today at the Emirates, in a match that opened the title race back up.  Now faced with two crucial matches in the space of seven days, Sir Alex's side will be forced next Sunday to confront an increasingly confident Chelsea on only four days rest.

Not that you can say they don't deserve to be in this position: United were bland all afternoon and came out seemingly set up as if to generate a nil-nil scoreline.  Arsenal 'keeper Wojiech Szczesny was never really tested on the afternoon, and the number of true chances the Reds had in the game could be counted on one hand with several fingers to spare.

Call it a Champions League-sized hangover or whatever you want -- all four semi-finalists bit the dust in their respective domestic leagues this weekend -- but United never appeared to want the game, failing to show urgency even in the match's closing minutes.  The midfield combination of Carrick and Anderson once again failed to impress, and Nani and Park on the wings were relatively useless.  In the day's most shocking development, Park -- United's human dynamo, after all -- was seen lazily walking back toward goal and left Aaron Ramsey completely unmarked inside the 18 yard box on the play which turned the afternoon in the home side's favor.