Weekend in 100 words or less

The fixture list makers last summer decided the weekend following the FA Cup 3rd round in January would be the weekend when most of the big clubs would actually play at home and kick off at 3pm on Saturday against weaker opposition. Dull and predictable? That wouldn’t be the Premier League. Another dour Liverpool showing ensured not all the big boys would win on Saturday and then on Sunday a team most knew very little about last summer produced a superb performance playing and defeating Arsenal at their own game.

Baker’s Dozen – 13 observations from the weekend’s matches

1. Wenger to blame for another Arsenal loss  - Sunday was not a good day to be an Arsenal fan. It was a day when, for the second successive Premier League game, their two biggest weaknesses were exposed at the same time. The Gunners are a mentally weak team who cannot defend. It is that simple. Of course they have reasons for this (or excuses depending on how you look at it) but what they don’t have right now is solutions. When Arsenal kicked off the season at Newcastle in August they did so with a back four of Bacary Sagna, Lorient Koscielny, Thomas Vermaelen and Kieran Gibbs. I’m sure many of you will agree that it’s a more than adequate back four for a team challenging for a top four spot although we all knew then that half of it was more than just a little injury-prone. Since then the four have played zero minutes of Premier League action together and the key reason for Arsenal’s poor results this season has been injuries at the back. However, injuries to defenders is nothing new to Premier League teams. The decisions on tactics and personnel when you are missing them is down to the manager and once again Arsene Wenger has been found wanting in this department. Wenger said the loss to Swansea came in “suspicious circumstances” in reference to the decision to award Swansea a penalty after 15 minutes and he is right that it was a very harsh decision, but Arsenal fans today should be more concerned about the ‘suspicious circumstances’ in which Wenger continues to decide who will play in his back four. Last month when right back Johan Djourou got hurt at Man City, Wenger decided to change the position of three his defenders and put on 19-year-old Ignasi Miquel at left back. Miquel and Per Mertesacker later marked space instead of players and David Silva scored the game’s only goal. At Fulham earlier this month he decided to play 20-year-old midfielder Francis Coquelin at left back and he was out of position in the final seconds when Bobby Zamora smashed home a late winner. On Sunday Miquel, at left back, was handed his first Premier League start and was out of position for each of Swansea’s second half goals. The winning goal, which came less than a minute after Arsenal equalised, also exposed Mertesacker as a defender with very little awareness. The German, just as he did at Blackburn earlier this season, again showed no chemistry with his centre-back partner and stepped up to play offside rather than tracking the  forward running Danny Graham. Arsenal have now lost eight points from winning positions in the last four matches and conceded 25 away goals this season, higher than every team in the league. Of course injuries have not helped but Wenger’s tentative display in the transfer market earlier in the season continues to cost his team as does his decision making with what he’s got. Arsenal fans deserve better.

2. Swansea are the real deal - Watching the faces of opposing Premier League managers in their interviews after the games at the Libery Stadium is one of the best things Swansea City fans can do. You see, the fans have known for some time what those managers didn’t. Sir Alex Ferguson, Roy Hodgson, Tony Pulis, Harry Redknapp, the list goes on and on. Every Premier League manager who has visited Swansea this season has come away impressed and surprised at how comfortable they are on the ball and playing against Premier League opposition. The biggest surprise for me is how much courage they have. They continue to keep the ball down and want the ball even when things aren’t going their way.

3. Goalkeepers continue to shine – When I first moved to Canada and met people new to this game the biggest thing they struggled with was the value, or the lack there of, in the goalkeeper. As I tried to explain the wise money spent on a goalkeeper is usually to prevent them doing something they shouldn’t rather than doing something special. Don’t get me wrong, goalkeepers are extremely valuable, but rarely, I explained, do they affect results in the manner in which goalies in hockey do, for example. This season, however, we have seen a remarkable amount of top class performances from goalkeepers not playing on ‘big’ clubs where they have often almost independently won points by themselves. During Newcastle’s game against QPR on Sunday co-commentator David Pleat was full of praise for one of these goalkeepers, Tim Krul. Pleat said the Dutchman was one of six top class performers in goal this season in the league but stopped short naming the other five. So it got me thinking. Who is the six? Feel free to leave yours below by the way.

4. My top goalkeepers of the season so far – Forget the David Pleat six here is my top ten goalkeepers in order of how well they’ve played so far this season: 1. Tim Krul (Newcastle). 2. Michel Vorm (Swansea) 3. Wayne Hennessey (Wolves). 4. Joe Hart (Man City). 5. Shay Given (Aston Villa). 6. Ali Al-Habsi (Wigan) 7. John Ruddy (Norwich). 8. Simon Mignolet (Sunderland). 9. Wojciech Szczesny (Arsenal). 10. Tim Howard (Everton). I promise you I will re-address this list closer to the end of the season but as you can see it’s certainly been a big season for goalkeepers not at the big clubs so far.

5. Premier League games continue to have corners taken that wouldn’t be acceptable at a Sunday League match – Honestly watch them. The amount of corners in this league that hit the first defender is incredible. Every weekend I see pathetic corner after pathetic corner and its stunning to watch it happen so regularly.

6. Forget the goalkeeping controversy at Villa. Its not a story – There were some last week in the West Midlands who felt American Brad Guzan deserved to keep his place in the side even though Shay Given had fully recovered from his hamstring injury. I hope those people watched Given against Everton on Saturday because he was brilliant again.

7. Landon Donovan – a class above the rest – Major League Soccer gets little respect in England and that’s if you can even get people to talk about it. Quite simply its not on their radar. On Saturday, though, at Villa Park two of England’s finest clubs in Aston Villa and Everton played their usual chess match (it was the fifth draw in their last six meetings) and it has to be said there was very little class on show. Everton were the brighter of the sides in the first half, Villa were better in the second and scored but later conceded at a time when they were fully in control. Marc Albrighton was rightfully blamed for the goal and even admitted fault on his twitter account later but American Landon Donovan provided the game’s only bit of brilliance when he produced a fantastic pass through to Victor Anichebe who did the rest. Donovan, who only just finished his own full domestic season for the LA Galaxy, could have been sitting on a beach somewhere but instead looked the fittest of all the players at Villa Park and was outstanding wherever David Moyes decided to play him, which was anywhere from left wing, right wing or centre forward throughout the game.

8. Without Ba and Tiote Newcastle put out a complete team performance – Newcastle have had a magnificent start to the season but when they went six games without a win before Christmas most people expected the slide to start. Since then they went to Bolton and won comfortably, lost at Liverpool and then battered Manchester United. Then Demba Ba and Cheik Tiote boarded planes to Africa for their Cup of Nations and another slide was expected. However, on Sunday the team put out by Alan Pardew played like they’d never had either of them in their side. Although the result (1-0 over QPR) didn’t show it, the dominance was there thanks to some fantastic tactical discipline by the likes of Jonas Gutierrez and goalscorer Leon Best. What looked like a 4-4-2 was actually a 4-3-2-1 with the pair operating in wide areas behind Shola Ameobi and it was their workrate and skill that made the difference in Newcastle’s sixth home victory of the season.

9. Shaun Derry’s foul on Yohan Cabaye exposes inconsistencies in the game – You’ll be hard stretched to find a red card more debated than the one issued by referee Chris Foy to Vincent Kompany last Sunday in Man City’s FA Cup loss to Man Utd. Some thought he should have been sent off while many even were at the opposite end and felt it wasn’t even a foul. Such a high-profile moment has had an obvious knock-on effect in the game this week and almost every poor challenge brought higher than normal moans from crowds across the grounds. The worst two challenges of the weekend once again were challenges that were reckless where the defender showed their studs. Norwich’s Daniel Ayala was the first culprit on WBA’s Jerome Thomas. He was booked and conceded a penalty and was lucky not be sent off. Then on Sunday at St James’ Park (yes that’s what I am still calling it) QPR’s Shaun Derry (above) went in high with speed and left his foot up to catch the ankle of Yohan Cabaye. The foul was far worse than the one Kompany saw red for but Derry was given just a yellow card for the most likely reason that it was simply just the one leg that he led with. And so now we’ve got to the point where a defender can fall to the floor with both his feet up and make little to no contact on his opponent and get a red but another player can charge far more aggressively at higher speed and hurt an opponent (Cabaye was taken off) and only get a yellow card. Yes that makes a lot of sense. Once again we are left screaming for consistency. The description of a reckless challenge in the laws is ‘endangering the safety of an opponent’ which is exactly what Derry did but instead today most people believe he shouldn’t have been sent off because of how low to the ground the foul was. By the way if you are wondering who the referee was in the Newcastle-QPR game it was Chris Foy. What a farce.

10. Leave it to Sir Alex Ferguson to hammer the nail on the head – The best quote of all around this madness took place shortly after 5pm local time at Old Trafford on Saturday when the Manchester United manager brought some common sense and a solution to the table at the same time.

“What should happen is the referee’s association, Mike Riley, should come out and say what actually the law is and they should stick by that law. There’s too many changes, too many inconsistencies and it really has to come from the very top. Tell referees this is what is going to happen, this is your responsibility, this is your decision making because at the moment we are not seeing that.”

11. Wayne Rooney’s woeful penalty record continues – It has to be said that the save from Adam Bogdan to deny Rooney from the spot was excellent but the fact is the Englishman has now missed two penalties in a week and four of his last eight in the Premier League and for a player of his quality that is simply not good enough. Top penalty takers usually score over 80% of their penalties and some of the very best score over 90%. Rooney has taken 14 penalties in his Premier League career and missed six for a scoring percentage of just 57%. United are a team that sends a lot of crosses into the box and will continue to get penalty kicks given their way and need their best player to go on a run where he scores at least nine out his next ten which would put him at 17/24 or just 70%.

12. Steve Kean impresses as Blackburn earn three crucial points - It’s never easy for any manager when your side goes down to 10 men after just 23 minutes. However, if you ask a manager which position is the best position to lose a man from then he would say striker. That’s what happened to Blackburn against Fulham on Saturday when Yakubu received his first ever red card in English football. What his manager did next though was very surprising. Kean withdrew a midfielder (Radoslav Petrovic) and brought on another striker (David Goodwillie) and asked wingers Junior Hoilett and Morten Gamst Pedersen to tuck in when they can to keep the advantage in midfield. This meant Fulham’s deep playmaker Danny Murphy couldn’t get into the game as he had to sit deep to cover them. It was also another example of Kean’s evolution as a Premier League manager. A month ago at Sunderland his side led 1-0 with six minutes remaining but had conceded any kind of possession for the bulk of the second half, sitting deeper and deeper. They lost 2-1. Since then he has backed his players to keep the ball and play themselves out of trouble (like they did at Man Utd when it was 2-2) and once again the players showed they were fully behind their manager.

13. Rock bottom for the Moneyball men at Anfield - Liverpool’s Director of Football Damien Comolli and his Liverpool management team are obsessed with the statistic ‘chances created’. It was the main reason they spent a combined forty-three million pounds on Charlie Adam, Jordan Henderson and Stewart Downing in the summer. The trio’s magic number was 239. As in 239 chances created between them last season. On Saturday, Liverpool – who lead the league in shots off target - had one shot on goal in their 0-0 draw at home to Stoke and left the stat geeks in their upper box asking more questions. Many of their loyal fans left the ground yearning for the return of Luis Suarez but it would have been hard to see how Liverpool would have scored even with the Uruguayan playing on Saturday. A change of tactic with a back three did little to ignite Liverpool’s inept offense and the Reds have now drawn seven home games this season, scoring just five goals in those matches. It remains too early to say the trio are Carlos Pena, Jeremy Giambi and Mike Magnante (go see the movie) but it has to be said that all three have been a major disappointment for Liverpool so far.

Six Super Stats

• Paul Scholes (37 years and 59 days old today) overtook Bryan Robson to become the oldest English goalscorer for Manchester United in the PL. Robson was 36 years and 216 days old when he netted at Norwich on 15 Aug 1993.
• Manchester United have scored in their last 41 PL home matches, setting a new PL club record. Only once before have they had a longer streak in the top flight – 42 matches in a row from February 1955 to February 1957.
• Liverpool have scored 24 goals in their 21 PL matches – their fewest at this stage of a top fight season in 20 years, since scoring 24 goals in old Division One in 1991-92.
• Frank Lampard scored in his 100^th different PL match for Chelsea, becoming the third player to achieve this feat for a single club in the PL era after Thierry Henry (123) for Arsenal and Alan Shearer (115) for Newcastle.
• Fernando Torres has failed to score in his last 10 PL matches. This is his longest run without a goal for either Chelsea or Liverpool.
• Swansea became the 18th club to win a Premier League match after being behind this season. The only clubs yet to do this are Manchester United and Newcastle United.

Quick Quiz

Which Premier League club became the first club this season to use their 30th player? I will tweet the answer out on Monday evening.

For more stats like the ones in this blog follow Infostrada on twitter by clicking here.

Don’t forget to catch more detailed analysis, including some love for Wolves and Norwich after excellent away performances, in Monday’s Footy Show EPL Podcast that will be available this afternoon.

Kristian Jack