Happiest this weekend will be the two people who thought to put Gabriel Agbonlahor in their team; unhappiest will be the chumps whose teams included defenders from Manchester City and Portsmouth – that’ll be me then – who both conceded four goals. Also beaming from ear to ear will be Fabio Capello, for not including Peter Crouch in the England squad. Crouch was so anonymous in the game against Chelsea that for an hour I assumed he was stil sat on Liverpool’s bench. Let’s take a look at the winners and losers from this weekend.
Aston Villa's Gabriel Agbonlahor gets himself all excited over his 7-minute hat trick against City.
Arsenal 1-0 West Brom
An impressive opening for new-boy Samir Nasri with a goal for the baby-faced schemer, delighting the four teams who picked him, and an assist for Denilson. Somehow West Brom conspired to gift Arsenal a clean sheet despite the best intentions of both sides, with Arsene Wenger prefering Johann Djourou’s comedy stylings in central defence to Philip Sendoros’ one-man impression of Titus Bramble.
Aston Villa 4-2 Man City
Mark Hughes’ was as stunned as everyone else when Villa speed merchant Gabriel Agbonlahor scored a hat-trick. Manchester City, who lost Valeri Bojinov in the warm-up to another long-term injury, have now conceded twelve goals in the last two league games – no mean feat when you consider eight of them were to Middlesbrough. Gareth Barry chipped in with a couple of assists and John Carew scored Villa’s other, whilst Elano’s penalty and Corluka’s tap-in were the consolations for City.
Everton 2-3 Blackburn
I predict a long, difficult season if David Moyes persists with the experiment of playing without a central midfield. Yakubu’s particular brand of running down blind alleys and standing in offside positions brought him a goal, whilst Mikel Arteta scored what would have been described as a sublime free-kick against any other team, but against Paul Robinson it’s simply put down to a goalkeeping error by the pie-loving Blackburn custodian. Scoring for the Guv’nor’s team were perma-crocked midfielder Clive Dunn, Rocky Santa Claus (who was surprisingly overlooked by many managers, making it into only one starting team) and aging Dutch centre-back Andre Oohyeah. The game was notable for a first public sighting of new Everton wonderkid Jose Baxter, who at 7 years and 128 days old broke James Vaughan’s record of being the youngest player to play for Everton. Doubtless Baxter will want to follow in the footsteps of other Everton wonderkids and really make a mark on the big time, like Francis Jeffers and Paul Rideout before him.
Bolton 3-1 Stoke
New £10m signing Johan Elmander looked worth every penny against Stoke City; in fact, Stoke managed to make every single Bolton player look like a £10m player as they capitulated to a 3-1 defeat, being 3-0 down by half-time. Stoke should be praised for attempting something that no other premier league team has managed, namely having a decent season with Thomas Sorenson in the nets. Steinnson’s agricultural hoof and Kevin ‘razor-elbows’ Davis scored the others, with Ricardo Fuller replying for the Harry Potters. Richard Cresswell failed to bother the scorers, disappointing the four managers who mysteriously picked him for their teams – what do you know that we don’t?
Chelsea Pensioners 4-0 Portsmouth
At Stamford Bridge Portsmouth’s collection of has-beens and never-weres were soundly thrashed by the only team in the league with a higher average age than theirs. Yes, the Chelsea Pensioners looked good; in particular, Ashley Cole took a day off from cheating on his wife to put in a good stint at outside-left, although so slight was the resistance put up by Glen Johnson that he would have made Prince Phillip look like Lionel Messi. Useless Kaboul made his debut in midfield for Pompey, whilst Papa Wop Bop A Loo Bop stood on the right-wing watching Ashley Cole run past him. Fears that Portsmouth would turn into a long ball team were well-founded as they relied on Plan A – hoofing it to Mr Abbey Clancy without ever offering him support. At the back they were similarly abject, with Herman Munster at left-back looking less at home in a premier league game than he would look on-stage playing guitar for Slipknot. During the post-match review on Sky Jamie Redknapp read out an interesting comment from his autocue – if Gareth Barry is worth £18m, what is Deco actually worth? The little Portugese Brazillian was terrific, being involved in everything as well as scoring the final goal. Joe “not Ashley or Andrew or Carlton” Cole, Frank Lumplard and Nic Anelka – another one, like Didier Drogba, who failed to make it into a single team – also worried the scoreboard operators.
Hull City 2-1 Fulham
Hull City surprised everyone this weekend by sticking with their awful orange and black strip: what’s up with that, lads? Slightly less surprising was their coming from 0-1 down to win as Fulham get caught out playing away from home more often than Ashley Cole. Silky Oon scored for the Cottagers with a terrific assist from Jummy Bullard, whose hair is so big it now has its own biometric passport. Hull’s equaliser came from Edward Woodward – no, not really. Brazillian Geovanni, who once cost Barcelona £18m, scored a terrific goal and no doubt delighted the one manager who picked him, not only because he scored but because he’s down as a midfielder rather than a forward which makes each of his goals even more valuable. Of course, Geovanni made a bright start to last season, scoring the winner in the Manchester derby, but by the end of the season he couldn’t even get into a team thrashed 8-1 by Boro, so we’ll see how that goes. Ex-Spireite Caleb Folan’s winner came after Paul “Cinderella” Konchesky ran away from the ball, leaving Craig Fagan to pick his pocket and square the ball to Folan. Those who like their fancy pieces on the mature side will have been disappointed not to see Dean Sizeableass make an appearance from the bench, although it did mean that the Sky blimp remained the largest pale round thing on view.
Sunderland 0-1 Liverpool
Liverpool’s new away strip harked back to the glory years of Graeme Souness and brought back poignant memories of Glenn Hysen, Barry Vension and Istvan Kozma. Like Pele Sunderland were very proficient up until the business end of the pitch, then they went all limp and floppy and unable to perform. The home side’s form was generally enough to suggest boring mid-table mediocrity is well within their reach this season (Steed “The New Zidane” Malbaranque looking very effective until being withdrawn). New £20m Sunderland defender Robbie Keane had an excellent game, notably stopping Fernando “difficult second season” Torres from rolling the ball into an empty net on one occasion. Torres eventually broke free from Keane’s shackles to hit a scorching low shot into the corner of Craig “Flash” Gordon’s net.
Manchester United 1-1 Newcastle
Manchester United were missing Cristiano Ronaldo, Nani, Anderson, Louis Saha, Owen Hargreaves and any sort of imagination as they laboured to a 1-1 draw against Keegan’s relegation contenders. Matters were not improved when Michael Carrick limped off and United faced the hinderance of playing with John O’Shea in midfield, rather than tough it out with only ten men. Obafembi (if that’s your real name) Martins and Darren Fletcher provided the noteworthy statistics. United were abject, turning in a performance devoid of any imagination, craft or guile, whilst Manchester were little better. Such was the lack of depth at United’s disposal that they ended the game playing with six defenders and three midfielders. The game will probably only be remembered for the first public sightings of two of United’s teenage Brazillian wunderkind: Sideshow Bob Possebon, a central midfielder in the Bryan Robson mould; and Rafael da Silva, an attacking right-back in the early Arsenal Ashley Cole style. His twin brother Fabio, a left-back, should also shortly be introduced to the public. I suppose the only plus about this is that last year we started with a charity shield winn on penalties followed by an abject home draw, and last season didn’t end up too bad for us.
Middlesbrough 2-1 Spurs
Spurs’ opening day travails in the north-east continued as they were easily beaten by a Boro team that rarely looked like breaking sweat. David Bentley, the league’s most popular player with eleven picks, continued the fine tradition of recent Spurs sides by being a right-sided player employed on the left-wing. Many of us were seduced by Darren Bent’s pre-season form when we should have paid more attention to last season’s competitve form. He was the joint second most popular striker, appearing in seven teams – more than Drogba, Anelka, Rooney, Tevez, Owen, Santa Claus, Walcott and Heskey put together. Desperate Dan-chinned centre-back David Wheaterbix should have scored the opener, but the goal was ruled out for a foul on him by Michael “WWF Royal Rumble” Dawson. I’m still trying to find that one in the FA rule book. Wheaterbix was on the spot to score the opener, whilst podgy cake-lover Ahmed Mido couldn’t get out of the way of a Didier Degard shot and deflected it into the Spurs net. Robert Huth provided Spurs’ consolation. Spurs manager Father Damian Karras left Dimitar Berbatov on the bench until the 65th minute when he replaced teenage Mexican stropper Geovanni Dos Santos.
West Ham 2-1 Wigan
Two early goals from bottle blonde Dean Ashton gave West Ham the points as Wigan struggled to raise their game. The away side were no doubt induced into a light yet soothing coma by Alan Curbishley’s oral banalities, which the Hammers were surprisingly able to take advantage of. Despite their new away strip resembling a flourescent marker pen, Wigan provided only one highlight with a debut goal from Amr Zaki. Zaki’s strike was well taken and provided a tantaslising glimpse of why, on current FIFA statistics, the Egyptians is currently the deadliest striker in world football. Unfortunately, a couple of missed sitters should also go some way towards securing a tag of “the new Emile Heskey”. In his post match interview, Alan Curbishley said zzzz ….
Recent comments