The Formerly Fat One got the better of the Formerly Special One again as Chelsea thoroughly outplayed Spurs at Stamford Bridge. The 2-1 scoreline was a travesty really as Spurs were never in this game and their goal was a last minute fluke that went in off Rudiger.
Chelsea completely dominated and played some lovely football at times. Mount was excellent and they looked a much better side with Giroud leading the line. There are some things he doesn’t do as well as Kevin Abraham, but big handsome Olly is a good player.
He’s far too good for the bench role he seems to have occupied for most of his time in England anyway. He’d start regularly for at least 15 teams in this league and he’s one of those players who always seems to play well against us.
He opened the scoring with a crisp finish and Alonso added a beautiful second. That was such a nice goal all round that. Alonso is such a contradiction as he seems to have two or three efforts on goal every game he plays but he’s an absolute liability at the other end. You can't say he's shit, but equally you can't say he's good either. He's both shit and good.
You can’t really get away with playing him left back in a four against anyone decent, but you’d want him in the side because of the goal threat he poses. He scored one great goal in this game, he also hit the bar with a brilliant free-kick and was a yard too high with what would have been the goal of the season had it gone in. A right foot volley on the turn from 25 yards.
Then three days later he got himself sent off against Bayern in the Champions League, and even before the red card he was getting the absolute run around from the Bayern forwards. Alonso might be the hardest player in the league to evaluate. I think the best way to sum him up is excellent footballer, terrible left back.
The result keeps Chelsea’s grip on a top four spot still relatively tight but they’re losing so many games that you can’t be completely sure they’ll hold on. They should do, because in terms of squad talent they’ve definitely got more than anyone other than us and City, but they’re wildly inconsistent and we still don't know yet if Lampard knows what he's doing or if he's a complete chancer.
The main talking point after this game had nothing to do with Chelsea’s nice football or Mourinho continuing to turn Spurs into everything they weren’t under Poch though. No, it was VAR. Again.
You all know how I feel about VAR and I’d scrap it tomorrow if possible. That being said, VAR should not be criticised for what happened with Lo Celso. If anything, that incident shows exactly why VAR ‘should’ be a good thing. Michael Oliver didn’t see the incident clearly and that’s where the video should come into its own.
Instead, we have some fucking clown watching the screen in Stockley Park and making a monumental fuck up. Cue everyone kicking off about VAR. The technology isn’t the problem, it’s the morons who are using it.
Saturday was plagued with shite VAR decisions because the guy who was making those decisions must have been drunk or bribed. How else can you explain the Lo Celso non-red, or the disallowed Bournemouth goal (I’ll get to that later), or De Bruyne getting away with one of the most blatant handballs of the season?
They don’t want the refs going to the screens themselves, but if they keep allowing the YTS ref to make it up as they go along on VAR then they deserve every bit of criticism that comes their way. They’re making a fucking mockery of the game with this shit.
If you’re going to use VAR, then use it properly and if someone performs as badly as this David Coote jabroni (one just for you there Roger) did, don’t let them near it again. In fact, just ban them from even watching football altogether, let alone refereeing it.
Mark Clattenberg was on the radio this week and he was talking about how on field refereeing and VAR requires a completely different skill set and that being good at one doesn’t mean you’ll be good at the other. Sorry, but that’s absolute fucking bollocks.
Not everyone can referee a game. I’ll be the first to admit I couldn’t do it even if by some miracle I had the required fitness levels suddenly bestowed upon me. Refereeing is fucking hard. Really fucking hard. Not anybody can do it. I get that.
VAR though? I could do that standing on my fucking head so any qualified ref should be able to do it too. Any one of us could look at that Lo Celso stamp and immediately know it’s a red card, yet because of this daft process they have where the on field ref explains his view and unless the VAR vehemently disagrees with it and can say it’s obviously wrong, they stay with the on field call.
Except for the times when they don’t. And that’s the problem. That’s why you get Son sent off for kicking someone in the balls, and Harry Maguire allowed to get away with doing the exact same thing.
They’re making this shit needlessly complicated. The VAR ref should have told Oliver that Lo Celso needs to go, or at the very least he should tell him “that looks quite bad, you might wanna take a look yourself and decide what you want to do”. Instead he did nothing. An absolute disgrace really.
It didn’t impact the result because Chelsea won anyway, but that can’t be allowed to go unpunished. Lo Celso should be retrospectively banned and so should David Coote, the clueless twat. Apparently he’s a Championship referee. The Championship has my sympathy then, because if he can’t get easy decisions right with the benefit of numerous replay angles then what chance is there when he’s out there in the middle with no help?
Of course Mourinho continues to moan about having no strikers and a tired squad. I don’t remember who said it, but I do recall a famous quote from a manager about how if you keep telling players they are tired they will believe it and it gives them a ready made excuse. In Mourinho’s case, the ready made excuse is for him.
He’s a busted flush and instead of crying about not having any strikers, why not promote Troy Parrott, the talented kid who people are raving about? What have Spurs got to lose at this point? He says Parrott isn’t ready, and maybe he’s right. But how many times have we seen young strikers who have been thrown in and provided a spark to their team?
Playing like this Spurs have no chance of finishing in the top four this season and while Mourinho will continue to deflect all blame away from himself, the fact is they look worse now than they were before he got there.
Spurs were so close but they couldn’t take the final step and now they’re a million miles away with a manager who plays a prehistoric style of football. For a ‘shrewd businessman’ Daniel Levy sure does fuck a lot of things up.
In the other big game on Saturday Leicester’s bad run continued as they slipped to a home defeat to Man City. They started brightly and Vardy was denied by the post. They had two strong penalty shouts turned down too, one when De Bruyne handled and the other when that Iheanacho cunt was punched in the head by that Ederson cunt.
Penalties are never given for those, which is weird when you regularly see keepers concede penalties for the slightest contact with the feet of attacking players. Can’t do that but you can smash them in the head with both fists and knock them senseless without any recourse. Funny old game, Saint.
The De Bruyne handball though. Fucking hell. It was as clear a penalty as there was all weekend, yet I heard them saying on the radio this morning that the reason it wasn’t given was because it wasn’t even looked at. Usually the ref will pause the game while they check but there was no delay on this and once play has restarted they can’t go back.
So why wasn’t it looked at? Had Coote nipped out for a piss? Had he fallen asleep at his desk, Homer Simpson style? Was he playing Candy Crush? It’s amateurish as fuck that an incident like that can happen and nothing is done about it.
To further rub salt in Leicester’s wounds they were penalised themselves later on when Praet handled in the box. Definitely a penalty but no more obvious than the De Bruyne one. Schmeichel saved it but City scored soon after anyway through Jesus and that was enough for the three points.
Final one on this. Vardy hasn’t scored since his missus gave birth. He hasn’t found the net either. BOOM! That’s what you pay your money for right there.
Moving on, and I’ve often mentioned before how Eddie Howe is too nice and that’s why he’s always on the wrong end of bad refereeing decisions. They seem to get screwed every week and he always comes out smiling and saying how difficult it is for refs.
The angriest you ever see him is when he says meekly "I'd better be careful what I say" and then says virtually nothing. He can’t go on like that as it’s just not healthy. Neil Warnock managed into his seventies and he didn't get that far by bottling shit up. Sometimes you need to let it out because if you keep that rage and frustration locked away it’s dangerous.
One day Nice Guy Eddie is going to completely snap and end up murdering a fourth official with his bare hands. With any luck it will be Martin Atkinson or Anthony Taylor.
I don’t know how he kept it together after this fucking farce. The stakes are so high for Bournemouth at the moment as they’re in real relegation trouble and every point could be vital. The goal they had chalked off at 0-0 might be the most egregious disallowed goal of the season.
That new attacking handball rule is terrible anyway, but even allowing for that there’s still no way that Josh King’s goal should have been disallowed. The ball flicks off the head of a Bournemouth player and strikes Billing who is directly behind him. It hits him on the shoulder and falls for King, who scores.
It was almost all shoulder but there was also minimal contact with the very, very top part of Billing’s arm. The only way you disallow that goal is if you’re looking to disallow the goal. There’s a 1% margin on that where you could say “it’s hit his arm” and VAR (Coote again maybe? I don't know) took that 1%.
Disallowing goals for that is just plain fucking wrong. Only Wolves should be on the receiving end of those calls just because it’s funny and because I like seeing Coady doing his nut.
Worse was to come for poor old Eddie and his men. After Burnley had gone ahead through Vydra (no goals for years then two in as many weeks for him) Bournemouth thought they’d equalised after a sweeping counter attack went the length of the field and was finished off by our Harry.
Joy soon turned to anger though as VAR pulled it back and not only disallowed the goal, but awarded Burnley a penalty. I’m not even sure they got this one right either, although it was more of a handball than the Billing one.
Adam Smith puts his arm out and the ball hits his shoulder. It caught a piece of his arm too, although not much. Because he put his arm out though it probably looked worse than it was. Still, you can’t blame Bournemouth for being massively pissed off when you see some of the handballs that aren’t given, and they’ve been on the receiving end of those two.
They fell apart after that. Rodriguez converted the penalty and McNeill lashed one in from distance to make it 3-0. It could easily have been more in the end, but this game was in the balance until those brutal decisions killed Bournemouth.
Burnley fans once used to call Dyche the Ginger Mourinho. They might still do for all I know, but these days it’s far less of a compliment than it was originally. In fact, it’s fairly insulting. After all, Dyche is also without his two star strikers but unlike Mourinho he isn’t crying about it. He’s done what any manager worth his salt would do. He said “next man up” and just got on with it. And his ‘next man up’ isn’t anywhere near the calibre of Lucas Moura and Deli Alli.
Elsewhere, Shane Long bagged his 7th of the season as Southampton beat Villa at St Mary’s. Is this Long’s most prolific campaign now? Must be close to it. Great play by Djnepo to create it.
He’s a weird one that Djnepo. He can go from looking like the best player in the world one minute to the worst a minute later. There’s something about him though, I think he might turn out to be pretty good.
Villa were awful, especially at the back, and Reina looked like a clown for most of the game. No idea what he was playing at. He went up for a stoppage time corner and Southampton broke and made it 2-0 when Armstrong finished into an empty net.
Southampton had 28 shots to Villa’s four. That doesn’t bode well for Villa, who might let in eight against City again this weekend at Wembley. I hope not. I hope they win. But if they don’t….. well….. there’s always this.
Down at Selhurst Park Newcastle took on Palace. Dubravka made a stunning save to deny Gary Cahill and then produced a similar one to deny Scott Dann. Palace were a threat from set plays all day and Benteke headed five yards wide from four yards out. Impressive that.
The only goal of the game came via a set piece when Van Aanholt curled one in from 30 yards.
Newcastle gave it a bit of a go and had a couple of efforts, but they were wide open on th break and could easily have conceded more. Lazaro was sent off in stoppage time for hauling down Zaha who would have been clean through.
Bentaleb is playing for Newcastle now (wiki tells me he’s on loan from Schalke). Remember him? My main man Tim Sherwood loved him but when Timmy got the bullet I don’t think we heard from Bentaleb again until now, which is not a surprise as I always thought he looked like a bit of a crab. Timmy probably saw a lot of himself in Bentaleb actually, as when he was at Blackburn he made David Batty look like Michel Platini.
Joelinton hasn’t scored in 32 hours of football. Dreadful that, but I bet when he finally breaks that duck he goes mental and doesn’t play it as cool as Benteke did. I still can’t get over that you know. I keep thinking about it. It takes some fucking balls to just give it the ‘business as usual’ calm celebration when you’re a £20m centre forward who hasn’t scored in about three fucking years. I think I was a Palace fan I'd be livid about it, as who the fuck does he think he is?
Sheffield United’s top four hopes took a knock as they were held 1-1 at home by Brighton. Stephens lashed them in front with a beautiful half volley into the top corner but Brighton hit back with the most basic of goals. Long punt up field from a free-kick, headed on by the centre back and finished by the centre forward (Maupay). Chris Wilder will be seething with that one.
He was talking some fucking bollocks afterwards though. “If anyone has anything to say about the way we play they should look at that today”. Has anyone said anything negative about how they play? All I’ve heard all season are people complimenting them and talking about the unique style they have. He’s swinging at ghosts there.
Onto Sunday now. United beat Watford 3-0. I didn’t even bother watching the highlights as frankly I can’t be arsed with United at all. Complete non-entities and dull as fuck to watch. I'm not going to watch them win and most of the time I'm not even arsed when they lose anymore. They're just not on my radar. I hope they win enough to keep Solskjaer in a job and not enough to actually accomplish anything.
Watford’s new manager bounce seems to have fallen flat now and they’re right back in the shit. We go there this weekend so I’m saying nothing further on them for now.
Wolves had a comfortable win over Norwich, who now look as though they’ve given up and accepted their fate. Wolves are good and it’s a tough place to go but Norwich were really disappointing and on the MOTD highlights they didn't even have one effort on goal.
Jota put Wolves ahead early but there was a VAR check for a possible handball. It didn’t touch the arm of Doherty but if I’m the VAR official I’m ruling that out just because it’s Wolves and it would therefore be funny.
Jota made it 2-0 and again there was a VAR check. This time for offside. He wasn’t offside when the cross came in but he was well off before that, so again, I’d have disallowed it just for a laugh and had the ref tell Coady there was a new rule change he mustn't have paid attention to.
Jota then thought he had a hat-trick but his shot came back off the post, straight into the path of Jimenez for a tap in. Not that he tapped it in, he absolutely leathered it from a few inches out. Big fan of that to be honest. Short of dropping to your knees and heading it in, that’s the best way to convert from that range.
They said in commentary that Wolves had smashed Espanol 4-0 a few days earlier. I had no idea as I pay virtually no attention to the Europa League. That result suggests they’re growing more comfortable in Europa and they could probably win it if they’re only up against the likes of Arsenal and United. Hope they don’t, obviously. Ideally they’d get screwed by VAR in the final. As long as it's not against United.
Finally, a weird game at the Emirates in which both teams scored in the opening seconds of a half. First it was Everton, who went ahead in the opening minute through a Calvert-Lewin volley that should not have counted because his foot was high and his follow through caught David Luiz on the head.
For some reason it was allowed to stand (VAR ref asleep at his desk again?) but Arsenal hit back when Saka’s glorious cross was converted by Nketia. There have been reports that we’re interested in Saka as he only has one more year left on his contract. Not sure whether Arsenal would be up for that, but they do have a history of selling their best players to other English clubs so you never know.
If the kid has any sense he’ll be pushing for it because he only needs to look at Ox to see how getting away from Arsenal is the only way to save a promising career. Walcott stayed too long and became the most pointless player in the world, especially because he then went to Everton.
Iwobi got out early enough but also went to Everton, so that was like jumping out of the frying pan into the fiery chasm of Mount Doom. Any young player at Arsenal needs to be thinking long and hard about what direction they want their career to go. If we are interested in Saka then he needs to do all he can to make it happen before the Arsenal stench of mediocrity becomes too strong to wash off.
Arsenal took the lead when Luiz split the defence and Aubamayeng ran clear to score, but they conceded four minutes into stoppage time at the end of the half when they failed abysmally to deal with a corner and Richarlison bundled in from close range. Shite from Leno that.
Incredibly though, just 26 seconds after the restart they had the lead again though as Aubamayeng headed in a cross from Pepe.
Everton probably should have taken something from the game but Calvert-Lewin missed three great chances because he’s shite. At the other end Nketiah hit the bar after yet more clown show play by Pickford.
Tell you who I have a completely irrational dislike of. Dani Ceballos. Any time I see him on the screen I find myself unconsciously muttering ‘absolute state of that cunt’. Not even sure why. Ok, his new haircut is one good reason, but I felt like that even before he went with the pathetic tiny little top knot.
I think he just sums up everything I dislike about Arsenal. Fancy dan, lightweight, overpaid fanny who people seem to think can play just because he was at Real Madrid. If Mesut Ozil is the living embodiment of modern day Arsenal, this fella is right there with him.
What's worse right now, supporting Arsenal, Spurs or United? I'm gonna say Spurs I think, because at least the other two have some good young players whereas Spurs are stuck with Mourinho and his shit on a stick footy and excuse culture. Really you wouldn't want to be any of them though, the big shit bastards.
Recommended Comments