The run in...

As strange as it may seem, chelsea is back in contention ever so remotely though for the league this year. As surprising as it is for me, the stats tell the story and they tell it impartially. Chelsea is the best team home and away over the last 2-3 months with Man U coming in second but mainly because of their home form where they have won every game. The always in contention but never good enough gunners are 14th in the league in the same time frame! They are not losing many matches but sure aren't winning much either. When the run in started arsenal started wilting, I am not surprised by this and very much expected it.

Last weekend saw a game most important for Man U and they pulled through at the very end, like they always do! They were playing the mercurial everton and things looked rather ominous for the red devils. A loss would have meant that chelsea could mount a serious challenge if they won all their games. A draw would not have been as disastrous, but a major dent to confidence since they are so strong at home this season. Now the situation is such that chelsea not only need to win every match, they need Man U to lose one. And this basically means that Man U is still the red hot favourites to take the league.

The chelsea form has made the league a bit more interesting considering that arsenal never comes to the party when it matters. But all said and done this is till Man U's league to lose...

And thus it happened...

I am new to the Reds vs Blues fight over at Manchester, but like every other derby I can understand that these matches would be anxiously followed, watched and supported. While I dont particularly like the money throwing ways of Man C, the fact that Mancini is trying to build a team should be respected. Yes, he is italian and yes he is defensive but then, he is doing what he thinks is best to win. Man U or should I see their supporters on the other hand have been so unclassy to keep reminding their city neighbours of the 35 year drought. No wonder the Manchester Blues wanted to get one past the Reds so very badly.

And today, finally they did just that! I seriously am happy for them!! Reds went about it all wrong. You cant keep a guy in form like berba out of the game for so long and then put him as the lone striker in a big match and expect him to perform. That being said, his misses were really woeful! I think Chica should have played alongside Berba. And while all loyal Man U fans will go gaga over Scholes. The years (last 3) that I have seen him, he has been doing the obvious with passes and usually makes a rash late challenge every now and then. If the Man C press can go mad at balotelli for his red in the europa cup, I think the Man U press must do the same against scholes! That really was a pathetic challenge. Yes, it is a split second call and the replays make it look a lot worse. But with the experience of whatever football I have played, you are exposed to such challenges in almost every other match and you can always pull away. Its just that some players choose to and some don't. Scholes never pulls out...

All in all... my weekend football started with a much hoped result. Now for Barca to show some magic at Bernabau. :-)

Another whiner!

As you all must have realized by now, no matter how much I appreciate the vision of wenger to play beautiful football, the constant whining of arsenal and their boss irritates me to no end. And here is the newest rant boy, Van Persie taking a shot at chelsea and barcelona for trying to "bully" referees into giving decisions in their favour. I can see this working, if at all, for fouls committed on them and not for fouls committed by them. And stats never lie and tells a clear story with chelsea on top of the fair play table in EPL and Barcelona on top of La liga fair play stats.

The season has been specially hard on arsenal and its players because of them being in contention in every competition and losing out in the last leg of each one. I have always believed that this Arsenal team will not win anything worthwhile. Beautiful football is one thing, but to win the silverware you need winners in your team. People who have been there and done that are really important when get towards the end games. That is the reason most analysts have Man U as favourite and Chelsea as second favourites for this years EPL title rather than Arsenal which are the nearest to Man U in terms of points.

I hope Wenger goes somewhere other than the barca academy and buys some balls for his team, the current team definitely cannot muster any!

Men vs Boys

Man U are going to win their 19th premier league title. Yes, I have said it with 9 or so games yet to be played. The reasoning is solidified with todays superb performance from them. They played some very bad football for the better part of 90 minutes, they go down to 10 men for about 20+ minutes or so and yet score a late time winner against a bolton team that played like a top 7 team. The drive and belief when they went down to 10 men was just amazing to watch. There is a lot of strength in this squad and it is for everyone to see.

On the other hand, the skilled boys from Arsenal come back losing 2 points to West Brom! If this doesnt tell a story I dont know what does. Everytime Arsenal have a chance to put their foot into the title race they take a step back. Its almost as if they are happier to play second fiddle and keep crying on how the world is unfair to them rather than going out there all guns blazing! I am see a sixth season of silverware drought for them...

Too little too late?

It has been quite a week or two in the world of football. To start with we have the Man U vs Chelsea match followed by the Man U vs Liverpool one. Both were much awaited matches as this would signify the way EPL would go in a big way. For all practical purposes the EPL season was Man U's to lose. And Arsenal just following them as they always do to no avail. After the Arsenal draw to Sunderland, these two match wins could have put Man U out of the arsenal range even for the most ardent of arsenal supporters. But as we could see, Man U lost both the matches and I think in quite convincing fashion.

Chelsea defeat of Man U was of special interest to me because I think of the current top 4 or top 5, I think only Chelsea have the heart and legs to take on Man U as the season winds up. But I also do think this has come a little late in the season for chelsea and they still need to win every match they play and also get a couple of matches going their way and they then get to a fighting position this season. I still think Man U will take the season, but they have had a bad spell off late with a draw in CL, 3 losses and a win in EPL and riddled with injuries.

C'mon Arsenal, what if the Carling Cup is gone, what if the CL is gone, what if the FA cup is about to go... there is still the league to be won! Go for it, for once... please! ;-)

Student bettering teacher?

Its no secret to the footballing world that Arsenal is a wannabe Barcelona. As bad as it can be made to sound, this in my opinion is a very noble endeavour. I love beautiful football and arsenal comes closest to that in the EPL with shades of the same being shown by the Man U frontline (if not the midfield). Arsene Wenger knew what he wanted to do and he has since been recruiting like minded boys to fulfill his dream. He built the nucleus of his fast counter attacking team on Cesc Fabregas, the barcelona academy product who was destined for stardom with barca and spain. He has since gone ahead and shopped for Fran Mérida and Ignasi Miquel from the barca academy under controversial circumstances. And looks like Wenger has no plans of stopping his poaching. He has not gone ahead and brought the very well spoken off Jon Toral to Arsenal.

In last before weeks CL match, Arsenal has shown that they have improved from last season by actually beating a comfortable looking barcelona. But the real test is going to be at the camp nou. While arsenal can boast of a very powerful midfield of nasri, wilshere and song with fabregas playing in front of them, it will still sound like a let down when you put the likes of xavi, iniesta and busquets being their counterparts. If Wenger goes to camp nou thinking of matching barca for speed, accuracy and efficiency, have no doubt, he will lose! But if he becomes pragmatic, like Mourinho and Inter last season, and plays a little deep, you never know... stranger things have happened. Barca's weakness is defence, Arsenals strength is counter attack. If he keeps this in mind and plays just to this strength, arsenal can beat barcelona. But if he wants to show barcelona that arsenal can also play beautiful football, I am afraid he will realize that he will need to do a lot more shopping before making that claim. :-)

Not surprising

A colleague of mine is a big fan on the pace and speed of EPL. In many ways I am too, but I also am disappointed with the lack of outright creativity. Everything is so anticipated and usual. There is of course the special piece of skill once in a while from the top teams, but not enough in my opinion. On the other hand, La liga teams have sublime skill, its not all physical and that is so different from how most of EPL teams play. Each their own I guess...

But something that doesn't appeal to me from either facet of the game is the Serie A. The quality of football is going down the drain in Italy and it showed in the world cup. The games are played to half filled stadiums and that tells a story in itself. The teams I follow in Serie A are inter, ac milan and juventus and each of them are far below the standards by the other two big leagues i.e. EPL and La liga. There then should be no surprise that the teams that make it to europe and more specifically uefa champions league rarely make it past the knockout stage. And in this edition, ac milan has been taken to the cleaners at home by newbies tottenham while last years champions inter lost at home to bayern. The story is same in europa league where all the italian teams are out of contention with hardly any fight being put up.

These very obvious signs have not gone unnoticed and uefa has decided to reduce the number of teams from serie A getting automatic qualification to the champions league from 4 to 3. All this doesnt auger well for italian football and it wont be long before big players, even italians choose clubs outside of Italy to make their mark. The league making the most of the situation is Bundesliga which gets promoted to Serie A's place. And quite contrary to Italy, Germany was a revelation in the world cup. And after a long time you see german players playing outside of home with Mourinho reading the obvious. He has taken Ozil and Khedira, the stars of the world cup, and they are not doing too bad for themselves.Here is hoping to see more of these kind of german youngsters and their skills in the coming years in europe.

Overall this is the right move for football and will make the UEFA CL and Europa leagues more competitive in the coming year(s).

Innovative!

For all the seasons that I have followed EPL, I have heard the commentators go ga-ga over Rory Delap and his ability to convert throw-ins into corners. And to make this as dramatic as possible Delap makes the most of each such thrown in by running across the field and with an assistant boy to help him with his ball cleaning and everything. An expected attempt at a few extra seconds of prime time tv for a player who can't do anything else of note on the football field.

And then you see this...

When you see videos like the one above, you wonder if some stupid team (right now my guess is chelsea) will pay a few millions to get this guy into their team!

Epitomizing Bad!

Rafa Benitez is my favourite bunny when it comes to manager bashing. If someone has been overrated in the position of a manager in the time that I have seen football, it is this guy! You know how huge world corporations, especially US based ones rejig the management, departments and personnel and think they can get out of a sticky situation, well... benitez is that to football. 

During his time at Liverpool I cannot remember a steady playing 11. For a team sport, he sure did a lot of chopping around. I dont remember his CL win, but that was probably the only reason he was persisted with for all those years! Comparing with english club managers who have had a long run, Unlike Fergie he hasnt made champions at liverpool, unlike wenger he has not got kids coming through the system and playing good football and unlike david moyes he has not made the most of what he had! Other than Martin Kelly, no one from the youth academy has made it to the senior team at liverpool! You can effectively say that benitez not only screwed Liverpools present, he also screwed their future! For a club struggling to make it to the europa rounds, they have had to do a lot of spending to build a team again, post the benitez era. Yes, he was that bad!

When his innings with Liverpool came to an end, he inherited a champion team in Inter Milan, thanks to Mourinho. And what did he do there? He chopped and chipped the team into a team of losers! Sure, he got lucky with the FIFA Club World Cup, but then, he hadnt had enough time to screw things up yet. And when Inter saw that he was again on his path of breaking up a good team, they had to get him out! They brought in Leonardo from AC Milan and the results are here to see, 8 matches, 7 wins and 1 loss! and they had just 6 wins from 15 matches under benitez.

Now that he is out of a job post the Inter sacking, it is no surprise that he has no takers. I wouldn't be surprised if he gets a job with some of the relegation doomed teams in EPL or La Liga or Serie A in the near future, i.e. if he actually manages to get his head out of his ass! With my limited knowledge of football, I am willing to bet on this prediction. Anyone wanna take me on? :-)

Desperate Blues

Last season end saw some big names like deco, ballack, joe cole, carvalho etc depart from Chelsea. This greatly reduced the spends at the Blues, but they did little to restock their options. Come middle of this season, chelsea found themselves off the perch and in fact struggling to remain in the top 4. Bad form mixed with some injuries saw Chelsea struggle to score or stop goals this season and here came the desperation buys. The blues spend 50 mil quid on struggling Fernando Torres and another 25 or so for David Luiz. Are these worthy buys? only time will tell, but here is some math...

Van der vaart(8) + Mesut Ozil(12) + Luis Suarez(15) + Raul Meireles (10) = 45     vs      Torres (50) = 50

Does this really make sense? You have world class and proven midfielders in van der vaart, ozil and meireles and suarez is no schmuk with the ball in front of goal. I would have anyday chosen to go for the combo on the left side of the equation. But Carlo obviously thought differently. :-)

Loaning game time

It has finally happened! The much talked about and much hyped about Kakuta has gone to Fulham on loan. This should be a huge relief for Kakuta who was rusting at chelsea, be it for lack of game time or injury. I have always wanted to see Kakuta play. Since he was counting every second of every minute on pitch, he was just too nervous to show some real game. Yes, that is no excuse, but give the kid a break, I really think he has it in him. At Fulham he will get first team play time and possibly show some of the talent that can make the risk averse Carlo to make the boy the first team choice at chelsea next season.

While this is a good move for Kakuta and chelsea, carlo is just a kid at this game. Look at Man U and Fergie, they have been offloading their talented benchwarmers like welbeck, diouf, cleverly or more recently macheda! These boys are getting enough match time to sharpen their already established skills and get themselves ready as replacements for old timers like giggs or scholes who will probably play only one in four or five matches from now on. Sure chelsea has a lot of boys on loan, but how many of them are close to first team action? I would say very few or even none. This loan thingy is supposed to also get bored squad members some game time and that is all chelsea is managing right now. Not a long term plan in my opinion.

Anyway, lets wait and see how all this unfolds... for now, I am happy I can see Kakuta play, albeit not for chelsea!

Anti Climax

One of the most important matches of the premier league this season was played between Man U and Spurs today. Without going into the details of how the match in itself went, here are what stuck out for me.

1. Tottenham are definite title contenders if they continue to play this way
2. Man U just doesnt have the quality to win tight matches this season, but they sure have the quality to not lose tight matches! But I can safely predict, they will not win Europe this year... no way!
3. What does two superfast wingers in Bale and Lennon do to Man U? Well, Man U had next to no presence in the wings! Definite weakness
4. My Man Of The Match - Assou Ekoto. He kept Nani so quite that he had to be substituted. He kept pace with Rooney when needed and was on the receiving end of the foul that red carded Rafael and many defensive duties...

All in all, the match was end to end on the pitch and quite entertaining from the Spurs side. The only thing that was missing was the spark of magic needed to win such games. Spurs came out of the scoreless draw thinking they deserved to win, while Fergie was more than happy to take a point away from this match!

Whine Whine Whine

I am sick and tired of hearing the Arsenal camp whining after every defeat. Sure, they play the preetiest football in the premier league, but anyone who has seen football and more so the premier league knows that pretty doesn't necessarily win you matches!This Holier than thou attitude has stricken Arsene Wenger and his boy Cesc Fabregas for a while now and they don't seem to give up on it. They seem to have forgotten the Vieira days when they were one of the roughest team around.

Arsenal are called the Barcelona of the Premier league. While not playing down the achievements of Wenger and his star player, to be compared with Barcelona is a big deal, especially the Barcelona of the last 2-3 years. Have you heard of Barcelona whine about the way Inter Milan played in the champions league? The Inter team was many times less skillful than the barcelona team that played them, but they played to a very defensive mourinho plan which meant to stifle barcelonas freedom in midfield while using the speed and strength of milito, pandev and eto with fast breaks. As history will say, this was a brilliant move and it worked, worked very well indeed. Yes, it was physical, but Barcelona didn't complain, because they knew they were beaten more by strategy than by physical power play. Admit that as a weakness, work on it and move on!

Faced with a similar challenge Arsenal is somehow unwilling to move on. This is possibly because they cant get players who can withstand the physical onslaught that are part and parcel of the premier league or because Wenger cant think of any strategies on how to make his team immune to these challenges. Blaming these inadequacies on the game plans of other teams is just childish! What if a less skillful team were to tell arsenal to stop playing the passing game? Would Wenger and Cesc like that suggestion??

Thanks Ipswich

Chelsea finally wins a game in the premier league and dont concede any goals while doing it. They could thank Ipswich for giving them good practice during the FA cup tie since Chelsea did look like having the earlier missing conviction even though they were very suspect in the last third of the pitch. Champions of last seaon, hitting truckload of goals early in the season and now desperate for a win. Only a true chelsea optimist can see them winning the league this season. In fact, the way man city and spurs are playing, chelsea will have to fight real hard to make it to europe next year. That being said, and focussing more on tonights game, chelsea went into champion mode albeit for a few mins here and there. As promising as that may seem, they still have a lot of worries...

Lets start with ramires. He was brought in this season and I am yet to see a 90 min consistent game from him. Sure he is hard working, sure he is physical and sure he gets a few balls here and there, but for someone who is pushing essien into a holding role (mikel is injured) he sure does not know where to put the ball when on a quick break. He does not seem like a good buy as of yet and should be pushed into a holding role. Next is Anelka. He did score tonight, but that was more of an Ivanovic goal than anything else. To me, anelka is a spent force. He has a good touch on the ball, but doesnt do anything with the ball. He makes the most obvious of passes, take the most obvious of shots, makes the most obvious of tackles etc etc. As I said, he is a spent force! Next in line, the inimitable Drogba. Be it malaria or his charity work, drogba just hasnt been himself. He is only a physical presence these days and is lacking that skill component which in addition to his physical prowess made him the threat he was. He needs to take a break and get back to full fitness before putting himself up for selection. Next is Lampard. Yes, he can be given the benefit of doubt that he is coming back off a longish injury, but for someone of Lampards experience, the nervousness in front of goal is most unexpected. In tonights match, he was willing to do anything but shoot the ball at goal. And when he did, there was absolutely no conviction in it. There are a couple more I suppose, but dont want to judge them on a single game.

It is not like there were no positives for chelsea though. Ivanovic was brilliant as usual and honestly should be credited with both the goals. The defence seemed less brittle and bosingwa was finally put to some use and thanks in no small amount to essien who kept finding him on the flank. They managed to kill the game in the second half with 2 goals and then holding, something they couldn't manage against Aston Villa. And finally, if someone did manage to see the young boy mceachran play his 10 minutes should know that this boy is good! In my opinion, Carlo, who could lose his job any day should bite the pill and give a few boys a good run in the first team. First vote would be mceachran because he looks like he can make a big difference to an ageing chelsea side. Second vote would be sturridge, who in my books is better than kalou and anelka in the current form and my third vote would go to kakuta. He has the spark and if channelised well can be the difference needed to win those tight matches.

But Carlo in true italian style is playing defensive even if he concedes goals (pun intended)!!

Lucky Alex?

I have hoped and wished for many years now to see the last of Alex Ferfusson, but the old fox just wont quit! He has won a lot at Man U and will win many more before he is done. This year Man U is in contention for all the 3 silverwares in offer in England and stand good to win at least 2 of them, if not all. There was a time when i used to think than Man U and Alex were just plain lucky. They never seem to have the right team in terms of big names, but they always won. They won easy games...well, easily. They won the tough games too with some hard nosed resistence. They seem impregnable at times in defence and menacing at times in attack, even with little to no creativity in midfield with the likes of scholes and giggs past their prime. But their consistency at the top have made the likes of Chelsea and will make the likes of Man City look like flash in the pans. And I believe like many else, there is always a method with Alex and he is yet to be found wrong.

Alex has some oldies in his team, yet he makes very good use of them. He always knows whom to play in which game and when. For e.g. Park plays more 'must not lose' games, especially in Europe. Giggs plays with teams that cant handle penetrating presence while scholes plays against teams with weak holding midfielders. It took me a while to see the pattern, but then, there is method to Alexs madness, I think. And he always gets guys young and then makes them into super players (only to sell them off at huge profits :-) ). But seriously, look at the youngsters he has been giving a lot of matches. Anderson, the silva brothers, chicarito and even evans! And look at the youngsters on loan, diouf, welbeck, bebe, macheda, cleverly and so on. When the likes of scholes, giggs and neville are gone and the likes of rooney are sold (kidding! :-) ), these youngs guns will continue to keep Man U on top of the EPL. And at this rate, Alex will continue to coach Man U, even from his grave!!

Bad Bad world

The expected has happened but just a little too early, at least for my liking. Roy Hodgson has left liverpool. The season has not been kind to Hodgson with liverpool languishing mid table and to think they are actually better off now compared to earlier in the season. The Red Devils have not really worked well for some time now and I blame it more on Rafa who to me was a super ordinary manager. Hodgson inherited a mess and somehow he didnt have the time and possibly the skill to clean it up. Torres is still far from the player he once was, Gerrard is in and out of injury and the rest of the squad is somehow not able to step up.

Liverpool is in dire need of a manager who can stem the rot. Maybe Carlo will be in the market soon... :-)

Who is listening?

How many remember Daniel Aggers play from 2-3 seasons back? I thought he was one of the most complete of the young defenders playing in epl. He has since been seen sparingly and he isn't really too happy about it either. To keep things interesting for Hodgson he has gone public with his frustration on seeing such less play time.

I dont know about every club out there, but I would think Carlo will be very interested in this, since he is looking for an Alex cover and I think Agger can do the part and more. He needs a bit of controlling, but then, who does need controlling these days. :-) Look at the mess that happens while training in the man city ranks! You fill a team will bloated egos and short of world class talent, this is what happens. Money attracts the best and the worst and in my opinion adebayoor falls in the latter category.

Managers and their troubles... no wonder they get paid well (pun intended). :-)

Leftovers any one?

Its that time of the year again, when players are moved around more than money. :-) The january transfer window is well and truly in full flow and apparently the flow gets some old logs too. Beckham who went to US to "make" a career for his wife has soon realized that Fabio Capello only wants football players in his team and not supermodels! Strange you say... ;-) So, he is planning a move to EPL on loan and high flying spurs and their ever sleepy manager, Redknapp think they can get him. Frankly, this is a very bad move for Spurs, who similar to Arsenal have many youngsters and real playmakers in their team. Getting Beckham into the mix is like mixing wine and vodka... I am a teetotaler, but I guess that combo would taste bad. ;-)

Another old log rumoured to come the epl way is ronaldinho, who apparently was in talks for a 115,000 pounds a week for two years deal with Blackburn Rovers. Venkys will have to sell a LOT of chicken to give that much money to Ronaldinho. And seeing the shape that Ronaldinho is in these days, he will take a healthy share of those chicken wings too. ;-)

The lost pilgrim

The goody-two-shoes of the footballing world, Kaka, is seeing an uncertain future. He had a dismal world cup followed by 5 months of injury layoff. He is now ready to get back into the fold but mourinho has already filled Real Madrid midfield with his croonies, some deserving like ozil and some undeserving like khedira. So, what does Kaka do? Well... he goes to Man U, of course. :-)

But seriously, this is a great move for Kaka and in many ways Real too. Real would not want players not getting enough play time and cite that as a reason to leave to lesser clubs and make a mockery of the money they spent on them. I am not so sure if this will really benefit Man U though, since Kaka is coming off a long injury layoff and a wretched season before that. If the deal does materialize, we will have some brazilian flair and quality in EPL for a change, something that has been thoroughly lacking.

Blues see the blues

What does it take to be on top for an entire epl season? Well, don't ask Chelsea for they surely don't know, at least not this season. :-)

Another match, another draw and Chelsea have truly lost their way and will not defend their crown this season. People (mostly commentators) keep the hopes alive of all the top 5 club supportors, so that the viewership doesn't wane. But clearly, the crown is for Man U to lose and not for the rest to win. Chelsea are just so far away from the team that started this season and it is sad and strange that it has come to this. Aston Villa showed some grit for a change (and much like last season) and held their nerve till the very end. And Chelsea didn't show what defending champions should and that is "shut out" the game!

What ails Chelsea is not difficult to figure, at least not for me and I am surprised why Carlo hasn't doesn't enough to stem the rot. Chelsea is a physical team and part of their game is "fear" and the loss of terry, lampard, drogba and to some extent essien earlier in the season made many teams see that this chelsea can be beaten physically. Also, they let go of guys who could be physical like Ballack and clinical like Carvalho. And without lampard and essien there is absolutely zero creative drive in the team, not even from the bench! Carlo has to see this January transfer window as an opportunity to bolster the creative side of Chelsea and not just get cover for the injured Alex.This season is anyway lost, but creative guys need time to understand the runs of forwards like Drogba or Kalou or Anelka and do a good job next season.

Lets see how much more worse it can get for Chelsea before it gets better...