London
So, having managed a full season undefeated at White Hart Lane, Tottenham fell at the first hurdle following their temporary move to Wembley.
They actually played reasonably well but, with Harry Kane not joining the goalscoring race until around October, Spurs will struggle for goals unless somebody else steps up to the plate.
The player who stepped up on Sunday was Michy Batshuayi. The problem? He’s a Chelsea player so scoring for Spurs is not part of his job description.
In a game which saw Chelsea return to a bit of form, and in which they scored all three goals, these early days are a worry for Spurs as there is no sign yet that their Wembley hoodoo has been exorcised, (can you exorcise a hoodoo?).
The place was virtually full of Tottenham fans, (more so than at White Hart Lane), the pitch is bigger which should suit their expansive style and the fans are slightly further away which means the players are less able to hear the abuse being hurled at them whenever they make a mistake. So what is the problem?
Hopefully, for Spurs, it was just a one-off game which they lost after a decent display and normal service will be resumed on the next outing at Wembley.
Mauricio Pochettino will be hoping that is the case anyway. The last thing he needs is for Wembley to become a happy hunting ground for visiting teams again.
Manchester
The Manchester clubs had mixed fortunes in their second games with United scoring another four and City held at home by Everton. Neither of them look like world beaters and they have yet to play any of last season’s top six, but the others are so inconsistent at present that United are already looking a good bet, although we do agree with José Mourinho and would “like” to see them when a goal down and chasing the game.
Along with City, the other four top six teams from last season have all dropped points already, after only two games! How many will they have dropped by Christmas?
City need to find a formula that provides wins on a consistent basis. Arsenal, as we predicted, will struggle as long as old man Wenger insists he can compete with the younger managers. Chelsea need a couple more signings, Spurs need to pretend that White Hart Wembley is White Hart Lane and Liverpool need to find a way to defend, particularly away from home.
Next up for United is Leicester at home, while City face Bournemouth away. Neither of the two are fixtures which should cause any undue concern to either club.
So, by this time next week, Manchester United could, and should, be sat at the top of the table with nine points. We would certainly not bet against it!
The World Wide Web
Whilst wading through the interminable internet publications on the subject of Premier League football in general and Manchester United in particular we do get slightly peeved at the amount of clickbait and intrusive advertising which abounds unchecked on the world wide web.
We read a report that Manchester United were making an offer for Thomas Lemar of Monaco. Fair comment, probably untrue, but fair comment anyway. Within ten minutes, the same publication had reported that United were making an offer for Julian Draxler of PSG and within another ten minutes the same bunch of idiots reported that United were going to finalise a deal for Ivan Perisić of Inter Milan.
Now we may be naive in our thinking, but we find it highly unlikely that United will sign ALL three of these players. We also find it highly unlikely that they are interested in ALL three of these players so somebody, no doubt who is being paid by advertisers, just wants masses of people to visit their website and is using this clickbait as a lure to achieve their self-rewarding goal.
Whilst on the subject of advertising, we have now stopped visiting sites where an advert covers the entire page within a second or two of landing there and would urge that others do the same. It is then necessary to leave that site and click it again to read any article. This is just plain idiocy on the part of the site owners who allow this sort of nonsense on their pages.
Whilst we agree that it would be difficult to enforce, the time is now here where the world of online advertising needs to be controlled and sites who are blatantly devoting more space and time to adverts than to content should be banned.
Rant over until the next time.
WHY SAY ANYTHING? 