Tottenham Hotspur
The early game on Saturday featured Huddersfield Town against Tottenham Hotspur. This was the first real test for David Wagner and his newly promoted team. They failed it!
Mind you, Spurs had Harry Kane to thank once again for their margin of victory and one does wonder how many goals this team would score without him.
Yes, Dele Alli and Christian Eriksen tend to chip in with a few but Kane outscores everybody by a long way.
An overused phrase on this site is “bigger tests lie ahead”, but this is certainly true in the case of Tottenham Hotspur as they won’t play many easier games.
Manchester United
Kicking off at the now unusual time of 3:00 pm on Saturday, Manchester United also had a relatively easy game in which they beat Crystal Palace 4-0.
Romelu Lukaku scored his customary goal and was joined on the scoresheet by his fellow Belgian and giant oak tree, Marouane Fellaini, who got two and is now quite well appreciated by the Old Trafford faithful thanks to his decent control and work rate.
Manchester United now look a much better team than last year and, bearing in mind that only Romelu Lukaku of their new-ish signings was playing in this game, a lot of credit has to go to José Mourinho for the way he has turned round the attitudes and quality of display of some of the others.
United have gone from being the “draw specialists” to being the “four goal specialists” and long may it continue.
Chelsea & Manchester City
The late game on Saturday pitted Antonio “now-we’re-in-the-Champion’s-League-it’s-a-good-excuse-when-we-lose-a-game-but-last-season-when-we-were-Premier-League-Champions-not-being-in-it-wasn’t-a-factor” Conte against Pep Guardiola.
The “experts” were predicting a Chelsea win, particularly as City were without Kompany, Mendy and Agüero. The “experts” proved to be anything but and proved, yet again, that the word expert should only be applied to a select few, not every ex-player who chooses to spout his opinions on either Sky or BT.
City were excellent throughout the game and deserved their 0-1 win.
Conte, having decided against boring the world with the “no time to prepare” excuse, has now decided he wants to go back to Italy where people listen to him.
Arsenal
Over at The Emirates stubborn old man also had little time to prepare his team for the visit of Brighton but we didn’t actually hear him making a big song and dance about it. Maybe that’s because he doesn’t really want to win Big Vase as he doesn’t agree with the resulting Champion’s League promotion, so he only uses it to give game time to his fringe players such as“Union Jack” Wilshere.
Anyway, as is always the case, Arsenal struggled against a supposed “lesser team” but still managed to grind out a 2-0 win, mainly because they are a better team than Brighton, which moved them nearer to Chelsea and Liverpool, if not the other three.
Liverpool
The late game on Sunday saw Rafa Benitez welcome his old club, Liverpool, to St. James’s Park.
These are the games in which he loves to be involved and the impression is that if Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley had the same ambition as Benitez, then Newcastle would be involved in many more of them. The problem is that he doesn’t have that ambition so one of two things will inevitably happen; either he will sell the club which would be good news for the fans and Rafa, or Benitez will leave which would be bad news for for the fans and Ashley.
Anyway, after all the hype a decent enough game ended in a 1-1 draw and everybody went home a little disappointed not to have collected three points.
And finally, just a quick mention for Wayne Rooney. Dropped from a very, very average England squad, dropped and sold by Manchester United and now dropped by a currently very poor Everton team. All that needs to happen to him now is that he gets dropped by his wife………….oh, she hasn’t………….has she?
WHY SAY ANYTHING? 