The Premier League weekend started with an early game at the King Power stadium between Leicester City and Liverpool with the visitors looking reasonably comfortable when taking a two goals lead into the interval.
Sadio Mané and Roberto Fermino had scored the goals with the other member of the trio, Mo Salah, missing a great chance and, eventually, being substituted in the second half.
Leicester certainly chased the game and the referee didn’t appear to be of much assistance when giving free-kicks to Liverpool every time one of their players fell over.
In fact, the biggest assist Leicester received in scoring their solitary goal came from Alisson who, once again, confused himself with a ball-playing midfielder whilst in his own penalty area. He tried to beat Iheanacho, failed, and the next thing he knew was that the ball had been passed to Ghezzal who scored with ease.
The problem Leicester then had in chasing the equaliser was that they were susceptible to the counter-attack. As it turned out, Liverpool’s attempts at counter-attacks were pretty poor and the home team’s enemies became time and quality and, at this stage of the game, they had very little of either.
The game just petered out and Liverpool, for the third of their four games, came away with a rather fortunate win. Maybe their name is on it this season.
In the second game involving a member of the big six Chelsea took on Bournemouth at Stamford Bridge.
Pedro celebrates his goal against Bournemouth
It was a fairly routine victory for The Blues but, until the 72nd minute when Pedro gave them the lead, it didn’t quite have that look about it. Again, with the reassurance of that goal, Chelsea could sit back a little while Bournemouth chased an equaliser and, because of that the gaps opened up and Eden Hazard scored Chelsea’s second in the 95th minute.
So a perfect start continued for Maurizio Sarri although he will be mindful that, in the Community Shield which was the only game where he played a top team, he lost easily 2-0 and it could have been more.
The final game of the day saw unbeaten Manchester City play Newcastle, who have one point from their first three games, at The Etihad.
Within eight minutes Raheem Sterling who had come in for the excellent Bernardo Silva, cut in from the left and scored one of his better goals and business appeared to be continuing much as usual.
But wait a bit, as the oysters said in Lewis Carroll’s famous poem, after thirty minutes the score was level with Newcastle obviously not having received their copy of the script. It was a counter-attack, (it usually is against City), which was finished off by DeAndre Yedlin with some aplomb.
So for all of City’s possession and huffing and puffing and an open goal missed by Gabriel Jesus, at half-time the score was 1-1.
The second half began much as the first in that after seven minutes City scored. This time it was a 25-yarder from Kyle Walker, of all people, which fizzed into the bottom corner.
Raheem Sterling opens the scoring for City
Now would it finally be business as usual or would Newcastle recover again?
The answer was business as usual but without the customary goal glut although City did have chances to add to the total.
However they didn’t manage it and the game finished 2-1 to City, leaving them two points behind Liverpool and Chelsea.
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