WHY SAY ANYTHING?

In direct competition with each other for the viewing affections of WSA this Saturday was the Vitality T20 blast or, more precisely, Lancashire, against the dubious attraction of watching a team from London play a team from Liverpool in the Premier League.

No contest, Lancashire versus Worcestershire in the first semi-final it was then. We could join the football after this game which would, no doubt, prove that the game of cricket can regularly provide more excitement than the game of football.

And such was the case but only for fans of Worcestershire. Lancashire were pretty awful and lost the game by 20 runs and thus ended our interest in finals day.

So time to change channel and have a look at the live game. We joined it in the 66th minute by which time Georginio Wijnaldum had already given Liverpool a half-time lead and this had been added to in the 52nd minute by Firmino.

Liverpool then squandered several chances to put the game out of sight before the obvious happened and Spurs scored through Eric Lamela. The problem was that the goal came in the 93rd minute and left no real time for an equaliser.

At this stage the thought which was continually crossing our mind was that if a small percentage of deluded Manchester United “supporters” still want no-trophies-Pochettino to replace serial-winner-Mourinho, then Spurs would probably be reasonably happy to let him go now!

Even watching just this abridged version of the match it seems fairly clear that Tottenham needed to add to their squad of players during the summer and are beginning to pay the price for not doing so.

Liverpool, on the other hand, did improve their squad and this has made them look like challengers this season, we shall see.

So up to now a disastrous day on Sky TV with Lancashire losing and Liverpool winning. Time now to change channel again and see what Manchester City can do on BEIN Sports.

It was soon business as usual at The Etihad as Leroy Sané put the home side a goal up within three minutes and, after twenty minutes, David Silva added a second. The question now, as with Liverpool before they settled for two, was how many would they score? The answer was none, not before half-time anyway.

They were soon back in business after the break though when Raheem Sterling scored and what made this goal quite unusual is that he hadn’t missed four easy chances before converting this one!

Chelsea’s game at Stamford Bridge was supposed to be an easy win over newly promoted Cardiff City but they obviously didn’t read the script. Sol Bamba gave the Welshmen the lead very early on but two goals from Eden Hazard made it 2-1 at half-time.

Chelsea then stepped up a gear and Eden Hazard completed his hat-trick with a penalty before Willian scored a fourth.

Up at St. James’ Park Newcastle United and Arsenal played out a goalless first half and, with the home side playing down the slope in the second, it looked as though a favourable result could be on the cards.

Wrong as usual! Within five minutes of the restart Granit Xhaka had given Arsenal the lead. A mere 10 minutes later and it was 0-2 thanks to Mesut Özil and Arsenal seemed happier playing uphill than down.

Ciaran Clark did score a consolation for Newcastle but it was too little, too late.

For the late game we had to switch to BT Sports in order to watch Manchester United and Watford.

We were hoping to see United’s bubble continue to inflate and Watford’s to burst all over Vicarage Road. Particularly fitting for this eventuality was the fact that José Mourinho’s men were wearing their chewed-bubble-gum coloured kit which is actually supposed to pay homage to the late, great Football Pink newspaper but is, in reality, nowhere near the same colour.

The first half certainly made it look as though that was exactly what was going to happen as United took a two goal lead into the break thanks to Romelu Lukaku and Chris Smalling.

Unfortunately for United, with the selected back four, they were never going to keep a clean sheet and so it proved after 65 minutes when Andre Gray scored.

With a couple of minutes left Nemanja Matić conceded a stupid free-kick and, in so doing, received a second yellow card. This put his team under immense pressure and could have cost them two points. What was his manager’s reaction? He shook his hand and put an arm round him! No wonder Mourinho’s man-management skills are regularly called into question.

Still, United took the three points and moved up to eighth in the table. Wowee!