Week Eight - The Glory, The Shame & The Ranting.

Another bumper weekend of top flight action saw the usual ingredients of goals, drama and entertainment all thrown into a cash rich melting pot and served up with a side dish of controversy. So without further ado, let’s do what match of the day does every week, and start with the negatives…

The Bug Bear – Has the gap between football analysis ever been wider?

Discounting BT “Sport” (horribly mundane) and ITV (now just a condescending, if entertaining, boys club) – it is becoming increasingly apparent each week that the analysis being served up by the BBC on Match of the Day, is so far behind that offered by Sky that it is must now be considered terminal.

I’d love to sit here and blame Alan Shearer for everything, after all, he is terrible in every possible way you can judge someone. He is both stupid yet pompous, forthright yet inaccurate and obvious to the point of complete and utter pointlessness. However, I refuse to believe that the problem is as simple as the BBC just hiring worse people than Sky over and over again. The difference has to be in the message and the focus that is handed down each week. Andy Gray was already serving up analysis more insightful than anything Match of the Day had to offer before his scandal, but since then Sky have reimagined themselves under the guise of Neville, Chamberlin and Carragher. Monday Night Football is the best football analysis show on television bar none, and it has rippled through to all of Sky’s coverage to positive effect.

Let us compare this weekend. On Match of the Day we were served up a feast of attacking football from all the main games. Rather than focus on football however, five of the first six pieces of analysis all centred around controversial incidents. I wouldn’t mind so much if they discussed how these incidents subsequently shaped the game, but they didn’t. You literally got Alan Shearer showing us a replay of an incident we’d already seen three times during the highlights, and give us his meaningless opinion of whether it was right or wrong. The only piece that did focus on actual football, centred around the performance of Dusan Tadic for Saints. Did it show us unseen footage, some stats about his attacking coverage, average position, passes completed? No. It merely replayed the four goals he set up coupled with such expert punditry as “he’s made a great run there, and his cut back was perfect.”

Now let’s look at Sky’s coverage of the two games on Saturday, notably the magnificently barmy end to the Liverpool match. Did they just replay the goals back and idly comment on them? No. They rewound the footage and discussed how the goals had been created from step one. That was for starters, they then used previous footage and stats to back up what had happened (in this case, Liverpool’s woeful attempts to defend a set piece) and finally discussed future games, plans and strategies. Crucially, what they did, was actually analyse the football match and the key incidents within it. Rather than what Match of the Day does, which is replay the goals and red cards and essentially ask its two pundits yay or nay.

As a final point, can I also request that Match of the Day ban this conversation from ever taking place again. Because I have now, without exaggeration, heard this over 1,000 times:

Presenter: “A fantastic result, but the key question is… were Team A very good, or Team B very bad?”
Pundit: “For me, it was a bit of both”

OH FUCK OFF.

#teamsky

Stat of Week

Dusan Tadic and Graziano Pelle have thus far got 7 goals and 8 assists between them in 8 games this season; an average of 1.88 key interactions per game. The much touted Lallana and Lambert, by way of contrast, achieved their 22 goals and 22 assists at an average of 1.1 key interactions per game last season.

So to put it another way, Tadic and Pelle are giving Saints an extra 0.75 goals per game. The pair are five years younger than Lambert and Lallana and cost £11m less.

Weren’t Saints supposed to be in crisis…

Team of the Weak

Mannone – Conceded 8 goals, at least 4 of which were his own fault. Passed the ball to Tadic one minute, threw it in his own net the next. It’s hard to think of a worst goalkeeping performance in living memory.
Vergini – A wonderful half volley into the corner of the goal with his wrong foot. Shame it was his own goal. And that he conceded seven more following it…
O’Shea – The third Sunderland player to make the team, and in fairness I could have included all 11. Captained his team to their heaviest ever top flight loss in a performance so devoid of fight and effort it simply beggared belief.
Kaboul – It’s hard to believe that Pochettino took a look at all the defenders in his squad, bought three more and still made Kaboul the player to build the team around. Has he been possessed by Harry Redknapp?
Dunne – Ten own goals in the Premier League. Ten!? You just can’t argue with those numbers.
Moses – A shameless, shameless dive that ultimately helped win his team three points yesterday. A despicable cheat.
Arfield – Is showing none of the form that lit up the Championship last year and like pretty much the entire Burnley squad, looks badly, badly out of his depth.
Cazorla – Has gone backwards rapidly since his first season. Overshadowed by Ozil (for better or worse) last time around, Arsenal need him to step up amongst a mounting injury crisis.
Ulloa – Has looked a completely different player since destroying Manchester United last month. Looked tired and off the pace against Newcastle. Who are awful.
Balotelli – This isn’t going well is it Mario. I mean, I don’t want to say Sandra Redknapp would have scored that. But…
Costa – Ruining everybody’s fantasy football team. Especially those who didn’t have Aguero. Forget Chelsea, we’re the real victims here Vincent. Will you please stop selecting him for the national team? You have no right. You bastard.

Fantasy Football Disaster of the Week

This

http://fantasy.premierleague.com/entry/468900/event-history/8/

Manager of the Week

Ronald Koeman – Has retained the passing football of his predecessors and added an incisive, continental thrust at the end of it. Plus he has a face that just makes me want to smile every time I look at it. He’s so cheeky. Naughty even. I’ve said too much.

Worst Post Match Comments of the Week

Mark Hughes – “Ryan is the first person to be pulled up for that offence this year, so that suggests the referee was influenced by the media… for me it wasn’t a penalty and was very harsh” – followed by “Victor is running at pace, if you look at it again you’ll see the lads put his arm out, that’s impedement (not an actual word) and in my view it’s a foul. We can argue about all day, but if you impede someone in the box it’s a danger of getting a penalty”

So in one interview Mark got two decisions wrong and questioned the integrity of the referee. Who was apparently influenced by the media before the game, but not by the Stoke players/fans during it when it came to awarding them a penalty for a stonewall…  A STONE FUCKING WALL DIVE.

There are many, many hateable managers in football. But few provide so little humour as Hughes upon being so. The man is a despicable bastard.

What you may have missed

Neil Warnock still conducting post match interviews with the look of a man who cannot believe he’s here; Christian Eriksen and his dashing good looks single handily trying to help Spurs beat Sergio Aguero; Frank Lampard getting two assists in 20 minutes and then going off injured; so still doing more than the entire Arsenal midfield quartet against the worst defence in the league; Newcastle winning a game of football so boring and sub-standard one fan left after 4 minutes; Sunderland giving up after 12 minutes; Liverpool being carried by the young, tired legs of Raheem Sterling yet again and a nine goal thriller in the FA Trophy between two of the best named sides in the game… Kidsgrove Athletic and Loughborough Dynamo.

Dynamo. I mean seriously?

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