Five Things we've learnt from the Premier League - Week Fifteen

Pep’s tactics finally unleash the Foxes of old
In truth, Leicester’s tactics were figured out about half way through last season. They got over the line thanks to the failings of others and to superb defensive resilience forged from the fires of the incredible feat they saw before them. You would have thought Pep Guardiola had watched any of the footage from that title run before rolling up at the King Power Stadium. If he did, he certainly didn’t relay that to his players. As it was, City set up with a high press, high line attacking side with possibly the slowest back three you are ever likely to find. They were three down before they’d even fashioned a shot themselves and the 4-2 scoreline flattered what was a display of such tactical ineptitude it beggared belief from a coach as highly regarded as Guardiola. City still have plenty of time to rally this season and prove their critics wrong, but right now they can at least lay claim to one enviable record. They are the only team in the history of English football to have nearly 80% possession in a match and concede 4 goals.

I just made that stat up. But I’d bet you the entire of John Stones £50m (not a typo) transfer fee it’s correct.

Chelsea need to be stopped.
This Chelsea run is now bordering on the ridiculous. They were supposed to struggle against Spurs and City, they beat both with ease. Even when they play poorly, like they did this Sunday, they keep clean sheets and have a striker so on form he is winning games on his own almost each and every week. Costa was fed on scraps against a well marshaled West Brom side, and was finally forced to take matters into his own hands to get the job done. His goal was a microcosm of his season in a nutshell and worth noting once again, quite what a shadow of this player he was for much of the last. Conte and his players have thrown down the gauntlet to the the teams behind them and after 15 games only Arsenal have bothered to rise to it.

Only Arsenal emerging as a challenge in a title race? That is quite literally the definition of ffs.

Palace can’t keep defending like this

Only Liverpool fans have seen more goals go in than Palace this season. Their 15 matches have produced some 56 goals. Just to put that into comparison, Middlesborough fans have seen 29 for the same number of points. Palace have scored more than any team outside of the top four but their chronic inability to defend has meant they have thrown away points time and time again. This was the case against Hull on Saturday when once again 3 points flew past them with the same grace that Robert Snodgrass flew himself to the floor to win (Citation: steal) a penalty. Palace couldn’t blame that act of theft on their draw though, much as Pardew tried to. They are an absolute shambles of a side defensively but if you’re going to be that, kudos for being entertaining at the other end to boot. Palace have too much fire power to go down, but they seem hell bent on giving their fans several heart attacks on route to safety this season.

Super Saturday gave way to 1-0 Sunday

29 goals flew in during the six fixtures on Saturday in an almost collective fuck you to the morosely dull predictions of Mark Lawrenson. One clean sheet was pretty much par for the course in a season that just won’t do dull. It was a shame then, that that made way for three pretty uneventful 1-0 wins on Sunday before, you guessed it, Liverpool turned up to change all that. Conceding two goals to West Ham right is bad enough, but only scoring two against them is just downright awful. Pool have come unstuck a little since the injury to their talismanic Brazilian. The problems appear to be as much positional as personnel however. Origi has played up front in the last two matches and whilst he has down nothing wrong in that role, scoring two goals to boot, it denies Klopp’s team of having Firmino to dictate their high press. Liverpool are half the team without the pressing and passing axis of Firmino, Coutinho and Lallana and right now, their squad just doesn’t look deep enough to sustain a title challenge with injuries too often curtailing that trinity.

Why do Bournemouth defenders keep scoring?
I don’t have the answer to this. I’m genuinely asking. Bournemouth’s defenders have been involved in more goals this season than their midfield. What are they doing down there on the South Coast? Is is some sort of progressive new wave of football that bypasses the midfield and makes the back four do the work of every other aspect in the team? Seriously without their defenders Bournemouth would be bottom.

That sounded less obvious in my head.

Answers on a postcard please.

Team of the Weak:

Bravo - the worst signing of the season to date. Has yet to make a single save that has won a point for City. Has made several errors that have lost them.

Dann - he might be a goal machine Palace fans, but if can’t defend what fucking good is that.
Elmohamady - does anyone remember when he was good? Like really good for a time? Pretty sure we all dreamt that.
Ndong - so many puns...
Stones - can I just put 11 defenders in this week? Or just one £50m one? Okay I’ll stop now.
Alli - not booked for as cynical an attempt to injure a player as you’ll likely to see. He’s just, you know, not a very nice player is he.
Pogba - will be in here every week until he dictates a match befitting a player of his status, apparent ability and ludicrous price tag.

Firmino - not involved and doesn’t look hungry enough wide on the left, Klopp has to get him back integrated into the spine of his side.
Snodgrass - cheats, form an orderly queue, you will be named and shamed here every week for the plague on the game that you are.
Long - he must be due one of those two or three games runs when everyone thinks he’s amazing again soon...

Kane - if you looked up anonymous in a dictionary, you wouldn’t see Harry Kane.

Goodnight

https://twitter.com/HinduMonkey

Five Things we've learnt from the Premier League - Week Fourteen

Anthony Taylor made for great football
Generally refereeing has been of a better standard this year. A tweak in some crucial rules and better consistency has meant far less controversial decisions than at this stage last season. All that was blown out of the window this weekend in a slew of rancid decisions across nearly every game. The upside? More goals, more drama and more madness than ever. None of this was more prevalent than in the opening match up at the Etihad, where Anthony Taylor got almost every conceivable decision wrong in an attempt to encourage an open game. From the opening moments Taylor set his stall out by refusing to book players for charging in with little regard for winning the ball. It was little wonder then that he bottled what would have been the correct decision to send off David Luiz in the first half for a clear step across in front of Sergio Aguero when clean through on goal. Barely 30 seconds went by without a wrong decision, everything from penalty calls to incorrect throw ins were counted up as Taylor just carried on waving play on with reckless abandon, hungry for more goals, more glory… more great football. In the end it took somebody drop kicking an opponent at pace to get a red card, although even then Taylor had little answer to the comical melee that followed. All told, this was one of the worst performances by a major official I’d witnessed in some time… and football was the winner for it.

Oh and Pep, you can’t blame the referee when your main striker couldn’t hit a barn door with a banjo when clean through for the 8^th time and your number 10 misses an open goal from 4 yards. That’s just not football. It’s not even cricket.

Diving… retrospective… anybody… listening…
Not to sound like a broken record every season, but can this happen now please? It’s a very hard thing to see at pace and I’m not blaming referees for getting a lot of these decisions wrong. So analyse them after the match and then implement the bans retrospectively. Three match ban for anybody who was found to dive to win a penalty; like three people did this weekend alone. The question what should define a dive is a silly one, given 99.9% of human beings with able eyesight would agree that say, Alli dived this weekend. It wasn’t close. It wasn’t open to debate. It was plain and simple cheating and he should be banned for three matches for it. It doesn’t need rule clarification. It just needs the law makers to be brave enough to start calling players out for doing it.

Either that or line the cheat up against a wall after the match and let every player from the opposition kick a ball as hard as they can at them from ten yards. Playground justice people. If you’re going to act like stupid little boys, you can be treated like them.

West Ham are in real trouble
Conceding 5 goals to Arsenal this weekend was pretty embarrassing, but conceding 4 mid-week to Manchester United was arguably even worse. West Ham are in a horrible rut and sit just one point above the relegation zone in 17^th. They cannot defend, they cannot stay organised for more than twenty minutes at a time and they cannot score the chances that an increasingly more bored Dimitri Payet is creating. The playmaker has been criticised this season but can you really blame him looking a bit annoyed when he knows that yet another great ball into the box will be spooned over, miss-kicked or sliced wide. The only silver lining for West Ham lies in the short term. Andy Carroll is back fit… and wasted no time in showing once again how much his side needs him. Expertly converting a chance served up by, you guessed it, Payet. West Ham will probably get four games out of him before he’s injured again. At this rate they will need to win all of them.

That’s Howe you mount a comeback Jurgen
It’s hard to imagine any team but Liverpool managing to lose 4-3 with 15 minutes left in a match they were leading 3-1 in. Thanks to what must rank as one of the all-time great substitutions, Eddie Howe brought on Ryan Fraser for the injured Stanislas on 55 minutes and watched the young Scot run absolute riot. Creating 2 and scoring 1 of his team’s 4 second half goals, Fraser tore into Liverpool’s shambolic excuse for a defence like a hungry Lion to a pack of injured Gazelles. Liverpool really are a fantastic team to watch, having now averaged almost 4 goals per game in either end this season. If this was a step back for them after a fine run, it was another step forward for the talismanic Howe. The Bournemouth manager is as positive and as likeable as his football, and the Premier League is a better place with both him and his club in it.

Will the real Tony Pulis please stand up
10 points out of 12 and with the same number of goals to boot, West Brom are up to 7^th in the league and playing their best football for years. Has Pulis finally thrown off the shackles and decided to allow himself to be entertained in his latter years? West Brom aren’t just scoring goals, they’re playing extremely attractive counter attacking football not unlike a certain Leicester from last season. What is happening? How has the world come to this? What next? Sunderland to start a season well? Swansea to stop shooting themselves in the foot? Odion Ighalo to score a goal? Manchester United to win a league match? Alan Pardew to stop winning football matches convincingly at the last possible point every time to save his job? Place your bets people… this season, anything goes.

Team of the Weak

Karius – How hard is it to buy a decent keeper Liverpool? I just don’t understand.
Reid – Was absolutely torn apart by an on song Sanchez. Painful to watch at times.
Fonte – Battered by Benteke.
Amat – A genuinely terrible defender.
Rojo – Possibly a red card ref? I mean, you were five yards away so… you know…
Lovren – Looks comically clueless at times, like he genuinely goes through periods in some matches where he doesn’t know where he is. It’s like the first two minutes of a Quantum Leap episode out there.
Arfield – Looked out of his depth against a well organised Stoke.
Pogba – An absolute abomination of a performance for somebody who cost that much money.
Cleverly – God awful. Still better than Pogba.
De Bruyne – You can’t miss those Kevin. Not at 1-0 you can’t lad.
Vardy – No goals in 16 games. Sixteen. Problems.
Aguero – As everybody’s fantasy football team changed overnight… Merry Christmas Sergio. See you on New Years Eve. What… were you thinking…

https://twitter.com/HinduMonkey