A Bad Day for the Big Boys. Except Man City.

By: Rob | September 25th, 2010

An eventful day in the Premier League that saw upsets galore. Roberto Mancini may have announced the title was already Chelsea’s, but he watched his Manchester City side overcome them 1-0 in the Early kickoff. It was also a bad day for Arsenal, Liverpool and Spurs. Man United fans must be rubbing their hands together – they don’t play untill tomorrow, against Bolton.

It was an ex-United player – Carlos Tevez who gave City the win against Chelsea, in teh defending Champions first real test of the season. Arguably all the good morale work done by those big wins against the weaker opponents at the start of the season has now been undone, as the first time they’ve come up against an arguable title contender, they’ve been beaten.

It is surely time to start believing in Roberto Mancini. Not only do his mind games about Chelsea already having won the title seem to have worked, but tactically he got the game spot on. Sure his team is not Holland 74 or Brazil 82, but crikey it worked.

Elsewhere, Liverpool were looking to bounce back from their Carling Cup defeat midweek, but only managed a draw against Sunderland in a highly contentious match. Liverpool took in the lead in farcical fashion, as Sunderland were adjudged to have taken a FK, and then Liverpool nicked in to score.

A couple of Darren Bent goals gave the Black Cats the lead however, and it fell to Steven Gerrard to score late on to salvage a point for the Reds.

Arsenal fared badly as well, suffering a 3-2 defeat against West Brom in a thrilling game at the Emirates. West Ham outclassed Arsenal, and went 3-0 up after missing a penalty, and two late goals from Nasri could not prevent a famous victory for the Baggies.

Arsenal’s north-London rivals Spurs didn’t have a better afternoon – they lost 1-0 to struggling West Ham, the first win of the Avram Grant era for the Hammers. West Ham played brilliantly, especially beleaguered Rob Green, who pulled off a string of exceptional saves, especially ones from van der Vaart and Modric.

In the other games – Birmingham made it a year without defeat at St Andrews in a terrifyingly dull 0-0 draw with Wigan, it was also goalless between Fulham and Everton, but Blackburn and Blackpool played out an electric Lancashire Derby. Blackpool looked to have done enough with a late equaliser to secure another valiable point, but a late goal from Brett Emerton sent them home pointless.