English Premier League
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So yeah, transfer deadline day, eh? I posted earlier with some of the deals and rumours going around – here are your headlines for what actually happened. Sort of.
Harry Redknapp spent all day telling Sky Sports News it’d be a quiet day for him, and then ten minutes before the deadline, it was revealed he was in for Real Madrid’s Rafael van der Vaart. That deal may or may not have gone through, nothings been confirmed. Redknapp is however, hopeful.
Birmingham had a busy day, signing Alex Hleb, Martin Jiranek and Jean Beausejour, to make them look even stronger than before. Sunderland meanwhile broke their club transfer record to sign World Cup star Asamoah Gyan.
Ryan Babel went on a Helicopter trip South, causing Sky Sports News to go into speculation meltdown, but then he headed back up to Liverpool. Like Mark Mark Schwarzer, Scott Parker and Shay Given, he stayed where he started.
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Ok, so how do you approach Transfer Deadline day, as a blogger? I’m going to give you a hit of Transfer Deadline Day madness now – i.e the deals that have been done, the rumours that are flying around etc, and then in about six hours when its calmed down a bit, I’ll do a follow up, hopefully with mostly confirmed deals. Also message to Sky Sports, please stop Jim White yelling, thanks.
Ok, so biggest ones I can see are – former Arsenal winger Alex Hleb has signed for Birmingham on a one year deal, which is a great move for them. They’ve also bought Martin Jiranek from Spartak Moscow and Chile winger Jean Beausejour. Robinho has ended his Manchester City stay and has joined free spending Milan, who seem intent on building the best team from 2008 in 2010.
Ryan Babel is either joining Spurs or West Ham, Sky Sports can’t decide. Eidur Gudjohnson is on loan at Stoke. Paul Konchesky is joining Liverpool, who are also after Carlton Cole.
Shay Given and Emmanuel Adebayour are going nowhere, neither is Mark Schwarzer. Or Scott Parker. They’ll stay at City, Fulham and West Ham respectively.
Bolton have signed Rodrigo Moreno. Franco di Santa is joining Wigan. Hopefully he’ll deliver the goods (Santa, see?).
That seems to be it for now.
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So the big two news stories of the day are that Javier Mascherano has managed to wrangle his move to Barcelona after a protracted period of complaining, and Emmanuel Adebayour has told Manchester City he’ll be off if he isn’t given some first team football. Player power, then is back on the agenda.
Liverpool manager Roy Hodgson has hit out at the fact that he has been coerced into selling Mascherano, due to a combination of heel-dragging and the club not really having enough money.
The simple truth is this though, until clubs start taking a hard line on players, players are going to have all the power. Take a look at the way Arsenal are holding all the cards in the Cesc Fabregas saga. Cesc would clearly like to go, Barca would clearly like him, but Arsenal have signed him to a big contract, and don’t need the money enough to need to sell him. Fabregas knows if kicked and screamed, Wenger could just not sell him anyway, and then not even pick him in the first team to show him what’s what.
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So, after a wide open week in the Premier League, where there were plenty of points on offer (Newcastle, Arsenal and Chelsea all netting six goals) it is again Sons of Pitches who finish the week top of the table. 2 Wins, this week against The West Brom Blog, gives them just a 5 gamepoint advantage over Your Next Opponent, who sit in Second.
30 teams have won both their games so far, meaning they are the ones to watch so far. Full table is after the jump, so you can check out how well you are doing.
I had a mixed week – I cleverly put Drogba in my team, but uncleverly dropped Arshavin. After his awful perfornance in game week one, I dropped him, but he tucked away a penalty against Blackpool to make him some useful points. Still I picked up a win, which leaves me utterly mid table so far.
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Manchester City have just smashed Liverpool 3-0, with a very very convincing performance at Eastlands. Liverpool meanwhile, apart from the odd spell, looked largely impotent. City opened the scoring with a well worked goal, where Johnson, Milner and Barry combined to put the latter in. They scored again right after half time thanks to a Micah Richards though it was credited to Tevez, while Tevez converted a penalty to kill the game half way through the second half.
All this was in contrast to week one, which has largely been a theme of the weekend. Last weekend, Liverpool looked pretty good against a lethargic looking Arsenal (who bounced back by scoring six against Blackpool) last week, while City were only kept in their opener with Spurs thanks to the heroics of their keeper Joe Hart.
Aston Villa won their opening game 3-0 and looked like they had easily shrugged off Martin O’Neill’s shock departure. Yet this week they suffered a 6-0 collapse against Newcastle in one of the most eyebrow raising results in a while.
Similar stories for Blackpool (comfortable win last week, destroyed this week) and West Brom (strong win this week after being humbled last) just go to prove, you absolutely cannot tell anything about the Premier League just yet, and its probably best to let it unfold a bit yet.
Still at least Wigan and Chelsea are proving to be consistent, if not in the same way.
You can follow me on Twitter, its @EPLOffside – no guarantee I’ll remember to use it though.
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So Roy Hodgson has suggested that Alberto Aquilani is to head back to Italy on loan for a season, just a year after signing for Liverpool for £20m. Its a pretty disappointing step in a pretty disappointing story. I’m not particuarly monogomous with the Premier League, and often cheat on it with Serie A (and other leagues, but I don’t want to put too many in an analogy that already makes me look like a bored housewife) and I was a fan of Aquilani from his time at Roma. Sure he got injured a fair bit, but his talent was obvious.
He’s not really been given a shot at Liverpool. Injuries again have plagued his stay in the North West, but there was a weird sense that Rafa Benitez didn’t really like him anyway (which obviously begs a question – why sign him?).
Its been true of a fair few great players, who have done it for fun in other leagues, but come over here and are disappointing. I don’t think its because the Premier League is vastly superior to other leagues Europe, there are usually some other explainations.
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Its Champions League qualifying week, which means everyone’s eyes are focussed on Europe. Which might be why its good timing for perspective new owner of Blackburn Rovers, Ahsan Ali Syed, to mention that its the Champions League that he is aiming for. He’s got the cash to do it as well – if all he says about how much he has is true, Rovers will apparently be the third richest club in the world.
Viewers of a certain age will remember the last time a Millionare took over Blackburn and promised them European Football and so on. He was Jack Walker, and by goodness, he managed it. Long before Chelsea or Manchester City were accused of buying success, Walker did exactly that for Blackburn, and they won the 1994/5 Premier League title on a thrilling final day.
When they made it to Europe though, things were not quite the dreamland they had envisioned.
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Congratulations go to Sons of Pitches, who lead the league table after week one. The 90 point haul can partly be attributed to the brilliant call of making a certain Didier Drogba captain. The Chelsea frontman of course, hit a hatrick and scored Pitches 34 points on his own.
My own team, Round the Bendtner lost our first round game (relying on a not playing Cesc, and a not really playing Arshavin) Chelsea_blues, scoring just 7 more points than me. Which gives them 3 points and me nothing. But not too bad a points difference, I suppose.
The full league table, as well as some analysis about where to look next week, after the jump.
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1. Ian Holloway would like to be taken seriously.
Sky and the BBC must have been rubbing their hands together as the Ian Holloway led Blackpool had a dream start against Wigan. Holloway has been known for many seasons as a wonderfully out there quote machine, but his post match interview was somewhat morose as he was determined not to play up to his mad as a hatter image. Which comes across as even madder, obviously.
2. Blackpool will not be whipping boys
Probably. Wigan won’t be their sternest test, but to win any game away from home by that kind of scoreline is something to celebrate, especially if you are newly promoted. Time will tell if they can keep it up – its Arsenal next.
3. Chelsea have no sense of Romance.
Blackpool were top of the Premier League for just a couple of hours, as Chelsea outright refused to let the seasiders have their moment by sticking goal after goal past West Brom. Come on lads, it won’t mean that much at the end of the season, and surely it’d be nice to see Blackpool top for just one weekend? No?
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The Premier League then, is well and truly back, and back with it, is Good Day/Bad Day, renamed Heroes and Villains. Its my occasionally regular series with pithily sums up a day in football, by praising those that have done well, and pointing and sneering at those who have done badly. So here is your opening day of the season dose:
Heroes:
Blackpool: Well, Well. Not only did Ian Holloway’s new boys win on the opening day of the season, away from home, but they did it 4-0 against Wigan. Fair to say Wigan miss Titus Bramble already?
Joe Hart. Roberto Mancini had a tough choice this morning between club vice captain Shay Given and England Number 1 Joe Hart. He picked the latter, and he’ll be thankful as he basically single handedly earned Manchester City a point against Spurs.
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