Ugh.
Before I start taking bows for guessing, stress guessing the correct scoreline in the Manchester United/Liverpool game and noting that William Gallas might score for Arsenal against Chelsea, let's examine an astounding 1-7 performance from the Saturday Premier League Picks.
One and seven.
Egads.
That's Derby County level bad.
That's 'The Adventures of Ford Fairlane' bad. (Well, good in a different kind of way.)
That's Spice Girls reunion level bad. (Ah, topical humor, err, humour.)
Anyways, before digging into the big games let's look at went awry Saturday.
** Wigan 5, Blackburn 3. This one deserves a gadzooks, or possibly a kerblooey. Looking back, who didn't see the Latics winning their first league game since August 22?
** Derby 0, Middlesbrough 1. My bad. Why I went with the Rams almost makes my decision to start Selvin Young in my fantasy NFL playoffs seem reasonable. Almost.
** Portsmouth 0, Tottenham 1. Pompey hadn't lost a league match at Fratton Park this season before Saturday. Spurs hadn't won on the road before Saturday. In retrospect, this should have been as clear as when Sir Isaac Newtown was brained by an apple and 'discovered' gravity. (Or when Doc Brown fell and hit his head on the toilet and devised the flux capacitor.)
** Manchester City 4, Bolton 2. Long stated fact, I don't like Sven Goran Eriksson. Stupid.
** All the rest (Fulham 0, Newcastle 1; West Ham 0, Everton 2; Birmingham 1, Reading 1) here's a little (ssh) secret. These were proverbial coin-flip games, except unlike a coin these can land on three sides.
Ok, enough of my self pity and self promotion?
Good.
Let's get this out of the way. During the week I planned to schlep into New York to watch the double-header at the Kinsale. A couple things derailed that plan, in no particular order: crummy weather, my brother's birthday, back pains that would be only made worse by Metro North's trains and a late night of "Rock Band" that made waking up for a 6 a.m. train next to impossible. (No, I was not dancing with Herr Brownstone.)
From what I can tell I didn't miss a classic at Anfield.
Two storyline emerge from this one. The first is easy, Manchester United obviously aren't going away in the title race. This was the kind of result they snatched last season, so it's an encouraging sign for Red Devils fans from Manchester to Milwaukee to Malaysia that Tevez redirected Rooney's worm-burner from a United corner.
The juicer stuff comes from the losing dugout.
Now an astounding 10 points behind leaders Arsenal, Liverpool are closer to tenth place Newcastle than the penthouse. It's not over, but it's over.
After the game Rafa Benetiz met with Tom Hicks and George Gillett, who apparently didn't understand the idea of the January transfer window. How this conversation played out, the erudite Spaniard and the Texas soft drink bottling tycoon would have been more interesting than the game itself. (Sorry, no gross sterotype for George Gillett. If you want one, here's Zwarte Piet -- Sinterklaas' 'slave' in the Netherlands.)
Rafa: "Sirs, you donnot understand. I do not have enough players for my rotation system. We need a first team of at least 50, men who can enjoy sangria with me."
Hicks: "C'mon, now Raffer, we just gave you all that money for that summbitch Tor-rez."
Gillett: "Sorry fellas, I'm deeply engrossed in watching the 'Miracle in Istanbul' DVD again. I bleed for this club. ... Really, I do."
Anyways, you can guess why none of my one-act plays ever made to off-Broadway.
Just thinking out loud, but if Rafa doesn't make at least the semifinals of the Champions League I bet he walks away...paving the door for Jose Mourinho. (Or at least Jose Mourinho rumors.)
Now for the other big game, the one I actually watched -- Arsenal 1, Chelsea 0.
Lots of places to go in this one. First and foremost, Chelsea are not an elite team without Drogba. There's nobody to score. Down a goal Avram Grant waited much too long to bring somebody on for the offensively challenged Claude Makelele. Of course, Claudio Pizzaro is a mug. (Just wondering, what the hell happened to Steve Sidwell? Did ESPN hire some goons to kidnap him for that tackle on Beckham?)
Still, Shaun Wright-Phillips (what a waste of money) missed an absolute sitter on his foot late in the game that would have leveled it.
That meant William Gallas' first half goal that probably could have been saved by Petr Cech held up. No doubt the Faux-Franco-Hawk played a part in the score. (What's the deal with all these athletes and the Mr. T power-hawk anyway?)
Yes, I'm jumping around here but before I forget, as much as I praise Cesc Fabregas, his reaction like he just took a punch from a circa 1986 Mike Tyson after Ashley Coles' Bitch-slap gives footballers a bad name. Take a cue from Randy Macho Man Savage and 'Be a Man.' (On second thought, after clicking that link maybe not.)
The biggest thing I noticed from that game was a lot of excellent saves on both sides from Cech and Manuel Almunia. He might look like a cheap extra from a Euro-porn, but Almunia got his named chanted at the Emirates and was pretty HUSK worthy all day.
Naturally the result of this game left the Premier League in virtually a flat-footed tie bewteen Arsenal and Manchester United with 19 games remaining. Chelsea are rank outsiders trailing by six points. My hated City are in fourth on 33 points and a three-way tie on 30 of Liverpool, Portsmouth and Everton are behind them.
It's a two-horse race, but as always, stay tuned.
** TOP Fantasy team of the week is Del Perkins' DynamoDel with 64 points. Standouts were Kolo Toure, Roque Santa Cruz and Nemanja Vidic. Congrats.
** In an incident non-related to Zwarte Piet, the Dutch police were on strike, thus shutting down the Eredivisie. Make your own joke about wooden shoes here.
** First place won't be on the line, but next weekend Real Madrid plays at Barcelona in the final game of the La Liga before the winter break. Ray Hudson is washing all his underwear in advance, even with Messi out a couple weeks.
** Hopefully you caught the 'Extras' special on HBO last night. It was especially poignant with the Hollywood writers strike and impending wave of reality television crap. Above all, if the interplay between Barry and Darren Lamb doesn't make you bust a gut, well, "I don't get it."
The only drawback was my lack of knowledge of British flash in the pans. Oh right, that George Michael cameo was a riot.
Still, Ricky Gervais/Andy Millman's first starring role in a Hollywood film sounds like a turd.
If you had eagle eyes, you caught the one-and-only Karl Plinkington as an autograph seeker outside the trendy restaurant.
** Finally, a little D-A-P for Wake Forest and Marcus Tracy for winning the NCAA College Cup. While I have little interest or need for the collegiate game, Tracy gets some recognition since he was the first player I wrote a feature on while he was in high school at my current job. See him on some MLS gridiron lines near you.
Before I start taking bows for guessing, stress guessing the correct scoreline in the Manchester United/Liverpool game and noting that William Gallas might score for Arsenal against Chelsea, let's examine an astounding 1-7 performance from the Saturday Premier League Picks.
One and seven.
Egads.
That's Derby County level bad.
That's 'The Adventures of Ford Fairlane' bad. (Well, good in a different kind of way.)
That's Spice Girls reunion level bad. (Ah, topical humor, err, humour.)
Anyways, before digging into the big games let's look at went awry Saturday.
** Wigan 5, Blackburn 3. This one deserves a gadzooks, or possibly a kerblooey. Looking back, who didn't see the Latics winning their first league game since August 22?
** Derby 0, Middlesbrough 1. My bad. Why I went with the Rams almost makes my decision to start Selvin Young in my fantasy NFL playoffs seem reasonable. Almost.
** Portsmouth 0, Tottenham 1. Pompey hadn't lost a league match at Fratton Park this season before Saturday. Spurs hadn't won on the road before Saturday. In retrospect, this should have been as clear as when Sir Isaac Newtown was brained by an apple and 'discovered' gravity. (Or when Doc Brown fell and hit his head on the toilet and devised the flux capacitor.)
** Manchester City 4, Bolton 2. Long stated fact, I don't like Sven Goran Eriksson. Stupid.
** All the rest (Fulham 0, Newcastle 1; West Ham 0, Everton 2; Birmingham 1, Reading 1) here's a little (ssh) secret. These were proverbial coin-flip games, except unlike a coin these can land on three sides.
Ok, enough of my self pity and self promotion?
Good.
Let's get this out of the way. During the week I planned to schlep into New York to watch the double-header at the Kinsale. A couple things derailed that plan, in no particular order: crummy weather, my brother's birthday, back pains that would be only made worse by Metro North's trains and a late night of "Rock Band" that made waking up for a 6 a.m. train next to impossible. (No, I was not dancing with Herr Brownstone.)
From what I can tell I didn't miss a classic at Anfield.
Two storyline emerge from this one. The first is easy, Manchester United obviously aren't going away in the title race. This was the kind of result they snatched last season, so it's an encouraging sign for Red Devils fans from Manchester to Milwaukee to Malaysia that Tevez redirected Rooney's worm-burner from a United corner.
The juicer stuff comes from the losing dugout.
Now an astounding 10 points behind leaders Arsenal, Liverpool are closer to tenth place Newcastle than the penthouse. It's not over, but it's over.
After the game Rafa Benetiz met with Tom Hicks and George Gillett, who apparently didn't understand the idea of the January transfer window. How this conversation played out, the erudite Spaniard and the Texas soft drink bottling tycoon would have been more interesting than the game itself. (Sorry, no gross sterotype for George Gillett. If you want one, here's Zwarte Piet -- Sinterklaas' 'slave' in the Netherlands.)
Rafa: "Sirs, you donnot understand. I do not have enough players for my rotation system. We need a first team of at least 50, men who can enjoy sangria with me."
Hicks: "C'mon, now Raffer, we just gave you all that money for that summbitch Tor-rez."
Gillett: "Sorry fellas, I'm deeply engrossed in watching the 'Miracle in Istanbul' DVD again. I bleed for this club. ... Really, I do."
Anyways, you can guess why none of my one-act plays ever made to off-Broadway.
Just thinking out loud, but if Rafa doesn't make at least the semifinals of the Champions League I bet he walks away...paving the door for Jose Mourinho. (Or at least Jose Mourinho rumors.)
Now for the other big game, the one I actually watched -- Arsenal 1, Chelsea 0.
Lots of places to go in this one. First and foremost, Chelsea are not an elite team without Drogba. There's nobody to score. Down a goal Avram Grant waited much too long to bring somebody on for the offensively challenged Claude Makelele. Of course, Claudio Pizzaro is a mug. (Just wondering, what the hell happened to Steve Sidwell? Did ESPN hire some goons to kidnap him for that tackle on Beckham?)
Still, Shaun Wright-Phillips (what a waste of money) missed an absolute sitter on his foot late in the game that would have leveled it.
That meant William Gallas' first half goal that probably could have been saved by Petr Cech held up. No doubt the Faux-Franco-Hawk played a part in the score. (What's the deal with all these athletes and the Mr. T power-hawk anyway?)
Yes, I'm jumping around here but before I forget, as much as I praise Cesc Fabregas, his reaction like he just took a punch from a circa 1986 Mike Tyson after Ashley Coles' Bitch-slap gives footballers a bad name. Take a cue from Randy Macho Man Savage and 'Be a Man.' (On second thought, after clicking that link maybe not.)
The biggest thing I noticed from that game was a lot of excellent saves on both sides from Cech and Manuel Almunia. He might look like a cheap extra from a Euro-porn, but Almunia got his named chanted at the Emirates and was pretty HUSK worthy all day.
Naturally the result of this game left the Premier League in virtually a flat-footed tie bewteen Arsenal and Manchester United with 19 games remaining. Chelsea are rank outsiders trailing by six points. My hated City are in fourth on 33 points and a three-way tie on 30 of Liverpool, Portsmouth and Everton are behind them.
It's a two-horse race, but as always, stay tuned.
** TOP Fantasy team of the week is Del Perkins' DynamoDel with 64 points. Standouts were Kolo Toure, Roque Santa Cruz and Nemanja Vidic. Congrats.
** In an incident non-related to Zwarte Piet, the Dutch police were on strike, thus shutting down the Eredivisie. Make your own joke about wooden shoes here.
** First place won't be on the line, but next weekend Real Madrid plays at Barcelona in the final game of the La Liga before the winter break. Ray Hudson is washing all his underwear in advance, even with Messi out a couple weeks.
** Hopefully you caught the 'Extras' special on HBO last night. It was especially poignant with the Hollywood writers strike and impending wave of reality television crap. Above all, if the interplay between Barry and Darren Lamb doesn't make you bust a gut, well, "I don't get it."
The only drawback was my lack of knowledge of British flash in the pans. Oh right, that George Michael cameo was a riot.
Still, Ricky Gervais/Andy Millman's first starring role in a Hollywood film sounds like a turd.
If you had eagle eyes, you caught the one-and-only Karl Plinkington as an autograph seeker outside the trendy restaurant.
** Finally, a little D-A-P for Wake Forest and Marcus Tracy for winning the NCAA College Cup. While I have little interest or need for the collegiate game, Tracy gets some recognition since he was the first player I wrote a feature on while he was in high school at my current job. See him on some MLS gridiron lines near you.
Labels: Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, manchester United, Prem League, Soccer
i think you sort of made this mistake in the preview last friday too, but there are 38 matches in each PL season. (19 opponents X 2, home and away.) thus the halfway point is 19 matches (two weeks hence) and there are 21 left, not 19.
and if you hate citeh now, just wait until they get nery castillo next month.
Man City becomes a little more execrable but a lot better with Nery Castillo on board, right?
Finally, some credit for my main man Marcus! Don't know if you saw the highlights of the semis, but that first goal was simply amazing.
--You think he has any chance at the National Team sometime soon? One of my buddies played with him on Beachside and said that he gave the ol' finger to ODP a long time ago because of the $ factor and since then they haven't been that nice to him....
hoping that this type of performance opens all of their eyes and he gets a shot..seems like you know more on him than i do, would like to hear your take
In high school Tracy simpled owned it.
As for the National Team? Guess he'd have to show something in MLS before even being considered.
The level of play in NCAA is nothing compared to anything else, really.
The one knock people had on Tracy was his mental focus, perhaps winning an NCAA title changed that.
At the very least his name will be mentioned in the upcoming 'SuperDraft'.
Cardillo - how does the Superdraft work? If you play NCAA, do you have to be a certain age to be eligible?
--also, jumping ahead I know, but guessing that he probably has no chance at 2010, maybe a slight outside chance at 2014?
I spent the hours between 8:30 am and 4 pm in a Brooklyn bar, and I got to watch Liverpool and the Jets lose -- awesome day for me. Plus I wanted a draw out of the middle game, and I got Arsenal taking three points. Not my best day for rooting interests.
I could go on for about 2,500 words on the Liverpool/ManU match, but instead I'll just say this: Neither club looked like champions, but ManU showed how to win a championship. They did little out there, but they converted one of their two chances, whereas Liverpool blew every single on of theirs. That's it right there.
(P.S. Dirk Kuyt is not the answer. I'm done with him. It's Crouchy time until the window, at which point they should do everything they can to get the Bulgarian to Anfield. End of story.)
(P.P.S. Xabi and Mr. Agger, please come back soon.)
Cheer up Ace, apparently for about $7 mil you can get Castillo from Shaktar. Then buy him next year for maybe another $70 mil on top of that.
Jesus, even Hicks isn't that stupid with money.
A little off topic...
Does anyone else think Kaka is a little overrated? He seems to play well in about 10 games and people fall in love with him. I can't be the only one to feel this way, right?
Fair point about Kaka, but you could say that about anybody. How many non-goalies or center backs maintain the same level each and every game? In the Premier Leauge Ronaldo came closest to keeping up a high form throughout the season.
Of course, with all awards, take them with a grain of salt. Was Cannavaro the best last year?
Good thought.
Yeah, that's a good point about Cannavaro, whom I thought was even slightly less deserving. The thing is, about Kaka, who else are you going to give it to? Besides Ronaldo I suppose, there doesn't seem to be one guy who stands out.
Grain of salt is right.