Category Archives: Football

Match Review 20/08/2016 Tottenham 1 Crystal Palace 0

Tottenham finally managed to break down a Crystal Palace side with a deserved goal in the 83rd minute of the first game of the last season at the ‘old’ White Hart Lane. It was newcomer Victor Wanyama who powerfully headed in to make the net bulge via an assist from Harry Kane from Erik Lamela’s corner, much to the relief of the home supporters.

The match did not reach great heights as a spectacle, with Spurs in the ascendancy for most of the 90 minutes. Vincent Janssen, Tottenham’s other debutant, looked lively and really should have scored from the chances that he had. First game nerves, perhaps. Spurs fans will be hoping that he breaks his duck soon to banish the ghosts of the Roberto Soldado era.

What really changed the game was the subsitution of Christian Eriksen, who was not enjoying the best of games for the Lilywhites, for the mercurial Dele Alli on 68 minutes. The England rookie’s impact was felt almost immediately, Alli showing great vision and accuracy with a one touch pass that was perfect for Janssen who went on-on-one with Eagles’ goalkeeper Hennessey. Janssen managed to chip the keeper, who came off his line to meet him, but the ball went wide. His influence on the match seemed to turn the tide for Spurs.

Andros Townsend was lively for Palace, and showed great pace and industry throughout the game. However, despite this, he was not able to create enough for the away to team to fashion many chances. He was also subjected to an audacious nutmeg by Erik Lamela right at the end of the match.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JZyQNdqANQ

Crystal Palace boss Alan Pardew can have few complaints about the result, and will hope that the signing of Christian Benteke will give the team a reliable target man. They hardly looked like scoring in this game, despite fashioning a few decent chances – with the home team creating (and wasting) several good chances throughout.

Next up for the Eagles, it’s a home EFL Cup Second Round match on Tuesday night and then another home game against Bournemouth in the Premier League on Saturday. Both teams (19th & 20th in the table) will be looking to pick up their first points of the season.

Spurs are also at home, hosting the hot and cold Liverpool FC, on Saturday 27th in the early Premier League kick-off.

Tottenham: Vorm, Walker, Alderweireld, Vertonghen, Rose, Dier, Wanyama, Lamela (Carroll 90), Janssen, Eriksen (Alli 68), Kane (Onomah 90). Subs not used: McGee, Davies, Carter-Vickers, Mason.

Crystal Palace: Hennessey, Ward, Dann, Delaney (Tomkins 82), Souare, Ledley (Cabaye 45), Puncheon, Zaha, Lee (Mutch 82), Townsend, Wickham. Subs not used: Speroni, Kelly, Mutch, Anderson, Ladapo.

Twitter Feed

Match Report: 6/8/2016 Ipswich Town 4 Barnsley 2

Ipswich Town 4 v Barnsley Match 2

Portman Road, 6th August, 2016

Bathed in Suffolk’s finest August sunshine, Ralph and I sauntered to Portman Road meditating upon why we loved football. New seasons and opening fixtures are always special, of course. For one day only and for every single club, supporters authentically can dream ‘this year – could be our year’. That new signing, this fresh formation, a crafty combination of youth and experience and hey: miracles can happen!

Only for most of us they don’t and by 45 minutes into Ipswich Town’s new season, they definitely hadn’t. Ipswich’s starting eleven contained attractive, attacking players. Unfortunately they were still squeezed into the dull and narrow 4-4-2 system that last season bored the Portman Road faithful, and many opposing teams, into sullen submission. It was a stifling first half but Barnsley were the brighter. Despite nine signings they looked every inch the side still on that amazing run, starting in the depths of League 1 at Christmas 2015, and ending in Wembley promotion glory some six months later. Indeed Barnsley should have led at half time, but for a wasted close-range header from Bradshaw straight at the goalkeeper; then a stunning reflex, strong wristed save by Ipswich’s excellent Bialkowski. Diving low to his right somehow, in the 43rd minute, he punched out Bradshaw’s six yard slam-and-dip shot for a corner.
Cue half time Ipswich yawns. Then adventurously and out of character, came two McCarthy substitutions. Home wishes were granted (groan) via second half debuts for permanent signing Grant Ward (from Tottenham) and year-long loan Connor Grant (from Everton). Within a minute the 4-3-3 formation paid off and Ward reacted coolly to slot home from inside the box.

Three minutes later Barnsley captain Hourihane deservedly pulled The Terriers level from close range before Ward, with another right foot shot ten minutes later, hit a second from 15 yards out. That was closely followed by a McGoldrick penalty, created by Murphy’s excellent run in the box. Still Barnsley refused to give in and a powerful header into the far corner, from a fine Hourihane free kick, saw Watkins reduce the deficit. Then and perhaps inevitably, given the carnival that had been the second half, Grant Ward completed a debut second-half hat-trick. From the edge of the Barnsley area he telescoped a sweet shot, so low into the corner that Barnsley’s goalkeeper could only assist it into the net, via an outstretched left hand.

Despite the result and far fewer summer signings than Barnsley, Ipswich looked markedly the less coherent side. They cannot rely on another hat-trick miracle next week at Brentford on 13 August and will quickly need to graft the right combination of their squad’s younger midfielders and defenders, with their more experienced attackers. Meanwhile if Barnsley can pick up a win in the next couple of games, starting at home to Derby next Saturday, there is no reason why they shouldn’t maintain their momentum from last year: at least whilst the August sun shines.
Betting
Ipswich are currently 15-8 to win away at Brentford, where they have struggled to win in recent seasons despite playing well. Man to watch – Daryl Murphy with two great assists against Barnsley.
Barnsley’s 2-1 to beat Derby home, which given their two goals and further chances against Ipswich, is well within their capability. Man to watch – Bradshaw who won’t want to miss any more chances and was unlucky not to score on Saturday.

Match report by Grant Bage

Twitter Feed

Big Champions League Matches this Week

A huge semi-final takes place this week on Wednesday night to decide who takes the remaining place in the Champions League Final of 2015.

There are plenty of bookmaker specials to consider, as the interest in this game at the Bernabeu is massive. We particularly like the offer from Ladbrokes.

The Champions League second leg semi-final features a Real Madrid side who came from 2-0 down against Valencia on Saturday to make it 2-2 at the final whistle. In that match, Cristiano Ronaldo missed a penalty as they appear to have conceded the Spanish title to Barcelona. They will need a much better performance to stop Juventus from progressing to the Champions League Final.

Their opponents are Juventus who have already wrapped up the Italian Serie A, losing just 3 games in the process. The Italians expect to have Paul Pogba available for their first appearance in a Champions League semi-final since 2003.

Twitter Feed

Gunning for the Title? Arsenal & Chelsea’s Premier League Run-Ins Examined

Even non-Arsenal fans have stood back and admired how well they have done since being well-beaten by local rivals Tottenham on the 7th of February.

That day, a Harry Kane-inspired Spurs overturned a one goal deficit to triumph at White Hart Lane and leap-frog Arsenal in the Premier League table. That prompted a lot of concern from Gunners fans about which players should be sold and so on.

How things have changed since then, though. Wenger’s men have gone on an incredible eight match winning streak and now sit second in the Premier League table with 66 points after their hard fought win away to Burnley. They are comfortably behind Chelsea (73 points with a game in hand) but now ahead of both Manchester teams and the chasing pack.

Speaking of the pack, that’s realistically now Liverpool and Southampton. Even though Spurs were ahead of Arsenal in early Feb, they have had their traditional late-season lapse and after picking up just one point from their last two games (draw at Burnley 0-0, home loss to Aston Villa) must now be considered out of contention for a top four place.

Arsenal’s Run-In

Looking at the remaining fixtures, Arsenal’s next home match against Chelsea is clearly THE critical one. Victory at the Emirates would give the Gunners some hope that the gap can be further reduced over the remaining games. Given current form, the only other team that might be expected to take points off of the North Londoners are Manchester United.

So, if Arsenal beat Chelsea and all others except Manchester United their total points would be 81.

Chelsea’s Run-In

Now this is interesting. Chelsea have to play some decent teams before the season is over. Manchester United are re-invigorated. Arsenal can smell blood and are on a roll. Leicester are desperate to avoid relegation. Crystal Palace are transformed under Pardew like no one could have predicted. Liverpool are hungry to get back into the top 4. Those games aside, you can see fairly likely wins against West Brom and Sunderland, but this just goes to show that this Premier League title race is not quite over yet.

If the Blues have a stalemate with United, lose to the Gunners and finish by beating West Brom and Sunderland (likely), they’ll have 80 points. This would means that they’d need to amass just 2 points from the Leicester, Palace and Liverpool matches to win the title. You’d think that pretty likely, but pressure can take its toll and things could start to get quite nervy down at Stamford Bridge in May.

Perhaps Arsenal have left it a little too late this season, but their run has at the very least made for an interesting finale. Unless you’re a Chelsea supporter, no one wants to see one team run away with the title without a fight. Let’s hope it goes down to the final day and may the best team win.

Twitter Feed

Football Shorts

Another frenetic finish to the Tyne and Wearside Derby at the weekend saw Sunderland prevail yet again over their black and white rivals. Amongst the better players was Lee Cattermole and after winning numerous awards recently that wasn’t a surprise, nor was him picking up his customary yellow card.

Liverpool made a last gasp goal count against Arsenal and that has made for a very congested Premier League table at the moment – especially below the top 4. The Gunners must have though that they were home and hosed against 10 men. With teams such as West Ham being higher up the table at Christmas Arsenal fans continue to (justifiably) complain about paying the highest ticket prices not only in England but Europe. Perhaps the German Bundesliga model really is the way forward at the Emirates to keep the prices affordable.

Meanwhile, down the road, Tottenham’s Citizen Kane is becoming a real Harry Kane revelation – An English centre forward who can’t stop scoring. They’re wild about Harry at White Hart Lane and at 21 a big future awaits. That has taken quite a bit of pressure off of his manager in the annual sack race, as did Martin Skertl’s goal for Liverpool.

But when a manager has a sustained period of bad times it generally signals the end. Those leading the charge include Leicester City’s Nigel Pearson and Hull’s Steve Bruce after the Tigers failed yet again to pick up points at home.

Now we prepare for a feast of football in the coming weeks. Can’t wait.

Twitter Feed

Football Round Up

This unpredictable English football season continues on as we head into the end of year fixture pile up. Here’s a round up from around the web of breaking talking points and news.

The view from Upton Park is that West Ham could still be higher in the table than Arsenal by the end of the year. And some concerned Gunners fans are tending to agree, with a lot hanging on the Dec 28th match between the two sides.

Manchester City managed to pull off the great escape at Roma to go through to the next round in the Champions League as not forecast by many pundits a couple of weeks ago.

In the race for promotion to the Premier League next season, Middlesbrough are hoping to head the table by Christmas with wins over the top two teams (Derby County and Ipswich), while AFC Bournemouth lurk around the promotion places.

Twitter Feed

The Costa of Diego’s Yellow Card

Dropping points against Sunderland on Saturday wasn’t exactly the end of the world for Chelsea as The Blues did come out on top in all aspects except for scoring. With 66% possession, twice the number of shots on goal (24 shots on goal to Sunderland’s 12) and four times as many corners earned, there was however one event that made the headlines more than most: Diego Costa’s 55^th minute yellow card.

Being his fifth yellow this season, Costa misses tonight’s game against Tottenham at Stamford Bridge. Big deal? It shouldn’t be. On current form, it would seem that the team should be able to easily cope with Spurs without him.

Then again, Costa has been a prolific scorer at the Bridge so far this season. The Spaniard opened the scoring against Leicester, grabbed a hat-trick against Swansea, added another against Villa, made the result safe against Arsenal, and scored another against West Brom.

In fact, Costa has only failed to score once this season at home, being the 2-1 win over QPR. Even with that kind of contribution missing it’s a pretty sure bet that the Blues machine will roll over Tottenham.

It’s a well publicised fact that Spurs have not won at Stamford Bridge since 1990. Although they do seem to be better when playing away from White Hart Lane it’s the stronger home defence that should be the undoing of Tottenham this time. With 11 clean sheets in the last 14 home games it’s difficult to see Chelsea conceding, even if Roberto Soldado has ended his long goalless spell. In contrast, Tottenham haven’t kept a clean sheet for seven Premier League games and this statistic provides the basis for the result.

Bookies odds suggest that Chelsea will prevail yet again tonight and even without Diego Costa there is plenty of firepower left to break through the visitors’ leaky defence. Didier Drogba has long been a thorn in Spurs’ side, with scoring three and assisting four more goals in his previous eight Premier League games against them. Don’t be surprised if he gives Hugo Lloris a very busy evening.

This article also published on cfcnet.

Twitter Feed

Aguero – Man City’s Suarez Without the Bite

Manchester City 3 – 2 Bayern Munich

Champions League, Etihad Stadium

Just as I was sinking into my sofa to watch this game I had one of those rare gut feelings that something a bit different or special might be about to happen. Too lazy to get up as the familiar Champions League theme music floated around the living room, I browsed my phone for mobile betting apps at bettingappstore.co.uk and just managed to get my bet in before the kick off. A tenner on City to win it, why not.

Bayern had not tasted defeat for ages, and that combined with The Citizens’ Champs League record made for a more likely Munich win – or so the bookies thought. As we found, sometimes things don’t always go to the script. But there is one constant and that is the brilliance of one man who can always be relied upon. Just as he has so many times before, Sergio Aguero’s hat-trick saved City’s skin when all had seemed lost and kept their slim UCL progression prospects alive. Just like Liverpool owed so much to Suarez last season, and Spurs to Bale before that, this Manchester City team is largely relying on ‘Kun’.

Even though City should have been cruising after Medhi Benatia received a straight red card and conceded a clear penalty for denying Aguero a clear goal scoring opportunity, it only sparked 10-man Bayern into a defiant riposte. By half time, a worm-burning free kick from Xabi Alonso (which was pretty poorly dealt with by Joe Hart) had the visitors level and it was swiftly followed up by Robert Lewandowski’s shoulder/header to make it 2-1. What was happening here? The champions of England being beaten by 10 men at home.

City should have been expected to have come back after the break and taken advantage of the numerical difference, but it was Bayern who went on to absolutely dominate possession for the majority of the second half. Their ten men just ran rings around City and at times it was just breath-taking to watch how masterfully they were doing it. At 20:45 I noticed a tweeted statistic that since they went down to 10 men, Bayern had completed more than twice as many passes as City. It was evident that the home fans had gone very quiet and at times it was like their team was being given a humiliating lesson in ‘keepy-offy’.

Cometh the Hour…

As the clock ticked down, it seemed that the best that Manchester City could have hoped for was a rather unlikely late equalizer. My ill-placed tenner was most certainly gone by then as the match had entered the last five minutes. Surely. But Sergio was not done yet. A rare mistake on the night (well, a rare mistake full stop) from Alonso gifted Aguero possession and he raced toward the Bayern goal. Keeper Neuer (quite possibly the best goalie on the planet) came off his line to narrow the angle but a sublime finish from the Argentinian gave his team the goal that they barely deserved.

Although a City win wouldn’t have made a difference to what they need to happen in the next round of matches, the goal just rallied them. All of a sudden, the swaggering Bayern Munich of minutes before were looking like a bag of nerves and the home side visibly grew in confidence. And then in the 91^st minute it happened. The visitors had been so good for so long but just caved in at the end with some shocking defending. Jerome Boateng made a right mess of a clearance and you-know who was there to nick the ball from his feet, keep his nerve and score the winner and bag a hat-trick. Cheers Sergio, you made my night.

For the Germans, the game must have had a feel similar to the 1999 Champions League Final against that other Manchester outfit. Surely Bayern can’t now lose to CSKA at home. A result like that might seem a little bit contrived. I don’t think I’ll be putting any bets on that one.

This article was also published on Back Page Football.

Twitter Feed

Why the Palace Match is Critical for Brendan Rodgers

The international break gives us a chance for a breather and to assess Liverpool’s season so far. And it’s a pretty frustrating one to say the least.

One one hand, the ever-increasing competitive nature of the Premier League is making it hard for many clubs. Just look at Man Utd, Arsenal and Spurs all struggling. If you’d been able to bet on Southampton, West Ham, Swansea, Newcastle AND Stoke having more points than Liverpool after 11 games at the end of last season you’d probably be very rich by now.
On the other hand, for the team that finished second in 2013/14 to be in the bottom half of the table at this stage is hard to stomach.

And that brings us to the next game away at Crystal Palace on 23rd November. This is a team that have really struggled and haven’t managed a win since September. Palace are…

Read the rest of this article on the Empire of the Kop site.

Twitter Feed

Manchester United – Top four for how long?

The international break gives all football fans time to reflect and hope for no injuries to returning international players. With the problems at Old Trafford being well documented for this season and the last, a look at the Premier League table at first sight looks promising once again for the red side of Manchester.

The makeshift Red Devils managed to beat Everton at home on 5th October and that result lifted United into the top four albeit on goal difference with Swansea and Tottenham on the same number of points. Incredibly, about the first time in a year. The question is, does this new-look team have the staying power?

Most bookies currently have United at about 4/9 to finish in the top four. That’s before Liverpool and Spurs and after Chelsea, Man City and Arsenal. It probably sounds about right at this stage of the season. Next up is a tricky tie at West Brom on 20th October. And one of the reasons that United are in the top four is partly thanks to the Baggies 1-0 win away at White Hart Lane a few weeks back so they will be no pushovers.

But then right after that it’s Chelsea and Manchester City, so for United to stay in the top four by the end of November they are going to have to be more solid at the back. This makes the WBA away game an absolute must-win match.

Concerns over United’s debt after their recent spending spree deepened this week, as they are now £350 million in debt.

It will be interesting to see what odds United will be to finish in the top four at the end of November. There is little doubt that the new talent at Old Trafford is top quality but Louis van Gaal will need his defence to gel before soon and January’s transfer window is looking like a busy one already for him – should he last that long.