Another week in football is in the rearview mirror, most likely like XYZ’s title hopes, ABC’s coaching career and EFG’s dream of getting a transfer into the Premier League – insert your own teams, managers and players for maximum personal giggles.
We all know what West Ham’s Jarrod Bowen has been getting up to to regain his goalscoring skills. Maybe Moysey should make that part of a unique kind of finishing training next week – for the rest of them that still can’t score in a you-know-what.
Bowen’s brace was enough to condemn the Ev to their weekly dose of humiliation. Everton were so bad in the first half, the interweb was fast tracking down examples of managers getting the chop at half-time. Carlo Ancelotti was one, apparently – it must be an Everton thing (even though it happened when he was at Juventus).
When a team is so poor after 45 minutes, you often watch closely to see if there’s any changes on the pitch – not the bench – and it was no great surprise to see Frank Lampard reappear given nobody who runs Everton seems to know who makes the final decision to call it a day. Moshiri? “Not my decision”. Kenwright? “Not telling you, we just need to start winning” – ah, yes. That easily found magic formula. It’s no wonder the Toffees are screwed.
The pressure has eased momentarily on the Moysiah who said post-match that he hopes Everton do stick with Frank. I’m not surprised, that’s one less relegation spot that West Ham could fill if they do keep him on. That said, I don’t think there’s many coaches out there that could turn this ship around. Is it Lampard’s fault? Was it Rafa’s? Or Big Sham’s? Or Carlo’s? Or Marco Silva’s? Or Big Ron’s? They’ve been naff since Moyes was there with no money to spend. They started turning very naff when they suddenly had a lot more money than sense.
Mind you, one solution could be to bring in Stevie G – either alongside Frank or to replace him. After all, we all spent the early 2000s convinced there has to be a way they could work together, one covers when one goes and all that rubbish. And then we all realised that the answer was actually Paul Scholes. Hang on, there’s an idea.
Saturday kicked off with Liverpool and Chelsea drawing 0-0 at Anfield. Of course Chelsea didn’t win – teams in blue don’t win in Merseyside.
Sunday kicked off with Man City rewiring the Erling Haaland Deluxe and watching him get all three in a 3-0 win over Wolves. It’s a good thing they kept the instruction manual – most guys just throw them out once they’ve taken the new toy out of the box.
That put a little bit of pressure on Arsenal, as did Marcus Rashford putting United ahead at the Emirates. This was going to be the game where Arteta’s frenetic arm-waving on the touchline would finally see him dislocate a shoulder, surely? And Arsenal realise that they aren’t going to just stroll to the Premier League title? Apparently not. Wise sages said that Gabby Jesus coming back from Qatar crocked would finish the Gunners off because, “you can’t rely on Nketiah to score the goals, bruv”. Yeah, about that. Eddie from the Hale End Academy scored twice either side of Bukayo Saka scoring yet another goal – he’s from the Academy as well. They’re going to win it, aren’t they? I wonder what Mykailo Mudryk was making of it all – or maybe he was too busy counting his agent’s commission for getting Chelsea to pay all that cash.
It’s been a long, long time since Arsenal vs United meant anything – but based on that, you have to believe that it might soon be at least the third or fourth biggest game in the Premier League calendar in the next year or so.
A drone stopped play at Southampton – to be fair, it was their best spell in the game. Unfortunately, the game resumed and VAR showed they are still as useful as a drone at a football match in ruling out a perfectly good James Ward-Prowse goal. Naturally, the laws of football clearly state that when such a thing happens, the opposition have to nick a winner and Aston Villa duly complied.
Leicester and Brighton played out a very entertaining 2-2 draw where Brighton’s players increased the chances of Chelsea putting in various €80m+ bids in the next week. Mitoma, Caicedo, Roberto Sanchez and Evan Ferguson can all expect to be linked with a move to Stamford Bridge in the not too distant.
Bournemouth’s new winger is straight Outtara Lorient – and he set up their goal against Nottingham Forest in the 1-1 draw. Forest have snapped up Chris Wood from Newcastle on loan, in case you missed it.
Leeds and Brentford ran around very quickly for 90 minutes without really looking like there was much of a point to it all. It finished 0-0 which was no help to anyone really, especially a Fantasy Football manager with both Toney and Bamford in his team.
