A look at the weekend's games- part two

The last article I wrote was on Tuesday morning, then I said I was going for my lunch and now it's Wednesday evening. I had a very long lunch, I'll be honest with you. It was in a posh-French restaurant style, where I had about 500 courses and chatted round the table, or got up and danced a bit between each of them.

 

I swear I'm gonna stop going to Greggs if they keep throwing me out.

 

By the way, before I started writing this I also had a quick look at my audience stats. It's actually quite a fun way of seeing who reads this. Apparently, I've got a decent following in Germany (hallo), Spain (hola) and Russia (hi, just whatever hi is in Russian, basically). Also two people, or probably the same person twice, has read my blog from the FYR of Macedonia! A big thank you to my Macedonian fanbase.

 

A bit of a whimsical start there. So lets have a look at the other games over the weekend. Annoyingly there's not a big Super Sunday thing on, Villa are playing West Brom which'll probably be a bit dull and that's the only one on Sunday. Not much compared with last week when it was Liverpool-United and Man City-Arsenal plus two other games. Shame.

 

Everton v Southampton

Everton will want to bounce back from the disappointment losing at Leeds in the cup midweek with a win on Saturday, seems strange that they could be top of the league by the end of the weekend.

Southampton probably needed the win against Villa last week to avoid the potential for 'doing a Derby' and spending the entire season bottom of the league. They now look in amongst the goals and Ricky Lambert is at the centre of everything, a great player.

You'd think Everton should win this, they're such a hardworking team and they always look so potent down the left hand side with Baines and Pienaar, plus Moyes won't let them get complacent. I'd expect Saints to make a good fist of this and reckon Lambert might score, but reckon the Toffees will edge them out in this. 2-1.

 

Fulham v Man City

There's to be no prizes for guessing who the happier manager will be with 9pts from their opening 5 games this season. Fulham, the West Ham game aside, have played well in all their matches and Berbatov has been a revelation for them- his Bergkamp-esc deftness of touch combined with attacking runs from midfield have seen them score a few goals.

The fact that Man City are without a win in 4 matches in all competitions and are yet to keep a clean sheet this season suggests there's a kind of 'sloppiness' in their camp, maybe linked to complacency and the pay packet their players get. Their new defensive system Mancini has incorporated is maybe taking some time to be adjusted to.

All things considered, I fancy Fulham to get one past Hart but this is really a must-win game for City. 3-1 to the Citizens, possibly with at least one goal for Aguero.

 

 

 

Norwich v Liverpool

It was probably important for the Canaries that they were able to stabilise a bit after their opening day humiliation at Fulham. Yes, they won't be happy to have drawn at home to QPR and West Ham but good performances against Tottenham and Newcastle suggest that Chris Hughton's side can compete at this level.

Liverpool badly need to secure first win under Brendan Rodgers and climb away from the relegation zone. If they don't win this, the pressure will really begin to mount on him because this is nearly October, typically the stage most teams find their position for the season. My own opinion is he's tried to change too much, too quickly. Spending £9 million on Borini was a mistake however much he liked him at Swansea and whenever a manager takes over at a big club, getting the first team winning is crucial- you can have all the long-term plans in the world but you can't put them into place if you're not winning matches.

I don't know why but I think Norwich can win this. Chris Hughton is an absolute genius motivator and at home they might nick a goal against an Aggerless Liverpool defence. With so much pressure on them the Reds might get a little frustrated, there's potential for another red card so I'll plump for a 1-0 Norwich win.

 

Reading v Newcastle

The Royals are in a similar position to Southampton a week ago, now- they need that first win soon sitting bottom of the table. Having said that, you might want to give them the benefit of the doubt for the time being. To draw with Stoke on the opening day will have been an encouraging result, they put up a fight against Chelsea, losing to Tottenham and in-form West Brom is no disgrace and they've played a game less than everyone else. They just need a win from somewhere and their confidence from the back-end of last season in the Championship could re-emerge.

Newcastle have made a steady start, the draw at home to Villa their only real disappointment. As good a goalscorer as he is, I'm not convinced Demba Ba is worthy of the new £100K a week contract he's apparently been demanding but no-one will mention it if he scores the goals.

For this game, Reading need the win most and they do have home advantage which can be key, but the quality in the Newcastle team makes me think they'll have to settle for a point.

2 apiece.

 

 

 

Stoke v Swansea

The successes of these teams in recent years suggest that, in football, you don't necessarily need to have a particular philosophy to achieve success. More that you play to your squad's strengths. If Swansea tried to play the direct, route one football that Stoke play against by lumping the ball up for Michu to try and win the headers, he probably wouldn't be tall enough and the defence would head the ball away easily.

If Stoke City tried to play some of the pretty tiki-taka football that Swansea play by feeding little through balls in for Crouch to run onto, he wouldn't be quick enough and the ball would just roll into the goalkeepers hands. In my opinion, the best teams use their best players by putting them in roles where they can do what they do best, best. That probably sounds really smart-arse of me, but too many managers like Rodgers and AVB try to come in and drastically change things with this big new paradime of how you should play football. It takes too much time for players to get used to they are better off, in my opinion, being more pragmatic.

Just a thought. Oh, what? The game? Oh yeah. I'll go for a draw, 1-1, or whatever.

 

Sunderland v Wigan

Fletcher is banging in the goals now and he's quickly become a favourite on Wearside. Whilst they'll want to record a first win of the season sooner rather than later, the four draws they've had this season, none of them have been particularly bad results. Not a bad tip for a top 10 spot this season Sunderland, if they can keep Fletcher and Adam Johnson fit. With tough trips to Man City and Stoke sandwiching the Tyne-Wear derby coming up, this could be the best chance for the Black Cats to get that win.

Wigan will have been disappointed to lose against Fulham last week, mainly because it was a home game- it may take them a while to recover from losing Moses. I still think Wigan will be okay this season, they only tend to really get going in March time, Martinez will probably do it again but I reckon Sunderland will win this. 2-1 the Black Cats.

 

 

 

Aston Villa v West Brom

There will have been something disgruntling about the four second-half goals Southampton scored for Villa fans. They had beaten Swansea the week before and when Bent's goal gave Villa a half-time lead I fancied them to climb the table from that point onwards. A combination of their inexperienced defence though and Southampton's spirit meant it all went to pot for them. No-ones sadder than me.

West Brom managed to sweep away fears of the 3-0 defeat at Fulham being a sign of things to come for them by beating Reading last week; they are sitting pretty in 4th place and Clarke can celebrate a great start having played some tough games. He'll just need to make sure that their inevitable slide down the table is a gradual one so that they're not facing a relegation battle come April.

In this game, all of these factors seem to negotiate themselves into a draw. Villa will need to come out fighting after the defensive display against Southampton and West Brom are the form team, but playing away from home they are the more likely to settle for a point- which I think they'll get. 0-0.

 

QPR v West Ham

Another side with first-win ambitions this weekend, QPR have got some tough games coming up and will want to get 3pts in the bank. They've invested quite gaudily in the summer and the number of signings they've made will take time to fit together and gel- interestingly the one position they clearly needed topping up in was at centre-back and the free transfer signing of Ryan Nelson doesn't really cut it for me. Instead they've spent tens of millions on exotic, big name midfielders and strikers.

If the sole aim for Allardyce this season was to keep the Hammers in the Premier League, they've had a great start. If you win two of your first three games, you can afford to draw a couple and that was the case when they played Norwich and Sunderland. Once they've got Andy Carroll back to full fitness, West Ham should be a real handful.

It's quite close to call so I'm afraid, folks, I'm gonna sit on the fence and go for another goalless.

 

And that's your lot for this week. Thanks again to my foreign fanbase, as a tribute to you I'll try and do an update on the Macedonian league at some point- I probably won't. But thank you anyway. Just a reminder to leave a comment if you want to say your predictions for some of the weekends' games- am always glad of some feedback. If you like you can follow me on twitter https://twitter.com/_thescore and I'll follow you back.

 

Cheers,

Gabriel

A look at the weekends' games

hola scorers-

Thought I'd write an article on the forthcoming games at about the usual time I start thinking about the weekends' matches, yep, Tuesday morning. The 'build-up' to the weekend starts here.

Arsenal v Chelsea

My gut instinct is that there'll be goals in this game. Partly because both of these teams have a lot of options in terms of creativity, either out wide, in the centre of the park or in the 'hole' as a link-striker- there should at least be a lot of chances created. Also, because I wouldn't think a draw will quite suit either team. Chelsea won't want to lose poll position in the title race with Man Utd playing later, and Arsenal are just coming into form- the fans will be more demanding of them playing at home.

To be fair, it's taken Arsenal a couple of games to get going this season and aclimatise to the loss of van Persie but the fact that Podolski is already up and running with his goal account and Cazorla has been instrumental with clever passes in behind him suggests Wenger actually did some pretty good business in the summer. If anything van Persie has, at most, another two good seasons in him and is probably 30 now whereas the players Arsenal have signed are about 26 and just about to hit their peak.

Although the Blues currently top the table, Arsenal might fancy just themselves against Chelsea who only managed a draw at QPR and were pretty fortunate to beat Stoke last time out. Eden Hazard, who was electric in Chelsea's first few games, his form has plateaued a little but they still shouldn't struggle for shooting opportunities with the creativity of Mata, Lampard and Oscar in their side apart from him. The main thing di Matteo will worry about is getting Torres's pace and cutting edge back so he can be in amongst the goals once more like he was at Liverpool.

Maybe there's a little bias in my prediction here because I don't like the way Abramovich runs Chelsea, throws money on the table and expects immediate results. I like Arsenal more for their ethos of nuturing players with potential and they've built themselves up over time-the fact that they are still competing in the top four without spending ridiculous money is impressive and shows finances isn't everything. In terms of the game, I'm going to stick my neck out for Arsenal and say that they can win this 2-1.

 

Man United v Tottenham

 

Judging by their games against Fulham, Southampton and Liverpool so far this season, it looks like RVP has kind of added to Manchester United's habit of winning the edgy games when they're not playing well, just to show mental strength and nick the win. His goals alone have rescued them 7 points, in many ways the transfer has worked out well for both United and Arsenal. It was important for him to quickly established himself as a favourite amongst the Red Devils faithful, and I can see him grabbing a couple of goals in this one.

Rome wasn't built in a day, (that's Coventry) but you have to say it's not been a great start to Andre Villas-Boas's Tottenham career. They've sold Modric to Madrid, van der Vaart to some German team, and replaced them with Dempsey and Dembele from Fulham. Without disrepecting these players too much, it's not the same quality. Yes Dempsey did really well for Fulham last season, but he's 30 now. If he was 22/23 I'd say: 'great buy' but it's not like Dempsey is signed to be a long-term player. I'd think of Moussa Dembele as little more than a good squad player for a club aiming to get into the top four, with a view to winning the title. In terms of the results, AVB will be glad to at least have his first couple of wins under his belt to ease the pressure a little bit but his transfer policy with what he's done in midfield, the signing of Lloris and then not playing him, has to be questioned.

With AVB's dubious decision-making provoking scepticism in the Spurs camp, I think the initiative is very much with United in this one. 3-0, and I'll go for a man of the match display from you know who.

 

 

Right, I'm gonna go for my lunch now. When I come back I'll have a more condensed prediction on the other games in the Premiership, plus the factors behind Stoke and Swansea's successes with separate playing styles as they prepare to face each other.

 

See you in a bit.

 

Blues 0-5 Barnsley: always look on the bright side of life

From reading the title of this, you could be forgiven for expecting to see a blank article. Just come back from the Barnsley game and, abandoning the rather diminished lure of a post-match San Miguel with enthusiastic West Brom fans, I decided to come home and stew self-indulgently for a couple of hours in the current state of doom and gloom at my club. I've got a lot to get through, I hope you're sitting comfortably...

 

If I'm honest, last night I wrote this game off as a home banker. I actually felt really positive about things at the club. Yes, we'd had a bit of a rocky start to begin with, but Lee Clark is still getting to indentify his best team and getting to know the squad- it would inevitably take time and at that point we had picked up 7pts from our last three games. Assessing things, I felt that this was the time we would start to really come out of the blocks and put a run of wins together. For the past ten years or so, Barnsley have always been one of those teams towards the bottom of the second tier but always having just enough to stay up, so I felt confident we'd win, I think I said 3-0.

 

In the first half we played very poorly. At this point I'd like you to acknowledge, knowing this, that all of Barnsley's 5 goals were actually scored in the second half. Without being able to score, they passed us off the park in the first period and did pretty much everything I wished we could do. All of their players were always looking for the space, finding it, wanting the ball, and getting it. All of our players weren't looking for space, couldn't find it, didn't really want the ball, and didn't get it. Barnsley had quite a lot of young players coming through and played at a high tempo, which unhinged us. Clark maybe put too much emphasis on experience with his transfer policy in the summer and we looked very fatigued. I think in the Championship, you need players with energy and tenacity who can play week in, week out and in more midweek games. Our squad doesn't seem to have that at the moment.

 

Towards the end of the first half, I talked to dad about the game and he put it down to complacency. We did have the look of a team that thought it just had to turn up to win, but more worryingly for me the players weren't making the intelligent runs off the ball I hoped their experience would provide and Chris Burke, normally playing like dynamite on the right wing for us, couldn't beat the left-back once. I decided to dismiss the semi-apathy in our players performance in the first half as complacency, told myself Clark would probably have a stern word with them at half time and we'd score a couple of goals in the second half to win. With this thought in mind, I refreshed myself with an Oasis and retook my seat.

 

It could never have prepared me for what happened next. Just after half-time, disaster struck. We half-heartedly defended Barnsley's corner and one of their players pounced unmarked at the back post. To be honest, if I was to give you a  detailed description of Barnsley's next four goals, it would be after I've had a look at the BBC Sport match report for it. The following twenty five-odd minutes were just condensed in my mind into one big blur of distress and anguish.

 

To say we were lackadaisical in defence would be paying a massive compliment to the players. Hayden Mullins, who was filling in at right back for the injured Paul Caddis, was pretty much ran out of breath against the pace on Barnsley's left flank, Pablo Ibanez got turned inside out for Barnsley's fourth as I recall, and players were ghosting through Caldwell as though he wasn't even there.

 

By the time Barnsley had scored their fifth, an eerie silence greeted the goal and there must have still been a good 20 minutes to play. Because we were a man down with an injury when we'd used up all our subs (I forget who got injured), we were playing with 10 men- it became a question of just how bad things were going to get and, strange as it sounds, there seemed to be an element of 'damage limitation' in our play. None of the players really pushed forwards towards the end and wry-humoured chants of 'we're gonna win 6-5' began to soak over ections of the ever-more diminished crowd, whilst other fans just sat there shellshocked.

 

I don't mind admitting that there were times towards the end when the goals flooded in that I had an almost overbearing urge to stand up and walk out of the game to get the bus back, but the Birmingham City fan in me held me back. Neither me nor dad have ever walked out of a game before it's finished, I felt almost like it would somehow dishonour the loyal, Blues blood in me to do so.

 

At the back of the tilton, a lot of chants began addressing the board and Carson Yeung that were quite unsettling. Not unsettling in the sense that I would support Carson Yeung because he hasn't put any money into the club, has left us in debt, has a court case coming up and we've never heard from him. What did unsettle me was the lyrics to the chant: 'you Chinese bastard, get out of our club.' I'm pretty sure that the use of the word Chinese was just a way of referencing that they meant Carson Yeung, rather than having any kind of racial component but it's still not a nice way of putting it. It was just unnecessary. It wouldn't matter to me where a chairman is from, just that they are a reasonable person, have the club's best interests at heart and have enough cash available to run the club properly. So far, I'm not sure Carson ticks those boxes.

 

In the short, but in many ways prelonged, car journey back into Moseley, a friend of my dad's mentioned that Lee Clark has allegedly got a history of having alcohol problems. That made me feel, if possible, even more concerned about the season ahead because it would explain why he was sacked by Huddersfield when they were top of league one midway through last season. So, let's have a final summary of the club's state of affairs. On the negative side, we've got:

 

-A chairman without access to his money who we're not in contact with.

-An old squad.

-A defence that concedes five goals at home to Barnsley.

-A team out of energy, in September.

-And an alcoholic manager.

 

On the positives:

 

 

 

See you.

Hope that kills: the life & times of the modern Blues fan

I guess having the international break from the Premiership and Championship has made me realise how much I base my weekend around football, how much I practically live for football. Over this weekend, I went to a comedy night, a last-ever concert with my choir, an Oxfam shift and my brother's 30th birthday dinner (thought I'd mention that to wind him up, don't worry, I offered him a herbal tea and a werthers original to cheer him- no pleasing some people).
You would expect my mind to be on other things; the truth is, throughout all of this, I was constantly checking my Sky Sports Score Centre app on my phone for the scores, only to find Scotland were drawing 0-0 with Serbia and Crawley Town were playing Portsmouth tommorrow. It was a bit thin on the ground, I'm not gonna lie.

When I think now, about 80% of my mind is probably full of pointless football games from the past that will never be of any use to me, about 17% is random song lyrics and the other 3% are things like when peoples birthdays are, what peoples names are at a stage in our relationship where it becomes too embarrassing to ask, and stuff I remember from school. I need to rearrange my data storage.

 

I digress. I feel like there's something kind of comforting about football, it has a reassuring quality to it, there's always hope, always something to look forward to. For example, if your team is in a relegation battle in May, I think it's kind of okay either way. If you stay up, you can celebrate, if you go down, there's always next season to look forward to and the challenge for promotion again in August, whilst deep down you know your life isn't actually that bad.

Maybe it's because I'm a Birmingham City fan that I feel like this. Maybe because of all the promotions and relegations we've experienced, as time goes by you learn to neutralise it in your mind.  You just get used to it to the point where it's no longer a shock, just a mild shame. Us getting relegated is becoming the equivalent of going to the supermarket and forgetting your bag for life. It's a bit of a pain, you get annoyed about it for a couple of minutes and then go home.

If there were two things Birmingham City needed to become an established Premiership club, I say two things because of the financial situation at the club with Carson Yeung and everything, but the other would be the sense of negativity around the place. We take a kind of weird pride in being crap, and having seen so many disastrous seasons take place, it becomes a part of our rich heritage. So many men in the Prince of Wales pub talk about getting relegated io the third division in 1989 at the same sort of time Aston Villa were challenging for the Premiership title, and stoicly watching rubbish football to the bitter end.

I'd like to compare our fans songs to those of other clubs. Manchester United have a song called: 'Glory, glory Man United': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUCn4w-S2KM
That talks about the busby babes, when they won the FA Cup, all of their trophies and how famous they are.
This is a song called 'when the blues win the cup': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9r65OcUxzQ
About a sad old man sitting in the corner of a pub wishing Birmingham City would win the cup- doesn't quite have the same ring to it. Thankfully we don't sing this song at matches, but even 'keep right on' which is what we are most well known for has an element of tragic heroship about it. Some lyrics to that song are:

As you go through life,
it's a long, long road,
there'll be joys and sorrows too

Some Blues fans sing this with such passion and commitment, I think a part of us are proud of how rubbish we are but how we stick it out through everything. Here's a video I've found of a group of our fans singing after losing away at Coventry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCsIqb3KM6k
Only Birmingham City fans could pay all that money, watch us lose to our semi-rivals who were one of the worst teams in the league at that time and still want to sing. If Aston Villa lost to Coventry, their fans would spend the whole journey back like some pissed off wife, not saying anything to each other and not making eye contact. But then again, they probably wouldn't lose to Coventry in the first place.

I don't know what it is about the Birmingham City mentality that sort of expects failure. It's possibly that, maybe Barry Fry aside, we've rarely had a manager that got us to play good football, possibly because of that period of time in the late 80s/early 90s when we were still in the third division whilst having to watch west brom, wolves and villa all above us, maybe all the play-off disappointments under Trevor Francis in the late 90s- there have been a lot of periods of time, particularly in the play-off defeats, where things were looking promising for us and then we miss a penalty and everything falls apart again. Maybe all of our fans hopes for the future are buried by fear for another Chris Holland moment.

That's why I was so disappointed Chris Hughton left. Over the last season, it was almost like he was gradually getting a positive atmosphere at the club- the fans were undergoing psychotherapy with trust exercises. We were beginning to hope that in spite of everything happening off the pitch with the board, in spite of having to play midweek European games with a small squad, in spite of being relegated the season before with a defensive, McLeish-esc outlook, we could still build a team to be proud of completely from free transfers, loan signings and youngsters off the academy. And we did. We finished 4th in the second division with no money, purely built on grit and determination.

And then we lost to Blackpool in the play-off semi-finals and one of our greatest ever managers left us. Right, I'm off to go and watch Halesowen Town.