Review week 33

Let me start by saying that it is a travesty that Herd's appeal against his red card was not reversed.  Similarly, it is a travesty that Balotelli was not given a retrospective ban - but I will be discussing both those red cards in perhaps a future blog post.

Unfortunately, given that all the games were played during 'work' hours, I was only able to watch the Liverpool and United games and will be reviewing those.  The following are the rest of the scores - 

Review of Week 33

Wolves 0-3 Arsenal 

City 4-0 West Brom (Tevez started = goal fest, title race back on?)

Spurs 1-2 Norwich City (Arsenal look a shoe in for that 3rd place spot)

Fulham 1-1 Chelsea (Dempsey is a baller)

Blackburn 2-3 Liverpool

How long has it been since we watched an exciting game involving Liverpool? A long, long time.  This was one of the games of the season in how even it was.  Blackburn started really well, probably buoyed by the fact that Suarez and Gerrard were missing from the starting line up.  However, in what proved to be a sweeping counterattack involving two players who I have been hoping Dalglish would play - Bellamy and Maxi combined to score a brilliant goal.  Soon after, Maxi scored from another good move involving Shelvey and it looked like the Anfield outfit would run away with the game.  Then came the sending off.  Alex Doni trying to recover from an errant back pass from his defender, fouled Hoilett in the box, and a penalty and red card were awarded.  I have some sympathy for Doni who was clearly trying to get to the ball - and Hoilett was clearly playing for the penalty.  However, according to the letter of the law, it is a red.  Before the game, the increasingly-annoying/disappointing Kenny Dalglish regurgitated the whole 'FA conspiracy' thing.  As I have said before - I admire KD - but this garbage about the FA bias against Liverpool just has to stop.  More importantly, Liverpool fans need to stop believing it.  Back to game however.  The Yak's penalty was subsequently stopped by the 3rd string keeper - Brad Jones - and it looked like Blackburn had missed their chance.  The Yak seemed to have made up for his error by scoring two goals - one of which involved a mistake by the young Liverpool keeper - but there was to be another twist.  In the first minute of injury team, the worst-signing-of-the-season, Andy Carroll, scored a typical Carroll goal.  The ball was hoofed into the box and Agger's knockon found Andy in space, and he placed an intelligent headed past the plucky Blackburn goalkeeper.  A much needed win for Liverpool - even though they played with 10 men for about 70 minutes.

Wigan 1-0 United

Take-home message - United deserved to lose, Wigan deserved to win.  United set up with their usual 4-4-2, while Wigan set up in their 3-5-2 formation.  The extra central defender caused Hernandez to be inconsequential the entire game, while it forced United's wingers to defend deeper and helped nullify Valencia.  What was amazing to see was that for the first 10 minutes, United were almost entirely in their own half.  Wigan kept possession really well and United were just trying to hit them on the break - rather ineffectively at that.  Valencia was being double-marked by the man-of-the-match Figuroa + somebody else, and with no Scholes to spray the ball out into space, he was an onlooker for a majority of the game.  Another reason Valencia struggled was because Phil Jones  had his worst game in a United shirt.  His touch, passing, positioning and work-rate were abject, and I counted that Valencia actually had more tackles and interceptions than his young full back did.  Where was Rafael?

I am going to get some stick for this, but I think the no-goal was actually a fair call.  If the goalkeeper is being completely pushed out of the game, a foul must be given, and it was.  But, i sympathize with Wigan, as they have had some crucial calls given against them recently.  luckily, this one did not affect them much, as soon enough, Wigan scored a deserved goal.  United conceded a corner (or did they?) and while they were complaining, young Jones found himself 2 on 1 and Maloney waltzed past him and Rooney to place a beautiful shot in the side netting.  

Wigan controlled the rest of the half as well, with Evra's terrible positioning, Wigan were having a field day down their right side and with DiSanto holding the ball up excellently, they easily played long-balls out of defense.  Ex-Wigan loanee, Cleverley replaced Young in the second half as United tried to match Wigan with a 4-3-3.  It did not help much for the first 20 minutes and Evans should have received a second yellow for his tackle.  Finally, around the 70th minute, United appeared to have taken control of the match - not surprisingly AFTER a disappointing Rooney had been replaced.  Wigan held on admirably and deserved to win the game 1-0.

Fergie - where's Berba? 

I apologize but I will not have time to write a preview of week 34.  But, I would like to thank everyone for following and reading the blog! Next post will be a round up of week 34 (including the big FA cup games).