A Tale Of Two Hatricks From A Weekend Full Of Goals

Well I might want to start with the case of comments against a female assistant referee which has caused two Sky Sports analysts at least a week’s pay but on this side of the map, we ain’t cut out for those kinds of stories so I’ll skip but if you still wanna read; help yourself here.

If you missed the premiership this weekend, you definitely missed a lot (except you are a fan of any of the City’s namely Stoke, Manchester, Birmingham). It’s been a long time I saw two hatricks in one day (specifically 90 minutes) and adding Liverpool’s first away win in decades and Chelsea’s first premiership away trouncing in the new millennium there might be more records to be broken most notably an unbeaten season from ever impressive Manchester United.

Man Utd 5-0 Birmingham

Now truth be told, this is the best team so far this season and no matter what happens (except Arsenal sign Messi and win all four trophies) it will remain come the end of the season. What scares you is that they are not even at their best yet. Save me the crap of them playing easier fixtures than their rivals. They’ve beaten Arsenal and Liverpool already and played Tottenham home and away so what could be tougher. It would be too unfair to blame their success on whoever made the timetable ( sorry, fixtures). “Berbatov is too lazy”, some United fans say but I’d rather have a laid back, hatrick scoring Berbatov than a high work rate, blanks firing Sturridge. Berbatov is class and though he isn’t that close to Ronaldo the only thing I see missing is the exaggerated ‘leg overs’, dives and the Usain Bolt wannabe athletism.

Berbatov gets you goals without trying which arguably no other striker in the league can do so hats off to the current highest goal scorer. He is beginning to justify his expensive transfer fee from Spurs. Rooney might just need to read that part in the bible which says,’It’s not by might …’, but in all fairness he (Rooney) has been a wonderful lad. He’s done everything else but score. High work rate, great vision, pace, name it; he has all and we might not have to wait long before we start to see his name on the score sheet which might start tonight against Blackpool. Birmingham on the other hand were …

Arsenal 3-0 Wigan Athletic

Now when you see a scoreline like this, you imagine how many chances Arsenal threw away by trying to pass, sorry I mean walk ,the ball into the net but this wasn’t the case. Wigan had only one man on the field, unfortunately he was wearing gloves. I’ve never really known Al Habsi from his days as deputy to Jussi Jaaskelainen at Bolton but his performances showed exactly how only a goalkeeper of Jaaskelainen’s quality could keep him on the bench. Some of his saves bordered on ‘spiritual’. Wigan was appalling and when the stats showed that only 9% of football was played on Arsenal third you just can’t help but praise the goalkeeper from Oman. I give him this tribute by spelling his name in Arabic:علي بن عبد الله بن حارب الحبسي .   Arsenal gave a good account of themselves keeping pressure on Manchester United with a fabulous display. Robin van Persie’s hatrick suggests his never ending injuries might be the reason the Emirates has never felt a trophy save the Emirates cup (who cares?). He was almost unplayable and could even afford to lose a penalty. Everybody else played very well: Nasri did his usual magic, Fabregas orchestrating as usual, Walcott running off the field at times, Song threatening anyone who dared touch the ball. The Arsenal defence was untested throughout. Szchezsny wouldn’t have played any better or worse were he on the stands. The good thing the Gunners bring is that we still have another team challenging the Red Devils which otherwise would have made the league boring at this stage. Well, van Persie can’t stay fit till the end of the season which means Arsenal can’t stay winning too (except by a miracle) so I still expect Man Utd to take home the title.

In other matches Liverpool beat Wolves away from home 3-0 which doesn’t come often in this post-Benitez era. The Chelsea match ended a few hours ago with Chelsea hammering Bolton 4-0 at the Reebok Stadium. Didier Drogba’s strike for the first reminded us of what Chelsea used to be. If they keep up with this form, Manchester United would wish they had played that earlier postponed game.

Manchester City show once again that they are pretenders and I ‘m tempted to say over-pretenders, having played more games than all those around them they find themselves in 3rd place after losing 1-0 to Darren Bent (I meant to say Aston Villa). The man who has justified his £20m price by scoring a debut goal (very funny). Tottenham could only draw and that’s all for the weekend.

Up next Blackpool take on Manchester in the premiership and Arsenal welcome Ipswich to the Emirates in the Carling Cup. I guess that might force me to write something which I otherwise would not have done.