Fiiiiiive Poooiiints Cleeeeaaaar
Sorry for invoking the C word in mid-November. Blame FIFA ;-)
Kick Off
And so we reach the end of the season for the year. It feels odd doesn’t it? Like a strange end of term vibe where some people are off to the Gifted Students camp and everyone else is left at home to go on their family holidays or work a part time job or just slob about. Add in the fact it’s nearly Christmas and it gets even stranger.
The results across the leagues didn’t help with this feeling of oddness. We had the alleged ‘best team in the world’ being beaten at home, in Germany, Union continued with their wholesale collapse, there was no La Liga as it wrapped up in the week and Serie A provided a flurry of goals. Only Ligue 1 passed by without comment.
So let’s stop there first. PSG consolidated their top spot with a 5-0 win over Auxerre, with five different scorers grabbing a goal. Marseille squeaked past Monaco with a 90+8 minute goal by *checks notes* Sead Kolasinac.
This leaves the Ligue 1 table looking like this for Christmas.
As mentioned, La Liga played its last matches during the week. The notable events were Mallorca beating Real Madrid 1-0 and Barcelona having both Robert Lewandowski and Gerard Pique, in his literal last ever match, getting sent off. Pique was sent off from the bench after protesting at Lewy’s dismissal and using fairly fruity language at the officials in the tunnel at half time.
Barcelona managed to scrape a win however with goals from Pedri and Raphinha which gave them the Christmas top spot, as below:
In Germany, Union Berlin’s collapse continued with a 4-1 loss to former top spot contenders Freiburg, who remain in contention and hold on to second place.
Dortmund yet again fucked it, possibly because I was watching, and were simply woeful against a rampant Gladbach. Marcus Thuram was such a nuisance during that game and absolutely deserves his late call up to the France World Cup squad.
Bayern also consolidated their lead at the top with a win over rock bottom Schalke. The Christmas table looks like this:
In Serie A there was a win in every game except Roma v Torino which ended 1-1. Cracks are yet again starting to appear in the Roma squad with José yet again the ringmaster of pain. His ire at the moment has been turned on Dutch defender Rick Karsdorp who has reportedly already left Rome with his family after Mourinho spoke less than cryptically about a player who needed to look for another club in January.
Elsewhere, despite a late scare, Napoli continued to be Napoli, beating Udinese 3-2 and Milan also left it late to beat Fiorentina, despite Rafael Leão giving them the lead after just two minutes.
Given their start, the surprise package of late have been Juve, who beat Lazio to put them third. The table therefore now looks like this:
Finally, as always, we make our way to the unseasonably sunny shores of England for the Premier League.
The games started on Saturday lunchtime with the Bees of Brentford traipsing up North for what was most likely going to be a pointless endeavour against Manchester City. However, the scoring was opened after just over a quarter of an hour when Ivan Toney slotted home to show Gareth what he was missing.
They managed to hold on until just before half time, despite several penalty shouts, until Phil Foden popped up and equalised.
From then on the game was in the balance with both sides playing well and shutting down the attacks of the other. There was a lengthy break to patch up Aymeric Laporte after he started spurting blood following an elbow to the face, which meant this ended up being a 100+ minute game, which is always a fun time for the nerds.
So it was at 90+8, following a mix up at the back, that Ivan Toney again was allowed in seal the game for Brentford and cause glee for both their own fans and Arsenal fans up and down the country (and of course those who subscribe to ‘anyone but City’).
At 3pm, Bournemouth beat Everton and the Everton fans were not happy, Liverpool beat Southampton, Forest beat Palace and a resurgent Leicester beat West Ham.
For the second week runnning Leeds were part of a 4-3 scramble only to out on the wrong end this time, after alternating the lead with Spurs until two late goals from Rodrigo Bentancur. Having Kulusevski back certainly help Spurs but as always, they are a weird team who I’m not sure should be letting in 3 goals, even if they can score 4. Still, they’re fourth and that’s (sort of) all that matters.
The teatime game saw Newcastle beat Chelsea 1-0 and suffered from the being in the spot destine to provide an extremely dull game until the last five minutes. In this case it descended into SCENES after the final whistle with Dan Burn squaring up to Kai Havertz and many other players on the field and from the benches having to get involved. You hatelove to see it.
The final game of the day was top of table Arsenal against bottom of the pile Wolves. Would Wolves bring it and get some new manager in the house bounce? Would Arsenal play like they did against Southampton? No.
It’s fair to say that Arsenal should have got more from the game, but Wolves kept them at bay for a while until the second half when Martin Ødegaard was able to get on the end of a Vieira cross and dink home. Just over 20 minutes later he popped up again to get on the end of a Martinelli cross.
2-0 was the final score and it meant that Arsenal are now top of the league for Christmas with a five point lead. I feel utterly giddy about it. It’s a weird weird feeling being this good (disclaimer: I was pretty detached from football bar international competitions for much of the 00s so actually missed out on the Invincibles era) but man alive it’s amazing. Is this what City fans feel like all the time? (Except right now hehehehehehe)
On Sunday Villa took on a confident Brighton who scored in 49 seconds, their quickest goal ever in the Premier League. Sadly the momentum wasn’t kept and they eventually lost 2-1 after a Danny Ings brace.
And finally, Manchester United went to the Cottage to take on Fulham for the last league game before the break. Christian Eriksen bagged his first Manchester United goal after, appropriately given his shirt number, 14 minutes only for Fulham to regain parity via Dan James (*narrative*!) on 61 minutes.
The story of the game though, of the team, one I’m going to mention rather than dwell on the actions of someone twice his age, was a gorgeous goal by academy graduate Alejandro Garnacho. He’s good that kid, he’s got that dawg. Protect him.
When all was done, this is how we go in to Christmas:
Half Time
I’ve been avoiding writing this section for so long because I feel neither clever nor informed enough to offer anything new or of substance, but with the World Cup looming in just 6 days it’s time to speak.
We all know this is a bad and dodgy World Cup. It should never have been awarded to Qatar, not now anyway. Maybe one day they could have shown they would be an excellent place for everyone to be able to celebrate football at its finest but as it is, they were not and will not be by the time we kick off.
Many excellent campaigners and journalists and brave people prepared to take the risk of speaking out have alerted us to the horrible treatment of migrant workers and the unforgivable loss of life.
However, I will be watching. It’s not the footballers’ fault we’re in this situation, as ever we should be looking to the decision makers who are way above any player or manager’s head. You could argue for a wholesale boycott, maybe we should have withdrawn from the competition, and I can’t come up with a properly valid argument against this that isn’t simply, what about the poor lads who want to play?
So we need to keep talking, keep highlighting injustices, hypocrisies and criminal acts. We need to help those in Qatar find their voice and their freedom. I don’t have the answers how and I’m still on the lookout for any decent charities or organisations to donate to. Here are a few things I’ve seen that I’ve appreciated so far:
Bruno Fernandes taking me by surprise in the post match interview yesterday speaking eloquently about the myriad of reasons this isn’t a great tournament.
Dua Lipa refusing to perform at the opening ceremony
Joe Lycett being his usual excellent self
Stonewall’s Proud Stadium
Do let me know if you come across anywhere to contribute to.
The Thirst Trap
This week’s thirst trap is someone who’s just… what I mean is he’s… the thing is…
Look it’s Manuel Locatelli OK. Look at him. Look at those beautiful angelic curls, the beautiful angelic face that you know is anything but. The golden skin, the deep brown eyes, the slightly goofy grin. Mmmmmm.
Don’t forget I’ll also be dropping my much anticipated World Cup Hot List this week! The hottest player, imo, from each nation, in a handy to refer to thread!
Merch Stand
Merch? Thirst Trap? Both? Either way I did enjoy Sonny’s look at the game on Saturday
Look at this stunner of a bag
Also don’t forget that as well as my Hot List I will also be doing a World Cup Shirt Rating so look out for that too!
Final Whistle
This is great from Australia’s Jackson Irvine
Alisson tried to anti-Thirst Trap himself
Old but very funny
Eric please
Uruguay’s squad selection video is amazing
Could look at this for hours
Finally, I’m going to leave you with this, I’ve skirted over the World Cup a little, in terms of talking about the teams and the football and I actually don’t know how I’m going to do this newsletter over the tournament, but I can’t pretend I’m not excited, even if it is a little dampened by external factors and this advert is fantastic.
Until next time, whenver that may be!
