Super Sunday
Super Sunday
Kick Off
It didn't start off as a classic weekend, did it? Sure the Brentford Brighton match had its moments, Ivan Toney's Alessia Russo-esque goal for one and the general atmosphere at the Community Stadium for two, but I wouldn't say it was memorable by any means.
Then on Saturday it was just a shocking selection of matches. I fell asleep during Leicester Palace and didn't properly wake up again until Spurs Everton was kicking off and that wasn't anything to write home about.
I guess the most notable thing on Saturday, certainly in the Premier League, was Forest making themselves look completely stupid after their Billy Big Bollocks tweet about the Wolves game:
Which Wolves won and subsequently tweeted this:
This pattern seemed to hold true across Europe, with most of the best action happening on Sunday.
So let's start in France with le Classique. I started watching this but I can't lie, it was really boring, so I switched over to Serie A. The ever dysfunctional yet somehow regularly winning PSG beat Marseille 1-0 and remain top of the Ligue 1 table. Other results across the weekend mean that Lorient are now second and Lens third, with Marseille dropping to fourth. Perhaps most interestingly is that last year's new boys Clermont Foot and this year's Toulouse are 7th and 8th.
Over in Spain it was the first of the season's Clásicos. Madrid took the lead early via Benzema and then doubled their lead with a Fede Valverde goal. I like Fede a lot, I think he's a great player and he's just very cute. After the game Toni Kroos also tweeted that he was in the top 3 in the world, which is extremely high praise.
Late on in the game Barcelona managed to pull one back via Ferran Torres but were unable to push for a draw and instead Real sealed it with a 90+2 minute penalty scored by Rodrygo. I didn't watch the game because there was just TOO MUCH FOOTBALL so I have no analysis on the game but as a Barcelona fan this is obviously a blow. The table now sees Madrid at the top with Barça second, Atléti third and Betis fourth.
The Bundesliga brought us the goals this weekend with both Eintracht and Bayern scoring five, Stuttgart four and Hoffenheim, Leipzig and Köln three, with the latter two also conceding two.
Another team conceding two was Dortmund who lost to league leaders Union, allowing them to cement their place at the top. Meanwhile Bayern's aforementioned 5 goals were scored in a win against top four contenders Freiburg, allowing Bayern to leapfrog them into second place.
The other results have seen Dortmund slip to 8th while Hoffenheim, Eintracht, Gladbach and Köln are 4th to 7th respectively. It's tight up there though, with only a couple of points and goal difference in it.
Meanwhile, down in Italy in Serie A, Napoli had one of their first big scares of the season, going down a goal to lowly Bologna, only to claw back and lead and then be pegged back level again. The Masked Maverick, Victor Osimhen, was on hand however to come on and save the day with a 69th minute strike that proved the winner, keeping them at the top of the table.
Second place Atalanta also conceded first but after two goals, both technically in the 46th minute (one in the first half at 45+1 and one as soon as the second half started) they held on.
Milan were on course for a draw with Verona until, as he loves to do, Sandro Tonali scored the winner in the 81st minute. Leão was there with the "pre-assist" allowing Rebic to pick up the ball and find Tonali in space. He's come good with last minute important goals before and each time, as we would all love to be, is rewarded by a kiss on the head from Olivier Giroud.
Then he posted this on instagram after the game. Goodnight!
We've briefly touched on the Premier League but suffice to say that Sunday was a much more entertaining set of fixtures than Saturday. It started at 2pm with four games kicking off simultaneously, mostly due to Europa fixtures, only for the Arsenal game to be stopped within seconds, more of that later though.
In the televised game, Chelsea Villa, Chelsea opened the scoring quickly after Mason Mount pounced on a terrible Tyrone Mings error but after that it looked like, maybe, Villa were going to get back into it. That is had it not been for Kepa Arrizabalaga.
Having been preferred to Mendy by Graham Potter (weird but OK) he proceeded to have an absolute blinder. I happened to be in the pub for the first half and the shrieks and gasps and yells during the sequence of, I think, three massive saves in a row from him were intense!
I missed most of the second half, including the second goal, but it did feel like Villa were a little bit hard done by here and should have got at least a point out of it. They currently sit one point above the relegation zone and though perhaps too tight a timescale, you can't help but think maybe the Chelsea fans singing 'sacked in the morning' at Steven Gerrard have a point.
The other 2pm games finished 1-1 (Southampton West Ham) and 0-0 (United Newcastle) and both had their incidents.
At St Mary's, the referee seemed to impede Bowen who may or may not have been able to do something about Southampton's first goal. It's difficult to know what to say about this kind of thing because sometimes it's going to happen. Of course, we usually see the ref blow up and give a drop ball if the ball touches them but in this case that didn't happen. It's a tricky one where, I'm sorry to say, I can see both sides.
Then at Old Trafford Nick Pope seemed to dither taking a free kick so Ronaldo tackled him and scored. It was disallowed as the kick hadn't been taken and I'm not entirely sure how he thought it had been (admittedly I'm both strongly biased against him and have only seen it once). However, what I will say is that I don't know why more people don't try this when the keeper has the ball and is preparing to hoof it up the pitch.
Finally, for the 2pm kick offs we move to Leeds Arsenal. Boy. I wasn't even watching this, but I was so stressed throughout.
Let's start at the beginning. Having played just seven seconds, the game was halted after a power cut caused a break in communication between the referee and Stockley Park. This didn't get resolved for 35 minutes when the game eventually restarted.
My understanding is that much of the game was very bad and it was a good thing it wasn't on TV here. Following the game via alerts was fine, to a point. Bukayo Saka scored a lovely goal right before half time, and I felt OK, but the longer it went on, the more my stomach lurched every time something popped up and somehow, until I was told, I hadn't even realised there'd been a missed penalty. (Poor Patrick Bamford, get your hair cut son, it's awful and you'll feel a billion times better after).
So, when the alert popped up saying that Gabriel had been sent off, I shrieked, and the nerves kicked in big time. Having now seen the incident I know I had nothing to worry about. How that was ever considered a sending off or even a foul on Gabriel's part I do not know. Bamford wasn't clever with it at all. Instead of allowing Gabriel to obstruct him he launched at him then dived when that didn't really work. Sure, Gabriel reacted afterwards and shouldn't have but honestly it was so egregious, I did a big, shocked laugh when I saw it on MOTD2.
Anyway, the important thing is that despite the game running over into the Liverpool City match and nearly feeling sick with fear at the end, we won. All we needed after that was a Liverpool win...
Anfield then. Milner at right back against Foden. Haaland. Matip injured. Nunez left on the bench. Sure there'd been the incredible 1-7 against Rangers on Wednesday in the Champions League but this was City right? The best team in the country (DESPITE THE TABLE).
It was a fast and furious game with a loud and intense atmosphere. Both City and Liverpool were desperate to win but neither could break through and so it went to half time 0-0.
Back out for the second half and at 55 minutes the deadlock was broken after City fumbled the ball into the net for a Foden opener. Or did they? After a prolonged break and Anthony Taylor going to the VAR monitor the goal was chalked off for a foul by Haaland on Fabinho in the build-up. Pep lost it and ended up goading the home fans. Interestingly, on MOTD2 Chappers confirmed that even if the foul on Fabinho hadn't been given, a foul, also by Haaland, on Alisson would have been, so the goal wouldn't have stood regardless.
And so the deadlock continued. There was chance after chance, more so for Liverpool, including a heart-stopping miss from Mo Salah. Then, however, everyone's favourite attacking forward, Alisson, put a ball into Mo from a goal kick which freed him to run at Ederson and slot the ball into an empty net.
There were incidents after that, Klopp was sent off for his reaction to a number of decisions not going for Liverpool, of which there has been much Discourse today which I intend to avoid and Darwin, who had finally come on, made a lot of ludicrous decisions and just buzzed around the pitch like an unhinged menace. I love him.
After the late start of the Arsenal game which also had a hefty chunk of time added on, this game almost, nearly got to 100 minutes (we were 5 seconds off, I'm so mad at Anthony Taylor for that) and both my husband and I could barely breathe with the stress of it but then... it was done.
He was relieved, I was delighted, because Arsenal are now top of the league and four (4) points clear. No league game this week because of the rearranged Europa game but we were due to play City, so no game for them either. And don't forget. We're still the only ones whose trophy is gold :)
Over in the WSL, Arsenal women were also living up the "1-0 to the Arsenal" stereotype with a single goal win against Reading in the pouring rain. Whilst it does leave us in second due to Man United's superior goal difference, we did become the first team to keep a clean sheet for eight consecutive games. A huge achievement for Manu especially, love you Manuela!
Elsewhere Chelsea played their first game without Emma Hayes at the helm (get well soon Emma!) and won 1-3 against Everton, while United and City both put 4 past Brighton and Leicester respectively. Spurs came away with the win against Liverpool and the battle of the claret and blues was won by 10 woman West Ham, 1-2.
There are now two Arsenal Women's games in quick succession (Zurich Frauen at the Emirates next Thursday 27th and West Ham at Meadow Park on the 30th), so expect some pics and at stadium round ups from those.
Otherwise, that's it for this week, enjoy the Autumn sunshine where you can and don't forget, if you're an FPL player the next matchweek starts tomorrow and with neither City nor Arsenal playing it might be time for a Free Hit...
Half Time
So, I'm going to tackle a slightly silly thing this week, but one which I feel very passionately about!
Every time there's an amazing game of football on the TV the commentators will always parp on about how 'this is great for the neutral!' however I maintain that there is no such thing as a neutral. In this essay I will...
To be (semi) serious for a moment though I truly believe this is the case. There are games out there that are dead rubbers, games whose outcome will have no consequences to your team's position in the league/cup competition, games in nations whose league you don't follow nor have an adopted team from. But I reiterate - you will never end a football game as a neutral even if you went into it thinking you were.
My reasons for this are simple: if it's not your team playing it's probably a team you have an opinion on, either negative or positive, if you have no opinion on the team (for e.g. I have no strong feelings for or against Southampton, they're just there) then their win or loss is likely to have an impact on your position in the league.
If neither of these apply, something will happen during the game to make you favour one team over the other. Maybe Team A has a player you particularly like (for whatever reason, you know what would sway me, hehe) or perhaps Team B has a villain (either panto or real).
So there it is, something for you to argue about and two Simpsons pics. It's just like being on Twitter right?!
Thirst Trap
Sometimes a thirst trap is obvious. It's someone who takes your breath away, or who causes a raft of extremely x rated thoughts the second you see them, sometimes you don't know what it is, you just know that it is.
Then there are times when you've specifically said to someone 'I mean I don't fancy him' and because you're a contrary bitch you somehow end up talking yourself into liking them.
That's what happened with this week's entrant. He caught my eye due to his extremely cute smile; you can have one of these without being hot! Look at Bukayo, adorable, but I don't fancy him. Then I noticed that he's got these really unusual looking eyes. I think they're just brown but there's something about them that's slightly different to deep, chocolate eyes, they have a weird hue to them that's really interesting, almost like tiger's eye gems. And then, after enquiring as to who he was and telling my Ajax correspondent that, as mentioned, I definitely did not fancy him, well, yeah, I was smitten.
So this week, it's Ajax and Mexico's Edson Alvarez.
Thirst Trap Extra here with some World Cup stars, including Edson himself, snapped for GQ Sports (click through for the thread)
Merch Stand
This isn't merch per se (although let's be honest it probably is available in the club shop) but I absolutely love this super snugly looking coat the lads were wearing in Norway on Thursday. Very cute!
Buy No Score Draws World Cup wallchart! Look how good it is! (No they don't pay me commission!)
Full Time
A banger of a kit tbh. Another for my file of 'Kits That Look A Bit Like Zzapp Lollies' too.
This is very cute but also quite surreal, like watching people at a silent disco or something
Never gets old
Just extremely pleasing.
This Tifo explainer about Leicester being shit is extremely good.
Omonia goalkeeper and huge United fan Francis Uzoho played a blinder at Old Trafford on Thursday and despite losing, he loved it. This is very wholesome!
Speaking of goalkeepers playing in the Europa League.
Bukayo. Saka. On. The. Cover. Of. Time. Magazine.
This is a great interview by the always wonderful Flo Lloyd Hughes of gay trailblazer Josh Cavallo.
I think that’s all for now, it’s been a meaty one! Have a great week and see you next Monday where it will be far too late to engage in any kind of Ballon D'Or discourse. Until then!
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