Mike Dean: Man of the Match?

Rooney cheated, but Mike Dean is equally guilty.

I spent much of my Saturday here in NZ trying to toss up whether or not I’d be getting up at 4am on Sunday morning to watch the match between Man United and Arsenal. Eventually I resigned myself to the fact that I couldn’t resist watching such a mouth watering tie, especially as I felt – as I hinted in my Predictions – that Arsenal would outplay United in a cracking match. And they did.

That United came away with the points then, is a bit surprising. I was very impressed with Arsenal, they played good football (though the pressure of the occasion affected both sides at times) and played with great attacking intent. United were disappointing, and looked aimless going forward. There’s one reason and one reason only that in this match, the better side didn’t win, and that reason is called Mike Dean.

Premiership Predictions

There were a couple more upsets in last weekend’s Premier League fixtures, with the clarets of Burnley and Aston Villa both picking up wins against the Merseyside teams that few would have forecast, as I didn’t. That meant that it was another average round of predictions for me, with six right results but still no perfect scores, and this round of fixtures promises to be just as tricky to call with some intriguing match-ups, including the first ‘big four’ clash of the season between Man Utd and Arsenal. Read on MacDuff…

Saturday Fixtures, 3pm K.O. (unless stated)
Chelsea vs. Burnley (12.45pm)
When the fixtures were announced, it’s probably fair to say that after five games of the season, Owen Coyle would have been happy with three points. An winnable opening day game against Stoke was followed by meetings with four of the top five teams from last season. But wins against Man Utd and Everton will have Chelsea (and next week’s opponents Liverpool) sitting up and taking notice. I rate Burnley (indeed, I tipped them as dark horses), but I think this will be a game too far as Chelsea look really strong this season.
Prediction: 2-1.

Sylvain Distin: Distinctly Average?

Distin: not very exciting.

Isn’t it exciting when your club makes a new signing? That’s pretty much what the summer transfer window is about – especially in a year like this one when there are no major tournaments. Unfortunately, as an Everton fan, I’ve become used to getting a bit frustrated as we struggle to compete financially with our Premier League rivals and don’t usually manage to bring in any players until late in the window.

However, last season we did eventually had cause to get a bit excited about the arrival of Marouane Fellaini at the very death of the transfer window and just the other day the arrival of Diniyar Bilyaletdinov was fantastic – an exciting player with a great deal of promise who will surely add a great deal to our side. Today we’ve snagged our third major signing of the summer though… and well, it’s Sylvain Distin. That’s not very exciting, and I need a bit of reassuring.

WDKF Thursday: The Ugly Side of the Beautiful Game

So I’m currently back in my NZ home of Nelson for two weeks mid-term holiday from University at the moment, and as such I have to admit that I uh… rather lost track of what day it was yesterday. As such I didn’t post my weekly ‘WDKF Wednesday’ article (though the blame goes also to the fact that I did write an essay) and so I’ve posted over at WDKF today instead, and made a rather crude update of the above ‘topper’ to make it work.

While the design may not be up to its usual standard, the writing hopefully is so I highly recommend you click over there and have a read, as this week I’m condemning the violence that took place at Upton Park and it’s rather interesting timing in terms of other football events and the whole scheme of British football. Thanks for reading as always.

Click through to read my WDKF Wednesday Thursday article…

Apologies & Annoyance

The ugly side of the beautiful game.

Hi all, apologies for the fact that there will (probably) not be a proper post today (unless I have a flash of inspiration/motivation later on). I wrote a 4000 word essay looking at Aubrey de Grey’s Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (it’s more interesting than it sounds) today and to be fair, I’m pretty much all written out. Normal service should resume tomorrow though, all being well.

In other news, quick mention to the idiots who ruined a good game of football at Upton Park last night, and once more brought the game of football into disrepute. It only takes one isolated incident every couple of years to reassure the world that football fans are the scumbags they’ve been led to believe we are (in fact football actually made a top story on NZ news, which never happens otherwise), so thanks to those idiots (who aren’t football fans) for ruining our reputation.

What’s more, after a week in which one of West Ham’s players was himself viciously attacked and stabbed and another lost his father in a road accident, you’d have thought that the people involved in this violence would have gained a sense of perspective wouldn’t you? You’d have thought they’d have realised that at the end of the day, football is just a game and that people’s health is far, far more important. Shame on the lot of you.

Lescott’s (all but) Gone: Let’s Celebrate.

Unfortunately, I was unable to entirely share their elation.

Today has been a mixed day in a couple of ways for me. I woke up to the fantastic news that England have regained the Ashes from Australia after a superb performance in the fifth and final Ashes test match. Very few things in sport feel quite as good as beating the Aussies at cricket so I should have been elated all day… but I wasn’t. That’s because a split second before finding out that we’d won I found out that Everton had lost to Burnley and so remain pointless after two games of the Premier League season.

Today is also the day that seems to have finally sealed Joleon Lescott’s transfer away from Everton, and that’s disappointing too. Numerous times on this site I’ve expressed my admiration for Lescott and I hoped he’d turn down City’s advances. Still though, in a way I’m actually also delighted that the saga is over – it’s clearly had a disruptive influence on Everton’s start to the season and should allow Moyes to add crucial additions to his squad before the transfer window closes.

My Best to Calum Davenport

All the best to Calum and his family.

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Calum Davenport and his mother were viciously attacked and stabbed by two complete and utter scumbags in their hometown of Bedford on Saturday afternoon. Reports indicate that Davenport has undergone surgery on both legs and that the injuries inflicted on him could be career threatening. My thoughts are with Calum, his mother and his family and I hope he can make a full recovery and that the bastards who did this are caught and fucking punished.

There will be no other post today as I’ve zipped across the Cook Strait from Wellington to Nelson ready for a couple of weeks home cooking and I’m frankly knackered. More so though, it’s hard to think about football after what has happened to Davenport – it puts things into perspective. This sort of thing happens far, far too often in this world and of course Davenport’s case will receive more attention, but something needs to be done to stop this sort of thing from happening.

Once again, all my thougts and best wishes go to Calum Davenport and his family.

Premiership Predictions

The second weekend of the new Premier League season gets under way today with two lots of games already under our belts and plenty of upsets to boot, which pretty much makes predicting results – already a hard job – almost impossible. This was in evidence when I made my predictions for the midweek fixtures, where I had four out of six results right but no perfect scores. Let’s hope I can do a little better this time around…

Saturday Fixtures, 3pm K.O.
Arsenal vs. Portsmouth
Well Arsenal have had a pretty fine start to the season, they were given an easy start by a woeful Everton side but then brushed past Celtic in a tricky Champions League encounter in fine style. Portsmouth though, are on the rocks already. A last gasp defeat to a controversial penalty cost them against Birmingham in midweek and that’s typical of the way your luck goes when the chips are down. They need to start picking up points ASAP but it simply won’t happen against Arsenal.
Prediction: 3-0.

The Lescott Saga: An Evertonian Solution.

What's right for Lescott, but more to the point, what's right for Everton?

With just ten days to go in the Summer transfer window for British clubs, it’s fair to expect that quite soon more and more transfers will start to fly through, as managers rush to complete their squad for the first half of the season. One transfer that has dragged on and on all Summer though is Manchester City’s protracted pursuit of Joleon Lescott from my club, Everton. David Moyes has been hugely stubborn in upholding principles and has done what every non-City fan in the country wanted him to do, in standing up to their money.

However, given that Everton had a very poor start to the season with their abject display against Arsenal, and given that Lescott was subsequently omitted from the squad for the 4-0 Europa League victory over Sigma because of what Moyes described as ‘bad attitude’, I think it may well be time to allow him to leave. I’m Lescott’s biggest fan and have praised him many times on this site, but I think in terms of what’s best for Everton, we should take the money and use it wisely. I even have some suggestions as to how it should be used…

Premiership Conclusions

Well we’ve now had two rounds of Premier League fixtures and gosh, hasn’t it been interesting!? It’s fair to say there have been some major shocks already, so what have you made of the season so far? What are your first impressions? I’m going to give my two cents worth with three conclusions below, but please leave a comment and let me know what your reaction to the start of the ’09/’10 season has been.

1. Expect the Unexpected
I suppose the best and most obvious place to start today has to be with the raft of shock results that have already hit us this season. If you’d told me before the beginning of the season that Man Utd and Liverpool would lose to Burnley and Spurs, or that Arsenal would hammer Everton, that Wigan would beat Villa and then lose to Wolves I’d probably have said… well, I guess I’d have sat back and felt a bit smug.