Footie talk

I missed last weekend's football matches as I was away to Penang for PwC's annual treasure hunt. My team came in 2nd. I was kinda dissapointed as I personally felt that I zoned off towards the end which i felt caused us 1st place and an addtional RM1,000 to our current prize money of RM 2,000. Anyhow, I wanna blog about football today but i'm feeling extremely tired and lazy. As such, I am gonna steal some things i read about last weekend's matches that truly speaks my thoughts exactly.

Arsenal
There can be no doubting their title credentials now.

ManYoo
An eighth successive Premiership victory and the fourth match in a row in which the champions have scored four goals.

how the fuck do they do it?? fergie's formation of lining nani, ronaldo and teves in support of rooney has produced breathtaking football. thank god the fucked up the carling cup!!!!

Avram Grant
He is still reaping the rewards of his inheritance. A true test of a manager comes when he is required to build his own team (or teams). The integral role of Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba in the 6-0 win that surpassed anything Grant's predecessor achieved underlined the scale of the task the Israeli will encounter next summer when both players are expected to request transfers.

Reading
Despite reputedly suffering from Second Season Syndrome, Reading have precisely the same amount of points this season that they had at the same stage last year.

Liverpool
Liverpool remain an indefinable work in debatable progress. Consistent only by their inconsistency, they are a plethora of contradictions: Undefeated yet unconvincing, powerful but bereft of authority, resolute without inspiring confidence. A mirror of their manager, Liverpool are impossible to work out.

Rafa's first surprise of the afternoon was the introduction of a new formation. Designed to harass, it was vindicated by Steven Gerrard's sixth-minute opener. Yet the benefits were merely temporary, and the Gunners subsequently simply played out of their opponents' reach. That Benitez felt compelled to change his side's formation in order to obstruct their opponents was instructive. That is not generally the method or mentality of a title-aspiring team.

The absence of authority in the Liverpool team - depending on your point of view, either the cause or the consequence of the change in system - was obvious and, ultimately, telling. The loss of the under-rated Xabi Alonso was critical and deprived Benitez of one of the few technically-accomplished players he possesses. That the Spaniard has apparently suffered a reoccurrence of his broken metatarsal added considerable insult to literal injury.

Yet injuries are a smokescreen for Liverpool's wider problems, summed up by the deployment of Dirk Kuyt and Andriy Voronin, neither of whom had the pace or trickery to cause bother, out wide. What were the thoughts of Ryan Babel and Yossi Benayoun as they looked on from the bench?

Somewhere at Liverpool, a good team is threatening to break loose. It would be a relief if Benitez finally unleashed it.

Fernando Torres
Given the speedy attributes of William Gallas and Kolo Toure, it was strange that Liverpool, in the words of Rafa Benitez, "wanted to use Torres' pace" in preference to the height advantage of Peter Crouch which destroyed the league's smallest defensive partnership in April. Even before suffering his own repeat injury, the Spaniard was a virtual bystander. "Crouch was very good," Benitez reflected of the second-half substitute, partially acknowledging his own mistake.

The 4-4-2 Formation
There were four different formations used by the Big Four this weekend - a 4-2-3-1 for ManYoo, a 4-3-3 for Chelski, a 4-1-4-1 for Arsenal, and a 4-2-1-3 by Liverpool - and not one of them was the traditional formation of choice in English football.

Alan Hansen
"It is no exaggeration to say that they could have scored ten," opined the MoTD pundit after Chelski's 6-0 win over Man Citeh.

Total number of shots on target by Chelski: Nine!!!! (9)