The weekend is barely over and yet already the next game week Brighton and Hove Albions into view. The game weeks come thick and fast this time of year, and who else encapsulates those two attributes better than Mike Pollard, manager of The Unconsoled. Not surprisingly Mike didn’t let me down, and filed his report by return of post…
This game week saw a return to form for Spurs and the continued success of Mo Salah in front of goal. As a result, the high point scorers in Fray Bentos had Salah or Kane in their teams, usually as captain. Top scorer, Andy Dawkins, had both players and amassed an impressive 75 points, but risks running seriously foul of the Trades Description Act with his team “Bottom by Christmas”.
Well done to Thomas Ashman, whose Benchwarmers retained top spot with 67 points (Kane and Salah). An honourable mention for Alison Breakwell’s Raised by Wolves, who bagged the second highest points tally of 72, thanks to Kane and Ottamendi. As if Man City don’t have enough goal scorers in their side, Ottamendi now has 5 goals and is the 2nd equal rated defender, points-wise.
Morata shows off how many goals he’s scored lately.
But plenty of the current hot picks failed to deliver for their managers – notably Morata, Aguero, DeBruyne and Lukaku. GW15 saw many of those teams slide down the table, including my own Unconsoled – that’s real commitment to the name, Andy Dawkins! My score was not helped by Morata, RIcharlison and Abraham missing golden chances to score when clean through on goal.
On to the actual matches, 3 cracking derbies on paper produced only a few goals and two shock results – Chelsea losing to WHU and Everton getting a draw at Anfield. The verbal fireworks between managers was also muted, although Mourinho managed to get in a nice pre-match dig when he accused the City players of diving. Jose had obviously forgotten about Ashley Young in his team, but he was proved more or less correct when Walker and Jesus showed off their diving skills. Despite that, Man City probably deserved to win and the PL title race looks over already.
Group photo from latest Premier League Managers convention.
The manager merry-go-round is working overtime, but I enjoy having characters like Roy Hodgson and Sam Allardyce back in the PL. I’d like to see more managers who resemble their teams in some way. Arsenal and Arsene lead the way, of course, although they’re sometimes known as Wenger’s Whingers. We’ve got Klopp at the Kop, and I look forward to the arrival of Jurgen’s brother Klippety. Man Utd are known as the Red Devils – not, as you might think, a reflection of their attacking play, but a tribute to the bright red face of Sralex Ferguson caught in mid rant. I just looked up the English translation of “Guardiola”, hoping it meant something like enormous sense of entitlement, or stupid money, but apparently it means “booth”, as in ticket booth, although Man City did have a player called Tommy Booth in the 70s…….
Anyway, Roy Hodgson was very disappointed he didn’t get to see Santa at the North Pole this Xmas – he just couldn’t get past Iceland. Which brings us to the World Cup draw and the chance to see which unexpected minnow England can lose to this summer. Having been recently beaten by Australia in cricket and rugby league, it would be nice if we could get some revenge in the most important sport worldwide.
Poor sod.
Australia beat Syria to qualify for the World Cup finals, and Syria had to play their home match in Malaysia due to their domestic “troubles”. The USA will not be in Russia this summer, having been knocked out by Trinidad and Tobago. This meant a sacking for the wonderfully named US coach, Bruce Arena. If he’d taken them to a World Cup final, just imagine what the new national stadium could have been called! The World Cup will probably be won by one of the usual suspects, but we’re bound to have some shock results along the way. One reporter tried to explain how football actually works at the 1998 world Cup: “Norway beat Brazil, who beat Chile, who drew with Italy, who beat Norway. Therefore, clearly Norway are a much better side than Norway”.
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