It was really Super-Sunday today as 4 of the biggest Premier League clubs faced each other, Chelsea and Arsenal came out tops with a 1-0 win over Liverpool and Man Utd respectively.
Liverpool – Chelsea
First off for the day was the battle between Liverpool and Chelsea who faced each other for an amazing 12th time in 25 months.
The game (for me) was as dull as it could get, i really anticipated an all out style of play by Liverpool considering they lost to Everton last week but to my dismay both teams played a rather cautious type of game, what a bore!
Apart from the SUPERB goal from Didier Drogba and a straight red for Ballack it was pretty much even possesion by both sides.
I however am very suprise as to why Rafa Benitez chose to stick with the attacking duo of Kuyt and Bellamy till the 77th minute before taking off Bellamy for Peter Crouch.It was plain to see that as soon as Crouch was on Liverpool were the better team with most crosses being met by the lanky Crouch, who could have scored a late equalizer had it not been for the goalkeeper.
Crouch has been on form recently and i think if he played alongside Bellamy instead of Kuyt, Liverpool would have at least gained a draw.
At the end of the day Chelsea collected all 3 points and are at third place in the league with 12 points (same as United) while Liverpool are at 15th with just 4 points from 4 games.
Arsenal – Manchester United
The second big game of the day also ended 1-0 but this game was a little better than the previous one.
As usual with an Arsenal -United game there wer no shortage of controversies.
Jens Lehmann was controversially booked after just five minutes when he was wrongly adjudged to have picked up the ball outside the area, wiith Ronaldo completely making a mess of the freekick given to a sigh of relief from the travelling fans.
Tomasz Kuszczak who made his United debut after Van Der Sar reported ill before the game made a name for himself when he became zero to a hero in less than 2 minutes, fouling Emmanuel Adebayor but magnificiently saved the resulting penalty kick from captain Gilberto Silva.
United who started the game without Van Der Sar and Giggs were outplayed most of the time though they were moments of brilliance from Paul Scholes and Patrice Evra, but Rooney was fairly dissapointing and so were the rest of the United team who just didn’t produced that same kind of ‘magic’ they had in their previous 4 league games.
Just before the break Cristiano Ronaldo had a fantastic opportunity to put United ahead from five yards but was denied by Lehmann’s face! ouch…
Cesc Fabregas played exceptionally well and was involved in the goal as he made a great through pass to Emmanuel Adebayor who took it in his stride and tucked in the ball to give penalty hero Kuszczak no chance.
So United lose their 100% record in the Premier League and are now on equal points with Chelsea.
Final score Arsenal 1 Man Utd 0
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I should say, in both these games, the better team lost.