Graeme Souness on Christian Eriksen: “I don’t know him at all, I’m assuming he’s not been a problem around the place. I’d play him.”
Souness on Moise Kean: insinuating that Moise Keane’s got an “attitude problem” like Emmanuel Adebayor and, well, Paul Pogba.
Nothing to see here, move along folks.
Let’s do what Graeme is paid to do and talk about the Premier League football, probably in a slightly less judgemental way considering we’ve met Moise Kean as many times as he has.
It’s good to see David Luiz has sorted out all those problems in Arsenal’s defence whilst not losing his desire to sprint back into position. And if it’s not Luiz with his finger teasing us over the self-destruct button, it’s skipper Granit Xhaka and his well-timed tackles in the area.
But, maybe this is a new Arsenal. How many recent Arsenal sides would have fought from 2-0 down and got themselves level? Gary Neville has the answer.
With Guendozi driving them forward and being the player that Xhaka wishes he could be, Yo-Pierre levelled the score.
And if Spurs fans felt frustrated, they were nowhere near the Jamie Redknapp levels – imagine if Tottenham hadn’t put someone on the edge of the area for the next corner kick, eh?
Considering how little else there was to come out of Liverpool’s routine 3-0 win at Burnley, I feel compelled to blow the whole Sadio Mane tantrum out of proportion. Surely this has to be some kind of lover’s tiff between him and Mo Salah? Yes, Mo should have passed – but Mo is Mo. He is the selfish one in the relationship. He is the one who decides what is on TV. He says what they have for breakfast. He is the one who gets told he is wonderful all the time.
But Sadio knows he brings as much to this relationship as Mo does. He just wants a bit of recognition from his partner. He wants to feel like they are in it together. He wants to feel the love. And he doesn’t understand why he is the one who has to go bed early as it wasn’t him being bad.
Sean Dyche had it bang on after the game. If you are Burnley and you are playing a Liverpool team looking to break their record of Premier League matches won in a row then you probably don’t want to deflect a cross into the top corner and then give the ball away so they can score again. And it looks like Ashley Barnes’ hot streak is over, already.
Frank Lampard’s Chelsea U23 team did very well against the senior side of Sheffield United. Credit to Frank, this is the first time a youth team has played in the Premier League and they are doing rather well. Give them five years to pass their exams, get their driving licenses and have their first legal pint and these boys will be challenging for the title (providing that transfer ban stays in place). Tammy Abraham scored another brace once again proving how good he is against Championship defenders but Chelsea threw away their 2-0 lead in the second half. That’s right, Chelsea dropped off in the second period again – maybe they need better milk and biscuits and half time?
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is one of life’s optimists, that is for sure. Even though United dropped more points at St Mary’s, Ole was smiling, telling the world how well United had played and how good his young men were. Bearing in mind United normally beat Southampton, regardless of their form at the time, it was a clear indication that United really are not that good yet – despite another cracker from Daniel James.
With all the ‘disruptive influences’ bar one remaining at the club it can only go one of two ways for United from here. Either Solskjaer fixes this and United rise again or it’s all Paul Pogba’s fault.
Man City swatted Brighton aside in the manner we all expected. Graham Potter will have worked all week on making Brighton difficult to break down and all that work went out of the proverbial window after 70 seconds at the Etihad. Americ Laporte, who Peppy G had cleverly called the best ‘left-sided defender in Europe’ on Friday (before pretending he meant left-footed) celebrated his long-awaited call-up to the French national side by knackering his knee in a clumsy challenge for which he got booked.
Now, I am no coaching mastermind – believe it or not – but if I was taking a team to play Leicester City away from home I probably wouldn’t leave a lorry-load of space for Jamie Vardy to run into. It was a great finish and Leicester remain unbeaten even if they should have been down to ten men.
Equally peeved about VAR are Aston Villa who scored a perfectly good late equaliser that was ruled out because the ref wrongly blew the whistle for something that didn’t happen. Yes, a clear and obvious error from the official – something that VAR is there to sort out, right? Er, no. Apparently, because the ref blew his whistle VAR can’t get involved so Villa lost what could be a valuable point. Oh, and Palace actually managed to score at home.
VAR got it equally wrong in the West Ham match where it chose not to send the Hammers player off for crippling the Norwich player – the same Norwich player then unable to run two minutes later as West Ham strolled past him to open the scoring. Despite that, Norwich look in big trouble already.
Given some of the players that Gareth Southgate calls up to his England squad, Wolves’ captain Connor Coady could be forgiven for wondering what else he has to do. Probably not gifting Everton their opening goal in the first game after the squad has been announced, Connor – that would help. I had the game at Goodison Park down as a scrappy 1-0 win to Wolves. I was wrong.
