Dear reader, just imagine if Mohamed Salah wasn’t just a one-season wonder, eh? Pretend for a moment we live in a world where he followed up his phenomenal first season at Liverpool with something as electric in a different way. Liverpool would probably be in with a shout of the Premier League title if Mo wasn’t letting them down.
Salah scored an absolute Robbie Fowler of a belter against Chelsea to seal an important 2-0 win for the league leaders. King Kloppo’s men already led after Sadio Mane had headed them in front but it was Salah’s hit that was a lovely dollop of icing on quite a nice cake.
But, don’t forget (because Sky seemed to have forgotten momentarily) the title is still completely in Manchester City’s hands.
Crystal Palace away was the game many pundits had circled in big red pen as the match that would cause Man City the most problems in their run in. Unfortunately, someone forgot to mention this to Raheem Sterling and co as they will have worried for approximately two minutes on Sunday as Palace chased a late equaliser.
Luckily for City, Peppy G doesn’t have to think too much in the Premier League. It’s the Champions League where he thinks himself into situations where Tottenham actually end their quadruple hopes.
Just imagine how good Tottenham would be if they were playing like that in their new stadium. What’s that? They’ve moved in already? When did that happen? You’d have thought it would have got a mention. OK, then imagine how good Spurs could be if they weren’t so reliant on Harry Kane to score all their goals. Eh? Injured again? Ankle? Lucas Moura got the first hat-trick at the new ground? Blimey.
I think there’s probably only a finite time that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer can get away with saying Manchester United were lucky to win, although we do appreciate his honesty.
West Ham were unlucky not to be 1-0 when Felipe Anderson was wrongly adjudged to have been offside and were probably unlucky that Michail Antonio almost broke the Old Trafford crossbar and then were definitely unlucky when his header was saved brilliantly by David de Gea.
They were not unlucky to give away two penalties though, especially the first one. You should know the Tales ruling for what constitutes a penalty by now. If that happened anywhere else on the pitch, would the referee give a free kick? Yes. Yes, he would. Even those muppets we have officiating in the ‘greatest league in the world’.
Oh, and scoring two penalties does not make Paul Pogba man-of-the-match, folks.
If the footballing gods are getting their revenge on Neil Warnock then he must have done some really bad things that we don’t know about. Don’t get me wrong, Warnock is marmite; we all know that. But even he doesn’t deserve some of the decisions that are going against him. And even if he does, the Cardiff City staff that will no doubt be made redundant in post-relegation cutbacks certainly don’t.
Apparently, in this day and age if the ball hits another part of your body first before it hits your hand it isn’t a penalty. OK, I accept that if the ball is fired at you from a few yards away and rebounds all over your body. But from a cross 40 yards away that you have time to watch, judge and then jump for unchallenged? Mate, if you head that into your hand that’s a penalty and you deserve a yellow for being utterly incompetent. Ben Mee didn’t just handle it once in the area, he followed it up shortly after and blocked a shot with his hand in a somewhat unnatural position.
Cardiff managed to get their first hat-trick of the season when a third nailed on spot-kick was waved away by Mike Dean for, you know, the bantz.
Luckily for Cardiff, who are trying very, very hard to stay up, their main rival for the final relegation spot is Brighton who appear to be doing all they can to go down.
Brighton faced a Bournemouth team so far out of form that Eddie Howe would have done as well to pick a team out of the hat and see what happens. And, what happened was that Bournemouth won 5-0. 5-0! Anthony Knockaert doesn’t fancy helping his colleagues in their remaining matches this season. Nope, Knockaert got a straight red for one of the most mindless tackles of the season.
Wolves took a quick look at where Southampton were in the table, realised they were not top six and decided that they weren’t too fussed about winning. And, as a result, Southampton are now safe.
Finally, just give the job to Scotty Parker, eh Fulham? Parker led Fulham to a victory on Saturday. Yes, it was only Everton but you’ve got to start somewhere.
