Round 5 – English Premier League

It’s getting upsetting that the Moose is still not present on the banner but I still haven’t updated the theme yet.  I promised I would do it after their first win so I should have a while.  This week one of the viral videos making the rounds is the Japanese goalkeeping dog.

This is pretty impressive stuff for a dog. It makes me wonder if it could replace Joe Hart as Citeh’s number 1.

To be fair, I was going to put in a Calamity James montage but I couldn’t find anything short enough.

On to the picks!

9/12/2015 Everton 1 2 Chelsea
9/12/2015 Watford 2 1 Swansea City
9/12/2015 Arsenal 2 0 Stoke City
9/12/2015 Crystal Palace 1 2 Manchester City
9/12/2015 Norwich City 2 0 AFC Bournemouth
9/12/2015 West Bromwich Albion 1 1 Southampton
9/12/2015 Manchester United 1 1 Liverpool
9/13/2015 Sunderland 1 2 Tottenham
9/13/2015 Leicester 2 1 Aston Villa
9/14/2015 West Ham 0 2 Newcastle

The team that did not really spend much improving over the Summer, Everton, playing a Chelsea who have not got off to the best start.  This week Jose “the Special One” Mourinho will have had  a while to “strategize” on how to make improvements and I expect to see them play better.  John Stones will prove where his loyalties lay with an accidental last minute deflected own goal after Radamel Falcao proves that his bad time at Manchester United may have more to do with the Turtle (LVG) than we thought.

I’ve been positive on Watford all year and I’m going to continue as long as Quique plays a system that employs a striker.  I don’t mean a system that employs a striker as a defender like last week but one that might actually threaten the opposition area.  Swansea are a high-performance open team so it’s a perfect opportunity to open things up.  Ighalo to score another and continue to have his sale price rise (it’s a given that good players leave) but Gomis will score in his fifth consecutive game.  That’s 5 games in a row.  A fistful.

As an aside, I imagine Watford training is like the Eddie Izzard skit: Ich habe ein kleine problemo avec le defensio de Watford.  I know Quique is multi-lingual but the team features an incredible variety of nationalities.

Quick Final Summary

Arsenal are still looking good and fancy them in a simple win over Stoke.  The Ox is finally playing well and despite their frailties, I’m sure they will manage to scrap 2 goals from the large number of opportunities.

Crystal Palace are frustratingly making Alan Pardew look like a genius – Newcastle fans must be looking at the Eagles and no knowingly that the imminent collapse will come soon.  At the same time the minority have not bought into the idea that Manchester City have transitioned to this solid Championship winning team and am expecting a slow down.  The slow down will come in the form of conceding a goal but Manchester City are too solid to be rocked this year.

Norwich and Bournemouth are two beginners trying to stay up so I’m going with the home team.  West Brom and Southampton deserve a draw (not sure why I dropped the weekly 2-2 pick for the Baggies).  Leicester are playing better than Tim can tactic (yes, I made that a verb) so they will win.  West Ham will be in the valley of their bipolar performances and Newcastle prove that there is life after Pardew.

Spurs? What can we say about Spurs?  They are underachieving?  That they don’t know how to win? That Harry-Kane is more of a Harry Light Breeze.  That they laid their hopes on a Korean, Son Heung-min?  Well this week they will win because all Sunderland did in the transfer window was finally convince Borini that playing at Sunderland really wasn’t as bad as sitting on the bench at Liverpool.  The Sun is has the “Nice One, Sun”  headline penciled in … but this is the week that Harry scores and breaks his duck.

And that leaves the big game:  Liverpool playing Manchester at the old toilet
Old_toilet_by_sebasoul.jpg

This is a massive game for Brendan Rodgers, who’s team got off to a decent start but had a big let down.   He’s under pressure to succeed and it has to hurt seeing JonJo being such a huge and impressive success at Swansea.  I was told to write down Firmino last week and I did and nothing happened.  I’m going to guess it had something to do with the fact that I spelled it incorrectly.

I’ll do it again this week to see if something happens:  Firmino.

It’s not that much better on the Manchester United side.  Given the amount of money invested by LVG and the fact that he seems to  end up being reliant on David Moyes’s desperation signing of Fellaini (in his better position up front) and more so on Juan Mata than ever, you have to wonder what he’s actually achieved.  He let the most talented player he bought go for a loss and you have to wonder if his personality is getting more in the way than helping.   The big question is obviously going to be when will Martial play as LVG says he’s going to “ease” him into the game.

I think that while LVG might prove to be a success in the long run, it’s clear he doesn’t know how to moderate the market.  His spending is and management of players is extraordinarily bad as he tips his hand on everything.  But I digress.  A disappointing 1-1 draw leaves the media and fans with one more week of disappointment and chatter about lowered expectations as they continue to find themselves below Leicester in the table.

 

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