Fulham 2 – 2 Blackburn — The hot stat of the week is that if you counted only the first halves of matches, Fulham would be first in the league. What no one’s pointed out is that if you counted only the second halves of matches, they would be dead behind a Superquinn in Leinster.
Bolton 1 – 0 Manchester United — And you know, had the Bolton players actually been fitted with handguns, this one could have finished 2-0.
Birmingham 0 – 2 Portsmouth — The photographic evidence is disputed, but if you run the right query on Flickr you can see someone who looks suspiciously like Carson Yeung scrounging for loose coins in the St. Andrews car park.
Middlesbrough 0 – 3 Aston Villa — A lot of complicated things about Martin O’Neill, the England job, how you think about Steve McClaren, and the existence of a hierarchy of talent within football were summed up by this match. I’m not sure how, exactly, but they were.
Derby 0 – 2 Chelsea — Entertainment 0.
Arsenal 2 – 0 Wigan — “Arsenal 2 – 0 Wigan” is all you ever need to know about this match. Frankly, I’m not sure you even need to know that much.
Manchester City 2 – 1 Reading — Apart from the odd Harry Potter book and an occasional mental-health pamphlet, Stephen Ireland never really did like Reading.
Newcastle 0 – 3 Liverpool — Nice win for Liverpool and all, but does anyone else find it the least bit odd that Peter Crouch was stuck on the bench so that Dirk Kuyt could score by accident and Fernando Torres could miss 3289 chances? We do all know that Crouch had more goals and more assists than Steven Gerrard last year, right? No one’s confused on this? Perfect.
Everton 7 – 1 Sunderland — As every fan of Rome knows somewhere deep in their bones, Sunderland manager Titus Pullo never really stood a chance against Everton’s Lucius Vorenus.
Read More: A Line Under Sunday
by Brian Phillips · November 26, 2007
I’m not going to rubbish Rafa for starting Torres over Crouch in this one. Crouch was probably tired out from England duty. C-Ron didn’t play for Man U, either, for the same reason. Plus, Torres needed to get back into rhythm after his injury. He just happened to have one of those days.
Rafa will give us much worse times to call him out on this rotation nonsense. Trust me on this one.
Permanent4 – I have no doubt about that! And I agree, incidentally, about Torres; what I can’t understand is making Crouch sit for Dirk Kuyt. Maybe Crouch was tired, but there’s also an extensive pattern of Rafa giving Kuyt playing time no matter what he does with it. I’m working on a Super Mario Bros.-based theory about this that involves Kuyt being the Koopa Troopa of strikers, but it’s still in the early stages.