Avoiding the Drop

The past week has certainly given us our fair share of games to watch, ponder, pull our hair out over, or just genuinely enjoy. Just about every English team has played three games in the last nine days, Serie A just kicked off this weekend, and France and Germany are well into their seasons. Next weekend sees the start of the race to the title between Barcelona and Real Madrid in Spain which should be a very interesting one indeed, though it may cause international interest to the other 18 teams in Spain to dwindle slightly.

I’m not here to look at whats going to happen though, lets take a look at what actually did happen all across Europe this weekend.

It’s really hard to look at a table this early in the season and project how a team might perform, what could be going on for them could just be an anomaly and they could very well crash back to earth a month later, or their form could be indicative of how well they’ll actually do this season, but even that is usually based upon speculation.

Two teams that have performed opposite of speculation faced off Sunday morning to a result not many though would have happened. David Moyes Everton squad faced a very tough Burnley squad (you knew they’d be tough because you read fuse’s preview though, right?), and came up short partially thanks to a Louis Saha’s missed penalty. Everton finally got the whole Joleon Lescott situation figured out so hopefully with him gone and not causing trouble things can get back to normal, though Everton’s newly acquired finances could cause some late ripples as we’re not done with the transfer window quite yet.

One thing the table can sometimes confirm for us this early is when a team is down and out, like Portsmouth seems to already be. They’ve scored 1 goal in three games thus far and really looked listless out there against Arsenal on Saturday. Pompey’s situation is a tough one, the current owner isn’t putting any money into the club because he’s about to leave and the soon to be new owner isn’t pumping any money into the club either. Hopefully that gets sorted out and they’re able to stabilize themselves and start back on track.

Spurs have certainly gone above and beyond what anyone thought they might be able to do thanks in part to a red hot Jermaine Defoe. In comparison to last season it took them till November 1st to score as many points as they already have right now. Defoe has come in and scored 4 goals in the last two games to lead the league thus far in scoring. Spurs obviously won’t win every game this season, but I would not be surprised to see them give Manchester City a reality check when they’re the ones challenging for a top four spot with the Citizens looking up the table at them.

Personally, I’m not buying the potential success of Manchester City this season. They’ve certainly got all the parts for success, but it’s not just going to happen over night and it’ll probably be another season before we see them legitimately challenge for a place in the top for. City has played two relatively easy matches that for all their strength they should have won running away, but Wolverhampton gave them a bit of a fight and only allowed them a single goal on the weekend.

The big story over here in the states though was Jozy Altidore’s debut for Hull City. On his very first touch of the game he flicked the ball over the Bolton defense which allowed Kamel Ghilas to make a run and score the games only goal. Jozy should be able to make an impact in a squad that doesn’t appear to have much firepower, and he’ll hopefully be making regular appearances for the club.

One final note from England, Stoke Ciy and Birmingham City’s scoreless draw has been the ONLY one thus far after 26 matches which seems extremely odd.

Taking a look over at the Bundesliga it appears we’re in for another exciting season as the top 12 teams are within 3 points of each other in the table. If you’re looking to bet on a team to win the league, don’t bother, this one looks like it’s going down to the wire yet again making for yet another exciting season.

France looks like it’ll be a four horse race yet again with Bordeaux topping the league with an impressive 11 goals in three matches. Lyon, PSG, and Marseille rounding out the rest of the top four in France, this one could be very interesting since Lyon no longer has a complete stranglehold on the league as they did for so many years.

Finally, Serie A opened up this week. Reigning champs Inter Milan could only manage a 1-1 draw with newly promoted side Bari. AC Milan saw the start of their first season without Kaka start much like their first season with Kaka, with a young Brazilian lighting things up. Pato has stepped into the star role at Milan, and should fill it quite nicely.

Goal of the Week: Younes Kaboul, Arsenal vs Portsmouth, sure Pompey got killed, but Kaboul certainly made quite the jump to get over Manuel Almunia, but you know what they say white haired men can’t jump.

Player of the Week: Brian Jensen, Burnley. I’m sure none of you knew who Jensen was before this week, and you’ll probably all forget about him after this week, but Jensen put up two solid performances, first against Manchester United where he stopped a penalty, and then against Everton where he was active for most of the match.