Avoiding the Drop

This weekend saw some very interesting games, one regional rivalry took place over in Italy, one matchup of English powerhouses, and a boatload of other great matches took place.

However, I’ve got some bad news. Actually real bad, life altering news. That’s right, we’ve reached the interlull. Just as all those exciting club games were getting going, we’ve landed in an international break. It’s not that I hate the international break, it’s just that my excitement is very tempered when we’ve replaced club matches for Poland v Northern Ireland. It is what it is though and we can’t exactly change things. Plus when everything returns to normal, it’ll be that much better.

In what was obviously the marquee match of the weekend, and probably the biggest match in England thus far, Manchester United took down Arsenal 2-1 on Saturday. Arsenal struck first with a beautiful strike from Andrei Arshavin that took them into the dressing room up 1-0 at the half, but things wouldn’t go the Gunners way the rest of the way. Near the start of the second half Wayne Rooney went into the box and Manuel Almunia came out to challenge and Rooney won a penalty. Weather or not it was a fair call has been a talking point throughout most of the weekend. While it was a rather weak penalty call, it was still called and no amount of complaining can change that. Almunia came in, made a risky challenge, and paid for it, end of story.

Shortly thereafter Abou Diaby headed in an own goal that was absolutely terrible, he didn’t have anyone barrelling down on him challenging for the ball, he just stuck his head on it and it went the wrong way into the net. The final controversy came when Arsenal had a goal overturned thanks to an offside call on William Gallas. Gallas was clearly offside and the call was correctly made, but out of frustration Wenger kicked a water bottle down field and then the fun started. The fourth official took offense to that and called Mike Dean over and they told Arsene to leave. Arsene decided instead of just going down the tunnel that he’d be stubborn and go up to a landing above the tunnel causing about two minutes of chaos with Arsene giving Dean a look like he didn’t understand what he wanted him to do.

Dean didn’t do a good job with many of his calls on the night and Arsene was clearly frustrated by this point. The sending off was silly, there was maybe 30 seconds left in stoppage time and Dean could have ignored it and just let things finish out. Arsenal were certainly the better team on the night but United was able to eek out two rather lucky goals. Arshavin was the biggest offensive threat for Arsenal, but he went silent in the second half, making scoring chances almost non existent for the Gunners.

Both teams can take something good from this one. Arsenal looked good as they have the last few matches, they just lacked the finishing they’ve had the first four games this season. Manchester United know they can face up against a good team and battle their way to a win even though it certainly appears that they’re not nearly as threatening as last season.

Undefeated Tottenham escaped an almost certain draw with Birmingham thanks to a last second strike by Aaron Lennon. Tottenham face a tough battle coming up though as star Midfielder Luka Modric will be out 6 weeks with a broken leg. Modric is one of the keys to their midfield and Harry has a tough task of figuring out how to fill the hole he’s left and maintain their dream start.

Stoke City continued their good start with another grind it out victory beating Sunderland 1-0. Stoke certainly isn’t going to win anything by way of beautiful attacking play, but that doesn’t matter if they can be a thorn in the side of other teams and knock them around to steal a lucky goal and keep winning matches. If they do it enough they could well challenge for a spot in the Europa League.

Manchester City has started the complete opposite way that I’m sure most saw them starting. They’ve scored 4 goals in three matches against none too impressive of teams, which I’m sure most would have seen them winning most running away. They haven’t conceded any goals yet, so perhaps their formula has worked. Their next fixture is against Arsenal though, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens when they come against a big club.

Liverpool battled back from being down twice to beat Bolton 3-2 in a game that could have sunk the hopes of the Liverpool faithful. On the other side of Liverpool, Everton also had to escape another near miss when they were awarded a penalty in stoppage time to come up with their first win.

In other results across Europe, Inter took the Milan derby by storm with a 4-0 win over their city rivals and Juventus handled Roma 3-1 in the other marquee matchup in Italy.

La Liga opened up this weekend with Real Madrid’s new dream squad facing Deportivo in a very interesting back and forth match that saw Ronaldo score his first goal of the season on a penalty.The rest of the La Liga results went pretty much as expected and Barcelona plays their opener this afternoon.

Rounding everything out, Germany still remains the most interesting league in Europe with none of last season’s top three in this seasons top three at the moment, and last season’s relegation survivors Borussia Monchengladbach currently sit in 5th place. I for one am very happy to have gotten GolTV for this season and can’t wait for the vast amount of interesting matches this league should provide.