Premier League round-up: New age treatments and Tottenham go goal-crazy
After an extended international break over the last week, the Premier League was raring to get going again this weekend. However, the latest bout of international matches did not pass by without claiming some victims and certain clubs could be forgiven for wondering if fate wasn't conspiring against them.
The most notable casualties concerned the top 2 in the Premier League, as they were on Saturday morning. League leaders Chelsea were made to do without the influential Frank Lampard, whereas Arsenal had to face up to losing the fulcrum during their recent good form- Robin van Persie.
Bizarrely and interestingly enough, van Persie has since been reported to have placed faith in another in the long line of weird and wonderful emerging treatments. The remedy in question 'simply' involves massaging the fluid form a horse's placenta into the area of injury, in this case the Dutchman's ankle ligaments.
The practice is performed by the Serbian doctor Marijana Kovacevic, and it has emerged that van Persie is not the first Premier League footballer to have visited her in Serbia. Former happy customers have included Liverpool's Yossi Benayoun, Glen Johnson and Albert Riera, as well as Manchester City's Vincent Kompany and Pablo Zabaleta.
Since Lampard suffered his own injury on England duty he too has also flown out to Serbia. Although it is not believed that he is investing in Kovacevic's horse techniques, but rather her general expertise in muscular injuries.
When asked about the form of therapy that van Persie is undergoing, Arsène Wenger sounded far from convinced, but he did concede that part of the treatment may be psychologically beneficial. Either way it remains to be seen if you'll soon be able to buy it over the counter from Boots, if it does then your local gym may soon wreak of the essence of placenta- mmm!
As for how the absences of both Lampard and van Persie affected their respective teams, the answer ended up being good for Chelsea but bad for Arsenal. The Premier League's top team wasted little effort over the visit of Wolves, confidently brushing them aside with slick demonstrations of passing and moving in their 4-0 win.
The cause of Mick McCarthy's team wasn't helped by their horrendous opening quarter of the match, after only 21 minutes they had already conceded 3 times. The re-emergence of Joe Cole has come at exactly the right time for Chelsea and England for that matter, and against Wolves he showed the extra dynamic that he can provide.
The opening burst of goals for Chelsea came courtesy of Florent Malouda and a brace from Michael Essien, Cole polished off his own display by grabbing the fourth. Ominously the result also saw Chelsea equal the club record of consecutive home clean-sheets, originally set back in 1927.
Whilst Ancelotti and his side are deservedly the current title favourites, the chasing pack of Manchester United, Arsenal and those behind them can maintain some optimism. The African Nations is on the horizon and Chelsea stand to lose the most from it's impact on their squad. The manager maintains that there will be no signings during the January transfer window, but what is certain is that Chelsea will have to quickly adapt to losing key players such as Didier Drogba, Essien, Salomon Kalou and John Obi Mikel if they want to re-gain the Premier League crown.
Meanwhile, the growing talk of Arsenal's own quest to once again be Premier League champions were literally 'Bent' on Saturday. The loss of Robin van Persie had caused concern amongst the Gunners fans, the Dutchman has been an instrumental part of the club's recent surge towards the Premiership summit, scoring 7 league goals thus far and setting up many others.
Even so, Arsenal have players capable of stepping into the breach, namely Eduardo and the increasingly important Andrey Arshavin. On top of this, other players who have spent long periods injured are now beginning to return. With Theo Walcott and Tomas Rosicky there should be ample resources to cover for Arsenal's leading goal-scorer.
Despite such reassurances, Arsenal headed to the Stadium of Light knowing that they would have to see-off a Sunderland team that has looked more and more robust this season. Having already defeated Liverpool with a beach ball and been very unlucky not to defeat Manchester United at Old Trafford, yesterday's match looked more and more like a potential banana skin.
The match started with Arsenal making their obligatory frantic forays at the opposition, after which it settled down into an affair with few clear-cut chances. With time running out and Arsenal under pressure to match Chelsea's 3 points, there was an inevitability about Sunderland grabbing the only goal when 20 minutes remained.
England hopeful Darren Bent bundled in a corner at the second attempt and with it dealt Arsenal's aspirations a sudden blow. Despite the result Arsenal are still viable title challengers, but the importance of beating Chelsea at the Emirates on 29th November is of even greater consequence now. As Wenger said, "It is a massive setback because you need consistency to win a title. And today we were not capable of doing that and it raises question marks." Snuffing out Chelsea can be the only riposte.
Elsewhere Manchester United rallied themselves to a comfortable 3-0 win over Everton; Darren Fletcher, Michael Carrick and Valencia the goal-scorers. In truth Everton never looked capable of upsetting the odds, and only threatened once they had both Saha and Yakuba up front in the 2nd half. The tactical change brought only brief respite though, before Utd promptly grabbed their 2nd and 3rd goals to leave David Moyes in a rather forlorn mood.
As for the other half of Merseyside, Liverpool hosted Manchester City in the early Saturday kick-off and both Rafa Benitez and Mark Hughes must have been 'delighted' after a 2-2 draw that did little to help either side back towards the top four. The match itself was widely panned as unbecoming of the score-line and all the goals came after a lacklustre first half.
The two clubs are not short of competition for the coveted Champions League spots and if they continue to drop points as they currently are, there may be some difficult decisions ahead for both boards. It is hard to imagine that either manager won't have until the end of the season, but the same confidence cannot be said for the beginning of next season.
What must count as a relegation six-pointer between Hull City and West Ham, produced a game befitting of the occasion- a humdinger that ultimately ended in a 3-3 draw. The chances of survival for Hull are strongly linked with Jimmy Bullard and Kamil Zayatte, each scored for their club and were once again responsible for driving the home team forward.
For Gianfranco Zola, his concerns will centre round West Ham's porous defence and a worrying new habit of dropping 2 goal leads. Despite establishing a 2 goal cushion after only 11 minutes, they were unable to put Hull to bed and instead found themselves 3-2 behind at the interval. Da Costa salvaged a point with 20 minutes left, but Zola will hope that come the end of the season they won't be regretting their recent results.
Finally attention must turn to today's three o'clock kick-off between Tottenham and Wigan, recent form suggested a home win was most likely but Roberto Martinez will surely suffer a nervous twitch when hearing the words Jermain Defoe in future. The England striker became only the third player to score 5 goals in a Premier League game as Tottenham went on a 9-1 rampage.
Wigan will look back and wish that they could have settled for the 1-0 deficit they had at half-time, unfortunately for them they conceded 8 second-half goals for their heaviest ever league defeat. Not only will Defoe have shown Fabio Capello his increasing worth, there was also an outstanding performance from Aaron Lennon who set-up 3 goals and scored one himself.
The BBC's live text feed of the match jokingly commented after the score reached 3-1 that Tottenham only needed another 12 goals to overturn Arsenal's goal difference advantage. Little did they know that Wigan would collapse in an appalling heap and that Spurs would cancel out half the quota!
If Harry Redknapp can one day get his team to perform against those above them, then who knows what they could achieve. Until then they can dine out on having greatly contributed to yet another high-scoring weekend in the Premier League.
The most notable casualties concerned the top 2 in the Premier League, as they were on Saturday morning. League leaders Chelsea were made to do without the influential Frank Lampard, whereas Arsenal had to face up to losing the fulcrum during their recent good form- Robin van Persie.
Bizarrely and interestingly enough, van Persie has since been reported to have placed faith in another in the long line of weird and wonderful emerging treatments. The remedy in question 'simply' involves massaging the fluid form a horse's placenta into the area of injury, in this case the Dutchman's ankle ligaments.
The practice is performed by the Serbian doctor Marijana Kovacevic, and it has emerged that van Persie is not the first Premier League footballer to have visited her in Serbia. Former happy customers have included Liverpool's Yossi Benayoun, Glen Johnson and Albert Riera, as well as Manchester City's Vincent Kompany and Pablo Zabaleta.
Since Lampard suffered his own injury on England duty he too has also flown out to Serbia. Although it is not believed that he is investing in Kovacevic's horse techniques, but rather her general expertise in muscular injuries.
When asked about the form of therapy that van Persie is undergoing, Arsène Wenger sounded far from convinced, but he did concede that part of the treatment may be psychologically beneficial. Either way it remains to be seen if you'll soon be able to buy it over the counter from Boots, if it does then your local gym may soon wreak of the essence of placenta- mmm!
As for how the absences of both Lampard and van Persie affected their respective teams, the answer ended up being good for Chelsea but bad for Arsenal. The Premier League's top team wasted little effort over the visit of Wolves, confidently brushing them aside with slick demonstrations of passing and moving in their 4-0 win.
The cause of Mick McCarthy's team wasn't helped by their horrendous opening quarter of the match, after only 21 minutes they had already conceded 3 times. The re-emergence of Joe Cole has come at exactly the right time for Chelsea and England for that matter, and against Wolves he showed the extra dynamic that he can provide.
The opening burst of goals for Chelsea came courtesy of Florent Malouda and a brace from Michael Essien, Cole polished off his own display by grabbing the fourth. Ominously the result also saw Chelsea equal the club record of consecutive home clean-sheets, originally set back in 1927.
Whilst Ancelotti and his side are deservedly the current title favourites, the chasing pack of Manchester United, Arsenal and those behind them can maintain some optimism. The African Nations is on the horizon and Chelsea stand to lose the most from it's impact on their squad. The manager maintains that there will be no signings during the January transfer window, but what is certain is that Chelsea will have to quickly adapt to losing key players such as Didier Drogba, Essien, Salomon Kalou and John Obi Mikel if they want to re-gain the Premier League crown.
Meanwhile, the growing talk of Arsenal's own quest to once again be Premier League champions were literally 'Bent' on Saturday. The loss of Robin van Persie had caused concern amongst the Gunners fans, the Dutchman has been an instrumental part of the club's recent surge towards the Premiership summit, scoring 7 league goals thus far and setting up many others.
Even so, Arsenal have players capable of stepping into the breach, namely Eduardo and the increasingly important Andrey Arshavin. On top of this, other players who have spent long periods injured are now beginning to return. With Theo Walcott and Tomas Rosicky there should be ample resources to cover for Arsenal's leading goal-scorer.
Despite such reassurances, Arsenal headed to the Stadium of Light knowing that they would have to see-off a Sunderland team that has looked more and more robust this season. Having already defeated Liverpool with a beach ball and been very unlucky not to defeat Manchester United at Old Trafford, yesterday's match looked more and more like a potential banana skin.
The match started with Arsenal making their obligatory frantic forays at the opposition, after which it settled down into an affair with few clear-cut chances. With time running out and Arsenal under pressure to match Chelsea's 3 points, there was an inevitability about Sunderland grabbing the only goal when 20 minutes remained.
England hopeful Darren Bent bundled in a corner at the second attempt and with it dealt Arsenal's aspirations a sudden blow. Despite the result Arsenal are still viable title challengers, but the importance of beating Chelsea at the Emirates on 29th November is of even greater consequence now. As Wenger said, "It is a massive setback because you need consistency to win a title. And today we were not capable of doing that and it raises question marks." Snuffing out Chelsea can be the only riposte.
Elsewhere Manchester United rallied themselves to a comfortable 3-0 win over Everton; Darren Fletcher, Michael Carrick and Valencia the goal-scorers. In truth Everton never looked capable of upsetting the odds, and only threatened once they had both Saha and Yakuba up front in the 2nd half. The tactical change brought only brief respite though, before Utd promptly grabbed their 2nd and 3rd goals to leave David Moyes in a rather forlorn mood.
As for the other half of Merseyside, Liverpool hosted Manchester City in the early Saturday kick-off and both Rafa Benitez and Mark Hughes must have been 'delighted' after a 2-2 draw that did little to help either side back towards the top four. The match itself was widely panned as unbecoming of the score-line and all the goals came after a lacklustre first half.
The two clubs are not short of competition for the coveted Champions League spots and if they continue to drop points as they currently are, there may be some difficult decisions ahead for both boards. It is hard to imagine that either manager won't have until the end of the season, but the same confidence cannot be said for the beginning of next season.
What must count as a relegation six-pointer between Hull City and West Ham, produced a game befitting of the occasion- a humdinger that ultimately ended in a 3-3 draw. The chances of survival for Hull are strongly linked with Jimmy Bullard and Kamil Zayatte, each scored for their club and were once again responsible for driving the home team forward.
For Gianfranco Zola, his concerns will centre round West Ham's porous defence and a worrying new habit of dropping 2 goal leads. Despite establishing a 2 goal cushion after only 11 minutes, they were unable to put Hull to bed and instead found themselves 3-2 behind at the interval. Da Costa salvaged a point with 20 minutes left, but Zola will hope that come the end of the season they won't be regretting their recent results.
Finally attention must turn to today's three o'clock kick-off between Tottenham and Wigan, recent form suggested a home win was most likely but Roberto Martinez will surely suffer a nervous twitch when hearing the words Jermain Defoe in future. The England striker became only the third player to score 5 goals in a Premier League game as Tottenham went on a 9-1 rampage.
Wigan will look back and wish that they could have settled for the 1-0 deficit they had at half-time, unfortunately for them they conceded 8 second-half goals for their heaviest ever league defeat. Not only will Defoe have shown Fabio Capello his increasing worth, there was also an outstanding performance from Aaron Lennon who set-up 3 goals and scored one himself.
The BBC's live text feed of the match jokingly commented after the score reached 3-1 that Tottenham only needed another 12 goals to overturn Arsenal's goal difference advantage. Little did they know that Wigan would collapse in an appalling heap and that Spurs would cancel out half the quota!
If Harry Redknapp can one day get his team to perform against those above them, then who knows what they could achieve. Until then they can dine out on having greatly contributed to yet another high-scoring weekend in the Premier League.
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