Monday, April 14, 2008

Man United destroy Arsenal's title hope with a narrow victory.

Owen Hargreaves celebrates after scoring against Arsenal
Man United 2-1 Arsenal

A final chance for Arsenal's season.... 0-0 at Old Traford.... Adebayor scored! Wow, great start, Arsenal took the lead! Go Gunners......... Oh, no! They've blew it! Like at Stamford Bridge and Anfield in recent games, Arsenal got off with a flying start by scoring the first goal before showing their self destruct skills to lose all that was left of their season. Yet again, they allowed their opponent to hit back after scoring the first goal. They certainly have to improve their squad if they don't want to see them ran out of steam at the end of the season like they did. The win sees the Red Devils extend their lead at the top of the table to 6 points and 9 points clear of Arsenal with four games to play, while any hopes of a late Arsenal title-surge were extinguished. Now, it is over to Chelsea to heat up the title race in the next two games before the two meet at Stamford Bridge. For the title decider? We shall see...

Liverpool 3-1 Blackburn


An awesome inspirational display by Steven Gerrard saw Liverpool outclassed Blackburn with a comfortable 3-1 win. Gerrard scored the first and set up the second for Torres for his 30th goal of the season. It was another magnificent combination play from Gerrard and Torres in this match. Liverpool moved 5 points clear of Everton as they look to have a firm grip on the 4th spot. They may now look ahead of overtaking Arsenal to finish 3rd in the League.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Wenger should be realistic & stop complaining!


If there is a society for complaining and sore losers, surely Arsene Wenger would be the member of it, or perhaps holding a high post.(president, chairman, secretary..... etc) Sadly for Arsenal, when the team lose, he seems to blame everything & everyone excluding himself and his players, and his attitude is not likely to change even for years to come. Even his depressed players admitted after the match they were awful in defending and lack of experience. Was his team unlucky throughout the season? Or the triple battle against Liverpool? Certainly you won't think so.

"It's down to a dodgy decision, I believe, from the referee", "all the big decisions were against us", "It's very difficult for me to understand because, for me, it was no penalty tonight. I watched it clearly". "If you lose against a team that's better than you, OK, but that's not the impression that we got over two games."These are what Wenger said after the Champions League defeat. Try to think back their initially poor record in Europe, they got the luck and went into the final 2 years back, only beaten by Barcelona in the final. Think back earlier of the season when they got so many lucky points, including the recent "dodgy" comeback win against Bolton with 10 men. In truth, when he is beneficiary of poor decisions, we don't hear Wenger seeing the incident, and he will never admit that he was lucky.

If he is to blame for his failure this time(or even for the past 3 trophyless season), he should look at the deepness of his squad. Arsene Wenger stubbornly refuses to utilise the resources available (£70 million, allegedly)."We are good enough and we don't need to spend big to buy players", that's what he used to say before the season. Wenger, if he looks back of the video of the CL game at Anfield, should realise that his young players are not up to the standard, twice after scoring, they allowed Liverpool to get back in it, plus another one at Emirates. Although they controlled the possessions, they did not create enough chances in front of goal and they allowed vital spaces for vital goals. And the reason for this? They are not good enough, they cant cope defensively against dangerous players like Torres and Babel. We shall see how are they going to cope with players like Ronaldo, Rooney and Tevez when they play Man Utd this week.

In addition, for him to get support from the club's directer and owner and became the "life manager" at Arsenal, I just could not understand what is going on at the club. Jose Mourinho won 5 trophies in 3 years and it wasn't enough. So did the players and the fans questions his ability to win trophies, where he has failed to do so in so many seasons. For now, what he can do is to concentrate on the match against the Devils and a win will put them straight back into the title race. For the excitement of the EPL, I wish Arsenal good luck.

Top 10 Transfers Of The Season.

1) Fernando Torres (Atletico Madrid to Liverpool)
2) Roque Santa Cruz (Bayern Munich to Blackburn Rovers)
3) Anderson (Porto to Manchester United)
4) Javier Mascherano (West Ham to Liverpool)
5) Yakubu (Middlesbrough to Everton)
6) Sulley Muntari (Udinese to Portsmouth)
7) Bacary Sagna (Auxerre to Arsenal)
8) Mauro Zarate (Al Sadd to Birmingham City)
9) Carlos Tevez (West Ham to Manchester United)
10) Martin Petrov (Atlético Madrid to Manchester City)

Source: Goal.com
What are your opinions on this topic? Has anyone been left out you feel deserves a place on the list - if so, who should make way? Is Fernando Torres deserving of first place? You can simply post out your favourite top 10 transfer in the comment box to let Dion knows what YOU think.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Man United, Barcelona cruise through.

Man Utd 1-0 AS Roma (Man Utd win 3-0 on agg)
Barcelona 1-0 Schalke (Barca win 2-0 on agg)

Manchester United & Barcelona will meet each other in semi- final after they overcome their opponents convincingly in the second leg of the Champions League quarter-finals. They proved that they are far more superior to their respective opponents AS Roma and Schalke, having already won at the 1st leg away from home.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Liverpool end Gunners season in thrilling battle!

Liverpool 4-2 Arsenal

Liverpool have dumped Arsenal out of the Champions League witha a classic 4-2 victory at home. Again...... As the faithful Anfield crowd roars and cheers, chanting the famous "You'll never walk alone", acting as the 12th player on the pitch. We witnessed another famous Anfield night in the Champions League. This time, it is the Gunners who are the victim. However, it was a close and pulsating game until the very last minute with Arsenal gained the upperhand over the Reds twice.

Arsenal started the match brightly at break-neck speed with Diaby putting them ahead on 13 minutes after Arsenal had laid siege to the Liverpool goal. As the match progress, Liverpool levelled the tie through Sami Hypia on 30th minutes, they slowly found their momentum and starting to relax and pass the ball as they put Arsenal on the back foot. The half time score locked at the familiar 1-1 scoreline and crucially for Arsenal they had made the game balanced having already cancelled out Liverpool's away goal. Agg 2-2.

In the second half, Arsenal were no longer the dominant force. In 69th minutes, here comes Fernando Torres, he picked up a Crouch flicked, turned his marker and fired an unstoppable drive into the top corner, 2-1 Liverpool! However, their impressive control of the game looking bad after Theo Walcott's scintillating run sets up Adebayor for the crucial equalizer with 5 minutes to go. It looks like it was the battle for "the super speedy sub" at the closing stage of the game. Ryan Babel, who replaced Peter Crouch, reply by earning the Reds a penalty and scoring a goal to put the game beyond Arsenal's reach. Liverpool progress into the semis with a 5-3 aggregate win.

In the other semi-final, Chelsea defeated Fenerbahce 2-0(3-2 on agg) to set up another semi-final showdown with Liverpool.


Chelsea 2-0 Fenerbahce

Monday, April 7, 2008

The EPL Title Race heats up!

Man United - 77pts
Chelsea - 74 pts
Arsenal - 71 pts



Chelsea have closed the gap with Manchester United to just 3 points after the devils were held by Middlesbrough in a thrilling 2-2 encounter. Alfonso Alves produce an impressive performance by netted 2 goals to stun the Premier League leader. He should have scored the third if he had not miss his close range open header when they were 2-1 up. Later, Wayne Rooney fired home on seventy-four minutes to draw the sides level. Arsenal, who are 6 points behind, could still believe they can win the Premier League but we shall see when they take on Man United at Old Trafford next week. It promises to be an exciting battle and if they can win.... who knows?

Magnificent performance
Apart from that, I think Middlesbrough deserved more than a draw if we look back at their performance throughout the match. Manchester United looked like securing a comfortable victory after taking the lead within ten minutes courtesy of on-form Cristiano Ronaldo’s thirty-seventh goal of the season. However, don't write Boro off! They manage to turn the match around brilliantly against the rampant devils when they looked as if they were out of the game when Ronaldo scored. They are capable of beating any strong teams as we can how close they came to scoring in their previous match against Chelsea(hitting the post once and the bar twice). They are also the first team to beat Arsenal 2-1 when the Gunners were flying high in the League.

Arsenal