A few more days now and we have made it. If you’re a miserable git like me, you won’t be looking forward to Christmas Day. Boxing Day, now that’s what has really got me excited this month. Our first home fixture on Boxing Day for about five years. Now that, cannot come soon enough.
Swansea’s November-December tradition of sacking managers was in motion on Wednesday evening. Poor Paul Clement was given his marching orders, with his final match being the 3-1 defeat at Everton on Monday Night Football. Of the abundance of managers out of work at the moment, sound of da’ Pulis would have been the ideal man to keep them up. Or would the boyhood Cardiff City supporter willingly sacrifice his record of never having been relegated as a Premier League manager, to take them down? Unfortunately, we’ll never know. The club have ruled him out. While it seems everybody else is ruling themselves out. It must be bad there if Ryan Giggs isn’t interested. He’s only applied for about 9548 jobs.
Well, Maurichio Pochettino plan to go toe to toe with Pep Guardiola was a complete disaster. It’s all well and good Tottenham pressing high up the pitch against a possession based team like Man City’s, but it’s also bloody suicide having everybody man marking Man City when Ederson takes goal kicks. His passing is surreal. Whenever Kieran Trippier and Danny Rose stepped up to prevent City building out from the back, Ederson always found space in every area of the pitch. He’s like the Paul Scholes of goalkeepers.
Everybody has been talking about the Carabao Cup this week. Manchester United rolled into Bristol with a fairly attacking looking side, expecting to walk over the home team. It might be controversial, but I’ll opine that their squad really isn’t as good as people think. A 93rd minute winner from the giant Aden Flint brought a pitch invasion at Ashton Gate. Was that over celebrating Jose? Yes, it is the League Cup quarter final. I feel a few (all of you) may disagree me with there. Now, I was not able to watch the game. However as Jose Mourinho claimed Bristol City were lucky in his post-match interview, I gather the reason United lost was not solely because of bad luck.
And finally, what a game of Friday night football Sky treated us to. Arsenal vs Liverpool is probably the one fixture in English football (Must be hundreds in the Football League and beyond to be honest) where you would be willing to bet your mortgage on their being goals. It’s one of the few games where you are not entirely shocked to see the match finishing 3-3. Klopp’s Liverpool pretty much battered the Gunners, but an awful 5-10 minute spell at the beginning of the second half for Liverpool saw them give away three goals. Soft hands from Petr Cech wasn’t enough to keep out Roberto Firmino’s effort to around the hour mark, much to the delight of Simon Mignolet.
The goal gave Simon Mignolet some comfort knowing he was no longer the worst keeper on the night. For some odd reason, he was more interested in making a save for the sky cameras by choosing to try and save Granit Xhaka’s long range effort with the extravagant looking one hand, rather than the two that could have helped him. I’ll resist from calling it a Christmas cracker (Every sports reporter on the planet will be using that cliche this weekend, you watch), but it really was a brilliant game of football.
Anyways, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and thanks for putting up with me!
The post That was the week that was: Lucky Bristol City and Brendan Klopp? appeared first on Tales From The Top Flight.
