It may have been a little bit short to the say the least, it may have been one decided by one man and one man alone, but gameweek 21 was certainly a gameweek to remember – or forget, depending on what side of that precipice you were.
Let us trickle along the salient points from this somewhat shortened little wintry spell…
Carlos Tevez is a man on fire…
We woke up this morning wondering whether the Manchester City vs Blackburn Rovers would even go ahead, and now many fantasy managers across the world will sleep easy having just seen a tour de force in action. Not resting on his laurels after picking up the Player of the Month award for December, Carlos Tevez went one better and picked up his first hat-trick in the light-blue colours of Manchester City. One must wonder what thoughts will be running through Sir Alex Ferguson’s mind tonight.
In the form of his life with 10 goals in his last 7 games the Tevez train currently stops for no-one. With good fixtures on the horizon as well as a rather palatable double gameweek, the transfers in are sure to come by the bucket load, despite City missing a game in gameweek 23 and despite 245,000 managers having done so last week alone.
Blackburn still lack bite…
Morten Gamst Pedersen may have got a now rare goal this past evening (now more famed for stumbles like this rather than the peach he scored) but the team as a whole showed little to no sign of any impetus in front of goal. Having scored just 5 goals in their last 10 Premier League games, Sam Allardyce will be hoping David Dunn (who was somewhat anonymous on return to Premier League action this evening) can pull them out of the mire they are currently facing in front of goal. Get your shooting boots on David.
Birmingham are dogged, determined, and hard to break down…
As highlighted in Sir Paulos’ wonderful ‘Technical Area‘ piece earlier today Birmingham are no pushover. They may have been facing the reigning champions, but they certainly didn’t show signs of wilting under pressure. Every man and his dog put their bodies on their line on to stop every ball and but for a Scott Dann own goal the result could have been even more damning on Manchester United.
United failed to capitalise…
As already mentioned, Manchester United drew 1-1 away at Birmingham City this weekend. With so man games postponed the champions would have been able to surpass Chelsea at the top of the table and assert a little pressure. However, they failed to grab the chance with both hands – and much like in recent losses away at Fulham and at home to Aston Villa came up against a well drilled and organised team; one that managed to capitalise on the lack of serious invention in the Manchester United midfield throughout.
Everton keep their run going…
Everton pulled out all the stops at the Emirates on Saturday afternoon and were bitterly unlucky to only walk away with 1 point rather than three. Marouane Fellaini is currently reveling in his favoured and more defensive midfield position, captain Phil Neville is having a nice stabilising effect on the team and lest we forget Steven Pienaars beautiful chip for Evertons second goal and debut boy Landon Donovan ingratiating himself to the Everton fans no end with the assist for Leon Osman and Everton’s first.
The club are now unbeaten in 6 Premier League games and are looking more like the team we saw last year. If and when the likes of Mikel Arteta and Phil Jagielka return – a push on up for a late charge towards the Europa League places wouldn’t be out of the question.
Arsenal just scrape by…
As Arsene Wenger himself would admit, Arsenal got a bit lucky this weekend. Both of their goals this weekend took good fortune of fooling Tim Howard thanks to some rather meaty deflections. And without them, quite obviously, it could have been a much more disappointing affair for the home crowd. The gunners never really managed to find their game and sorely missed their captain Cesc Fabregas and the spark that he brings.
The last we heard the Spaniard was set to return for the trip to face newly appointed Owen Coyle’s Bolton side next weekend – hopefully he can help out our friend Andrei Arshavin come out of the shadows too. We know he has the talent, however in this game of fantasy patience is running thin and it’s time he showed it.
The weather is a power unto itself…
Well, we can’t finish without talking about the snow and ice that we saw this weekend. Games were called off up and down the country, and the Premier League didn’t escape from that lightly either. As we tried to keep you as up to date as possible through Friday, we ended up losing seven whole Premier League fixtures by the time all doors were closed.
What this does mean however is that there are now plenty of fixtures in the pending list – just take a look at our season ticker for example. Down the line lots of potentially tasty double gameweeks to look forward too, hopefully in much warmer climes, beginning with Manchester United and Hull this very gameweek.