What are YOUR thoughts after the first weekend of the season?
Posted on August 15th, 2010 | 223 Comments |
I’ve been watching football most of the day and have been catching up on all of yesterdays Premier League games.
Some of it was great, brilliant, just what the Premier League is supposed to be about, but there was also a lot of dross on display yesterday in fairness. There is only us and Manchester United left to play this weekend, so now everybody has seen the other teams in action, have you revised your opinions on our fortunes for this season?
I’ll start off at the DW Stadium where Blackpool thumped Wigan 4-0. I saw nothing yesterday from either team that should worry us. The scoreline would suggest that Blackpool dominated proceedings, which they did to a point, but only because Wigan, by their own admission, were woeful. If Chris Kirkland had have had his head screwed on then the scoreline would have been nothing like it was. At the other end, Wigan never really looked like threatening.
How about West Brom? It was hard to make anything of them yesterday to be honest. Much like us, they faced a tough test away a team that will likely be in the top two come the end of the season. The scoreline was 6-0 to Chelsea, a hiding to nothing which masks up deficiencies in their squad. It doesn’t get any easier for them either with away trips to Liverpool and Arsenal to follow. The Baggies are another team that don’t really concern me. We can beat them.
What about West Ham? With a new manager installed they have been tipped to move away from the bottom end of the table where they finished last season. Not going by the performance at in their 3-0 loss at Villa Park they won’t be. The Hammers looked very very disappointing yesterday, and once again are a team that I believe we can beat.
Bolton and Fulham didn’t really impress me either. I think Fulham will find it hard without Hodgson whilst Bolton look like they will spend another season dodging relegation judging by the performance from both sides yesterday.
Blackburn won yesterday, but it wasn’t convincing and certaily didn’t showcase any of that ‘pass-pass’ football that will supposedly rip us apart this season. The thing is, we can play Blackburn at their own game now, which is one reason why I don’t fear them.
Stoke can also be placed in the same bracket as Blackburn to be honest. They don’t really worry me and I have faith we can get a result against them. The same goes for their opoosition, Wolves, who won 2-1 in that game.
Sunderland and Birmingham drew 2-2 and as much as Sunderland impressed me in the first half they were far from unbeatable. If you can stop Darren Bent then you stop Sunderland. It’s pretty much as simple as that. Birmingham went 2-0 down against 10-men before they staged a fight-back. Overall, Sunderland have potential, Birmngham look average.
There are 12 teams that have failed to impress me over the weekend. Obviously there is no point looking at the top eight as we are not going to be up there at the end of the season, or if we are then it will be a miracle. Most of that top eight will beat us to be fair, although we could still pick up the odd result against them in fairness.
All in all, I feel more heartened about our survival chances after seeing every team play over the weekend. The top of the league is strong, and most of them teams showed that yesterday. Beyond that though I feel we can be a match for anyone. It’s not going to be easy, and we will lose games, but I firmly believe we can do enough to survive!
Howay the lads!
top 8 in no particular order:Chelsea,Man Utd,Arsenal,Liverpool,Villa,Spurs,Citeh and Everton any of the other 12 have the potential to be dragged into a relegation fight.I’m not saying they all will but all possibly could.
I daresay most of those teams will probably watch us on Monday night and say the same thing that ‘nowt to worry about’.