The Good, The Bad And The Ugly At The Cottage Plus Weekend Premiership Roundup
How it warms the heart to sit on a Monday and reflect back over a weekend of Premiership action that manages to rekindle some of the interest in the season as we work our way through March and towards the World Cup.
Another Pedro Mendes humdinger from outside the box was one of the brightest of bright spots for Harry Redknapp and Portsmouth as they trounced a second-choice West Ham side and gave themselves a massive confidence boost in their race to avoid the drop.
Seeing as Birmingham and West Brom both lost (I’ve given up reporting tha Sunderland have lost, from now on let’s just assume that they have unless told differently), those three points that Alan Pardew effectively surrendered to Portsmouth, so he could rest half of his side for an assault on the FA Cup, could well be the three that mean the difference between a south coast derby with Southampton in the Championship next season or another year in the Premiership.
With Arsenal, Blackburn, Bolton and Wigan Athletic all taking three points from their matches, the pressure was really on Tottenham in Saturday’s late kickoff against relegation haunted Birmingham but in a show of great professionalism and backbone they ran out 2-0 winners to give their fans some hope that they can hold onto the elusive fourth place. The great irony if they do and Arsenal win the Champion’s League (wash my mouth out) is that Arsenal will take the fourth English spot in next year’s competition regardless of league finishes.
Martin Jol may yet be banking on Juventus helping him out as well as praying for his side to keep up form like they displayed on Saturday. Sadly there are some more difficult games ahead than Birmingham every week, not least of which is the last North London derby at Highbury, a real six pointer if ever the term could be used at the top of the table.
The major talking point of the weekend came at Craven Cottage where Fulham put in a heroic display to beat their Russian West London neighbours Chelsea 1-0. The battling performance by CHris Coleman’s men over 90 minutes made them worthy winners but the game was marred afterwards by a pitch invasion by jubilant Fulham fans which incited a charge by Chelsea fans and some fisticuffs were xchanged both inside and outside the ground.
I’m all for fans celebrating but their is no excuse for crossing the line onto the field of play and the resulting fights and arrests demonstrate why. Fulham need to invoke some banning orders now and the police need to make some arrests and charge some of the instigators to nip this nasty spectacle in the bud. English football left most of this rubbish behind in the 1980s and we don’t want to go back there.
A disappointing end to a fabulous display and all rounded off by claims of an anti-Chelsea conspiracy by the Manager Formerly Known As The Special One. Once again in defeat Jose Mourinho finds it impossible to say the better team won and were once his arrogance was just annoying, it’s now become extremely boring. Bore off Jose and change the record. Football fans have stopped listening.
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