End of That Streak

Tottenham and Arsenal. I don't want to talk about it.

Starting the New Year Right

Well, well it's a brand spanking New Year and Arsenal remain atop the EPL table after what appears to have been a comfortable 2-0 win over the Red Devil killers, West Ham.

Chelsea stays within range on a couple of gift-wrapped decisions from refs and their assistants.

Over at Old Trafford, something strange is going with Fergie. He defends the American squadrillionaire owner, Malcolm Glazer (Rafa Benitez, are you taking notes?), blasts the fans and players, warns the players to stop committing physical assaults on young ladies, and

Meanwhile, the fans shoot back at the Old Trafford police state. Oh my.

Avram Grant pines for Nick Anelka and Dimitar Berbatov. Oh, please let it be Anelka.

I saw a couple of brilliant games over the break. The Liverpool-Man. City game was a knuckle biter to the end, with Liverpool attacking in tsunami-like waves and Richard Dunne single-handedly, it seemed, keeping the Citizens level. Sheer brilliance in defending from that man.

Also, quite good was the Aston Villa-Tottenham match. The Villans were organized and forward-thinking in the first half. It was almost unjust that they only mustered a score from a central defender's header off a corner. They had created several good opportunities from patient build-ups, but all for nought.

In the 2nd half, Juande Ramos made a couple of changes to the Tottenham side, most importantly, bringing on leading scorer Keane. It was mand the ramparts for the Villans after that. The equalizer was no surprise. It was only a matter of time they notched a winner (and likely an insurance goal or two). And then, contrary to the run of play, Aston Villa got an 84th minute winner, off a corner, headed in by another tall central Defender (Laursson this time; Mellberg in the 1st). Why the Spuds had mighty midget O'Hara marking (and not very well, mind you) the much taller Laursson, I'll never know. Good stuff. Exciting football.

Being the new year, we can expect that we'll see the diminishing in the distance backsides of Messrs. Lehman (Der Lemon: we miss you already), Gilberto (a real class character; the anti-Lehman) and Diarra (we hardly knew ye, lad).

Over at the Arsenal website, the coach waxes...well, coachlike. BTW, on the replays, Eduardo's goal against West Ham was spectacularly good, all the more so, because he took it so calmly. The kid's coming on. 3 goals in 2 Premiership games.

Oh, and Adebayor's bagger against the Hammers. How did he make that? You know it's going to be a good year when you start it scoring like that.