Miserable United!
The level of rot at Manchester United has been a hot topic of discussion in recent years. The seemingly wealthy and incredibly popular football team has continuously buckled under the weight of expectations for 10 straight years. Annoyingly, everyone seems to know the problem at the club. So why is the club struggling this badly if the inherent problems are this glaring? Ferguson's retirement was recently an easy excuse. Some people even went as far as blaming the old man for leaving a weakened team behind, a team he left as champions of England.
With Ferguson long gone, Woodward became the easy target. The incredible marketer was heavily blamed for not being able to navigate the murky waters of sports management. Anyway, he's gone too. With him leaving, who is to blame now? The Glazers? Another easy target. But they have provided a huge amount of money to be spent on the club. Then, we will point out the wrong football structure at the club as being the problem. It is the Glazers fault, isn't it?
How long will we continue to push blames around without finding solutions? It's 10 years already and this team looks light years away from seriously competing for noteworthy titles. This season, it's three defeats in five already; the season never even got off the ground before it ended. The painful part? Everyone seems to have accepted the fact this team won't compete. Every seemingly workable solution leads to a bigger problem. No one knows if this team will ever be great again. Well, we continue to wait; we continue to hope.
Gritty Gunners!
For several years, Arsenal were the flakiest team in England, their beautiful romanticizing of the ball always failing them when they came across physically imposing teams. Goodison Park happens to be one of those places you'd expect whichever version of Arsenal to be dominated. Afterall, they were bullied over there less than a year ago. However, this time it was different; Arsenal were prepared. Declan Rice is good, but I've never seen him as being one the best operators in his position. I'm not that keen to rate a defensive midfielder who plays in a very conservative team solely based on statistics, he'll definitely make more tackles and have a lot of interceptions because he spends a lot of his time chasing the ball.
For some time I doubted if Rice will improve Arsenal, if he is even as good as Thomas Partey not to talk of being better. Well, one thing he has definitely done is make this team a lot tougher to bully. Against Everton, Arsenal were not battered or bullied. They stood their ground against their perennial bully and dominated. That was impressive, but I will gladly wait till they play Newcastle to confirm if they finally overcame the problem that has beset them for several years, or not.
The Show Goes On
38 games, 38 goals; those were the statistics of a Premier League team expected to finish in the lower half of the table. Unsurprisingly, the team with those statistics finished 12th last season. Surprisingly, after spending tons of money to acquire new players, they're still averaging one goal per game. Unsurprisingly, most of the players they splashed the cash on are about as average as you get. So, they may just be out of their depth in this very tough EPL landscape. Acquiring Pochettino raised hope, but he won't be the one playing on the field, those players will. And right now, Chelsea is stacked full with players that won't even start for Crystal Palace. A position in the top half by the end of the season should be regarded as some sort of success for them, if they manage to make it there.