Surprise Live Premiership Football Results

It was nice to see most of the games kick-off at 3pm on Saturday this weekend; it’s a disappearing tradition with all the TV money and their demanding schedules in modern day football. It’s also great to see the league properly tightening up this year. The only real certainty this year is that Derby will go down. Its great to see such uncertainty with anyone from bottom to eleventh in the table facing the possibility of a relegation battle, and on the flip side, everyone from eleventh place are battling to get into Europe next year. It’s very exciting viewing, but let’s get back to the weekend’s action.
Saturday saw two surprise results, one bigger than the other, Tottenham found them selves at the wrong end of a 4-1 pasting at St Andrews, Mikael Forssell made a welcome return from the wilderness to score a hat-trick for his delighted manager Alex McLeish, Sebastian Larsson scored a curling free-kick to complete the rout for Birmingham. Jermaine Jenas scored a consolation goal for Spurs in the dying minutes, to be honest it was a depressing performance from Ramos’ men, it was like watching them at the start of the season again, they constantly looked shaky in defence on Saturday with McFadden and Forssell constantly posing a threat, even though Robinson has recently stated his delight at being back in the team, he was at fault for a couple of goals. Tottenham really need to pick them selves up from this result.
The other surprise was not such a big surprise come to think of it, Villa are becoming increasingly hard to beat at home under Martin O’Neill this season. Arsenal really struggled on Saturday and did look like a beaten team at times. Martin O’Neill had nearly the perfect game plan, they didn’t get overzealous, their defence was rock solid throughout and their main plan was working perfectly, hit Arsenal on the break. Villa have tremendous pace on both flanks, it worked to good effect a few times and they were really starting to cause Arsenal some problems, eventually they did get through and scored via Gabriel Agbonlahor. The game looked won, but Arsenal’s ‘never say die’ attitude got them a lucky Bendtner goal around ten seconds from time. Arsenal have now not won a single game since Manchester United put them to the sword in the FA cup, Alex Ferguson talked of the importance of how that result would unsettle Arsenal, maybe it’s now ringing true.
Talking of the Red Devils, it was another stroll this weekend for Fergie’s men, with Ronaldo and Rooney rested, they had no hesitation or problem with beating Fulham 3-0, goals from Hargreaves, Park Ji-Sung and an own goal saw Manchester United move to only a point from Arsenal at the top of the league.
Other results on Saturday included, sorry Newcastle beaten again, it seems the so called Messiah is really struggling to raise his Newcastle team, still without a win, and still worryingly staring at a relegation battle thanks to a tough Blackburn performance. Fellow North-East rivals Middlesbrough also lost at the hands of Reading, a priceless 3 points for Coppell’s men. An eventful afternoon at Upton Park saw Chelsea well and truly beat West Ham 4-0, Lampard was sent off against his former club to the delight of the Hammers faithful. Goalless draws at the Stadium of light and in the blue half of Manchester rounds up Saturday’s action.
Sunday saw an important day for the battle for fourth place, with faulting Liverpool and improving Everton in action. There was no denying Liverpool’s effort against Bolton; Rafa even put out near enough his strongest side out. A lucky own goal kicked Liverpool off, but the scored another two goals and it ended 3-1 to the merseysiders. Everton also won by the same scoreline with Yakubu in superb form scoring vital goals for Everton, Liverpool are still favourites to take the fourth place but Everton are still up there hanging on to it and at the moment given their excellent form, are not looking like they want to let go of the precious Champions League spot.