World Football's Monday Morning Hangover: Sense and Sensibility
Welcome to world football's Monday Morning Hangover, an homage to the NFL section's own Monday Morning Hangover, where we round up the key stories and important points from the last weekend in world football.
With an inevitable focus on the Premier League, let's get started.
Austin exposes top clubs' pride and prejudice
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It is probably no coincidence that Sky Sports reported on Monday morning that QPR had entered talks with Charlie Austin over a new contract, just two days after the striker had scored a match-winning hat-trick against QPR—and 10 days before the January transfer window opens.
With 11 goals in the Premier League, Austin is the highest-scoring English player in the league at this moment, with only Sergio Aguero and Diego Costa out ahead of him.
If England were in action at any point in the next month, it is a safe bet he would be named in Roy Hodgson's squad—a meteoric rise for someone who was playing at non-league level only five years ago.
It's no wonder that QPR want it known that they are on the verge of locking the 25-year-old down beyond the terms of his current deal, which expires in the summer of 2016.
On Saturday Austin scored three times—once with his head, twice from close range with his right foot—as QPR came back from 2-0 down against West Brom to win 3-2. The three points elevated Harry Redknapp's side out of the relegation zone.
Despite having yet to pick up a point away from home, QPR are going to hit the halfway stage in the season looking reasonably good to stay up. In large part that is down to Austin, who was certainly the difference against a Baggies side that arguably displayed the more sophisticated football.
"If we sold Charlie Austin we might as well go home," Redknapp said, according to BBC Sport. "We need Charlie to keep doing what he's doing and he can't afford to take his foot off the gas. His target would be around 20 goals now."
Suddenly it is beginning to look rosy for Redknapp and his team. The other two promoted teams, Burnley and Leicester, sit adrift of the Hoops and lack a striker as prolific as Austin has been. (Leonardo Ulloa and Danny Ings have failed to find similar consistency.)
Crystal Palace, above the relegation zone only on goal difference, have replaced a manager who has never been relegated from the Premier League with one who has never successfully stayed in the Premier League—and that disparity is beginning to show.
West Brom and Hull City are both floundering somewhat, again due in part to a lack of goals. QPR only have to beat three of those sides to confirm their Premier League status for another season. Redknapp will like those odds.
Which brings us back to a question: Why did no Premier League side try to sign Austin last season, when he was banging in goals at the Championship level for QPR? Or even before that, when he was scoring for Burnley? Why did West Brom instead spend £10 million on Brown Ideye, or Hull a similar figure on Abel Hernandez—two players who have never played football on English shores?
Bigger clubs are guilty too. Are Liverpool really better off having acquired Rickie Lambert and Mario Balotelli?
Plenty of clubs will enter January wanting to sign a striker—some of them, judging by Monday's timely leaks, were even sniffing around Austin. It seems a safe bet, however, that none of them will venture down to the Championship for that individual now that QPR's hit man is being taken off the market.
It's a shame. Having missed out on Austin, they might be missing out on the next player to tread that path as well. The prejudice against scorers in the lower leagues will continue, despite the evidence to the contrary Austin is now providing.
"He's a goalscorer. He wants to score," Redknappp added. "Goalscorers find a yard of space. It's a knack—he's in the right place at the right time.
"If you score 20 goals in the Championship this year you'll score in the Premier League. It's not rocket science, it's that knack that people have got—they've been scoring goals since they were kids."
No strikers, no problem for City
If there has been one persistent criticism of Jose Mourinho's managerial ability—and there have not been too many over the years—it's that he's has always struggled to organise his sides to be capable of breaking down teams that sit back and, to use one of his phrases, "park the bus."
We saw that during his time at Real Madrid, when his "low block" system offered plenty of defensive protection against rivals of similar strength but saw the club come up short sometimes in games they were expected to win.
We also saw it last season at Chelsea, when he used the lack of a prolific striker to cover the fact his team often had no clear strategy to break down obdurate defences (Crystal Palace, Sunderland and Aston Villa among them) over the course of the league campaign.
This season that deficiency has been covered by the signings of Cesc Fabregas and Diego Costa—a brilliantly inventive midfielder and a truly lethal finisher. But it would be interesting to see how Mourinho would have coped if he were City manager this season and had to work around the striker deficiency Manuel Pellegrini has had to deal with in recent weeks.
On Saturday the Manchester club's troubles reached their peak, as Pellegrini was forced to start James Milner (!) in attack. Yet even without any strikers of note, City have won all the vital games they needed to in recent weeks—against Everton (when Sergio Aguero went down), Roma (when Edin Dzeko was barely fit), Leicester and now Crystal Palace. That is a testament to the undoubted quality of the club's attacking midfielders, but it also speaks well of Pellegrini's coaching abilities—and highlights one area where he may well be superior to Mourinho.
Even without a striker to use as a focal point, City picked apart Palace with both a methodical and patient approach, using their full-backs to create space and disrupt defenders as Samir Nasri, David Silva and Yaya Toure used their prodigious skill sets to generate or finish those chances. It was deeply impressive, and is one of the main reasons City are once again contenders in the title race.
“If you review what we did last season, a lot of goals were scored by midfielders and full-backs," Pellegrini noted on Saturday, as reported by Jamie Jackson for The Guardian. "We have a style of play where we involve all of the players in attacking and after that we also try to have all the players defending.
"It’s not easy to play without a striker, but I assure you we had a whole week to prepare where we practised at creating the space, knowing Crystal Palace were a difficult team.”
The practice paid off. In one regard, at least, Mourinho will be impressed.
Goal of the weekend
It was disallowed, but frankly we make the rules here and we'll do what we want. Jeremy Menez, you have been doing some ridiculous stuff this week.
Goal of the weekend: Runner-up edition
"Golazo from Luis Alberto last night. https://t.co/sOGGSryrt1
— .. (@anfield_stuff) December 22, 2014"
Random Asides
- In his full senior debut, Southampton's Harrison Reed did a brilliant job to shackle the vastly experienced Samuel Eto'o, helping to win one of the important individual battles that ultimately set the table for an impressive, slide-arresting 3-0 win over Everton. With James Ward-Prowse also returning to the Saints lineup after injury, the result was not the only thing Ronald Koeman had to be pleased about in the aftermath.
- Aston Villa exposed Manchester United's continued structural issues on Saturday, as they held Louis van Gaal's side to a 1-1 draw—despite being down to 10 men for nearly a third of the contest. United's inability to break Villa down, and having to ultimately settle for a draw, is surely the difference between challenging for the title and ending up simply trying to consolidate third—which is surely what they are soon going to end up focusing on.
- Three games in, it is pretty clear that Brendan Rodgers' gamble to ditch Simon Mignolet for Brad Jones has not exactly worked. Jones has hardly covered himself in glory since moving into the starting spot—although what might you expect from a player who has seemingly gone out of his way over the course of his career to serve as a back-up player? Only when (or if) Mignolet returns, and returns in better form, will the decision perhaps be considered a success—but Rodgers may instead look to sign another goalkeeper entirely in January.
- Steve Bruce seems to be quickly coming up on the rails in the managerial sack race—which, of course, is still waiting for the first casualty of the season. Hull are mired in the relegation zone as we near the halfway stage, despite spending significant money in the summer (Hatem Ben Arfa, on huge wages, has been an unmitigated disaster) to no obvious effect. The club's chairman is notoriously strident about his opinions—despite all he has achieved at the KC Stadium, that does not bode well for Bruce. He surely needs a few results, and very quickly.
- Slowly but surely, Tottenham are starting to come together under Mauricio Pochettino. Four points outside the top four in the league, through in the Europa League and now into the semi-finals of the Capital One Cup, Spurs are beginning to hit their stride and, with Erik Lamela starring against Burnley at the weekend, even some of their recent transfer disappointments are beginning to turn things around. Spurs love to flatter to deceive, of course, and they face Leicester, Manchester United and then Chelsea over the next 10 days. Performances and results in those games might give us a better idea of what they can really achieve this season.
Good week, bad week
Good week
West Ham: Inside the top four at Christmas. These are heady days at Upton Park.
James Milner: Leads the line for City in a comfortable win. Is there any position he cannot play?
Charlie Austin: A Premier League hat-trick to go with those at every other level he has played at.
Graziano Pelle: Back to scoring ways, as Southampton returns to winning ones.
Erik Lamela: A scene-stealing performance has Tottenham thinking top four again.
Bad week
Nigel Pearson: Five points from safety—and they only have 10 points in total at the moment. Ominous.
Newcastle: Derby defeat always hurts; this one will sting particularly badly.
Alexis Sanchez: Hardly showed Liverpool what they are missing on Sunday.
Neil Warnock: You can moan about refereeing decisions, but Palace's precarious situation should now be obvious.
Gabriel Agbonlahor: Red card may have been harsh, but it being rescinded seems unlikely and he may find it hard to reclaim his place going forward.
Other Points of Note
Liverpool find positives in lucky escape
A late Martin Skrtel equaliser, and suddenly Liverpool are believing all over again.
"Can we now challenge for the top four? Yes. Absolutely," Reds manager Brendan Rodgers said as reported by the BBC's Phil McNulty. "The most important thing is that we are moving in the right direction again."
He added: "The way we fought back to equalise with 10 men says everything about the team and its character.
"This is a group of players with the talent to win games, as we did when we won 11 in succession last season, and that can quickly move you up the league."
Counter-intuitively, Liverpool seemed to get better after Fabio Borini had been sent off—the Italian making perhaps his last contribution as a Reds player a memorable one, as he played the role of Justin Timberlake to Santi Cazorla's Janet Jackson via the use of a high boot.
Arsenal, already ahead at that point, should have shut things down and walked away with the points—but that has rarely been their way, and some self-inflicted mistakes allowed Liverpool back into the game, and the European race.
Why did Wenger withdraw Olivier Giroud rather than Danny Welbeck in the closing stages? Even before his substitution the Frenchman was the one player offering an outlet in attack, relieving the pressure on his side with his ability to win the ball in the air or hold it up. He also offered an extra aerial presence from corners. But once he left the match, both aspects were lost to Arsenal, and Liverpool eventually took advantage.
"Once they were down to 10 men we were not dangerous anymore," Wenger acknowledged, again per the BBC. "We conceded a corner that was a bit unlucky and where we were guilty was that we didn't jump at all with Skrtel. Of course from then on we conceded so it became 2-2.
"Overall it's a fair result over the whole 90 minutes, but it's a frustrating result for us, because they came back at a moment in the game where we had plenty of defenders on the pitch and could defend the set piece much better."
This seemed another seemingly small but important mistake from Wenger, and it was another costly late collapse from the Gunners. Level on points with Tottenham and still only five ahead of the Reds, it seems certain to be another fraught and frantic race for the top four this season—whether or not West Ham are involved.
Sunderland steal bragging rights
The naivety was not limited to Arsenal on Sunday. Just hours before, Newcastle, in control of their derby against Sunderland, committed too many men forward and were stung on the counter-attack, as Adam Johnson rounded off a sweeping move to give Gus Poyet's side a dramatic 1-0 win.
For Alan Pardew, it was another defeat in a fixture he has started to fare very badly in.
"Losing four times in a row against Sunderland is a tag that is going to stick on me now so I will have to wear it," he acknowledged, per Marc Williams in the Daily Star. "It wasn't our day. Criticism that might come my way or the teams way, we will have to accept."
Newcastle were finishing the game strongly prior to Johnson's intervention, but it should not be overlooked that Sunderland had the better individual chances during the 90 minutes. Jordi Gomez should have already scored on one counter-attack, while Connor Wickham was also guilty of squandering a few gilt-edged opportunities.
After his side saved his job with a run of five successive wins, suddenly the storm clouds are gathering around St James' Park once again.
Newcastle are now limping into January, a month that was not kind to them last season. On that occasion they lost Yohan Cabaye, their best player, and they continued to struggle without him. This time it is Moussa Sissoko who is clearly head and shoulders above his peers—losing a second France international in successive January windows would be a devastating blow to this Toon side.
Sunderland, meanwhile, continue to rule the North East. They are still four points behind their arch-rivals in the league, though: Closing that gap will be the next challenge.
"It's great, it's incredible," Poyet said, via ESPN. "Records, continuing to win games, they are always there for someone to break. We were able to continue this winning run against Newcastle, which is great for us, without forgetting that the three points are the main thing.
"It makes it a very special Christmas for us."
Monday Night Football
Stoke City vs. Chelsea
Suddenly, the title race is wide-open. If Chelsea lose by two goals against Stoke on Monday evening—as unlikely as that might be—then they will not be top of the Premier League at Christmas. Lose 1-0, and they will only be top on alphabetical order. That is not a joke: That is actually how the Premier League will separate the Blues and Manchester City.
Jose Mourinho has proclaimed the Blues are unfazed by City closing the gap in recent weeks, according to Kieran Gill's MailOnline report, but he may privately acknowledge that this has the potential to be a pivotal week. Win, and then win again on Boxing Day against West Ham, and the Blues will be back to six points ahead of City before Manuel Pellegrini's side next play.
Lose, however, and the two forthcoming visits to Southampton and Tottenham make you think City could be about to stick their noses in front. There will be further twists to come, of course, but with other competitions coming back into play in the new year, you feel Chelsea will not want to suddenly be playing catch-up.
For the rest of the league it seems Chelsea remain the team to beat. Stoke boss Mark Hughes reckons the quadruple is a possibility for Mourinho's men, despite all the difficulties involved.
“Nobody else has done it, but they’ve got the potential to do it,” Hughes said, via ESPN. “I would have to say yes, they are strong enough.
"They have a chance, a better chance than most teams. The talk of winning every trophy, maybe in-house they believe that themselves. It wouldn’t surprise me if they did."
This visit to the Britannia Stadium seems one of those games that tests such resolve.
Prediction: Stoke 1-1 Chelsea
