Premier League Week 12 Winners and Losers

It was an exciting week in the English Premier League with upsets galore up and down the league. Here are the winners and losers from this weekends action.

Winners

Arsenal

An important win over Manchester United will silence the Arsenal boo-birds for another week. What the United game showed was that against the teams that plays football, Arsenal are as good as anyone in Europe. Their problem in the league is that outside of the top four, few teams are as technically sound as Arsenal so their plan is to be physical and stop Arsenal playing and use set-pieces to steal a goal or two.

Arsenal will not win the league this season as they cannot grind out wins like Chelsea and Liverpool can. The best hope for silverware this season might be in Europe where Arsenal will play teams committed to playing football. An Arsenal versus Barcelona Champions League match-up might be one for the ages.

Spurs

They just cannot stop winning under Harry Redknapp. A couple of weeks ago they were mired in bottom place in the table with their next four games to be Bolton, Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City. They picked up 10 points out of twelve and in a league with few consistent teams (outside of the big four) there is a good possibility that Spurs could not only avoid relegation, but qualify for Europe!

Losers

Manchester United

After the loss to Arsenal, Sir Alex said that United “have got to get above 85 points to have a chance of winning the league”. That means acquiring at least 65 points from their remaining 27 games at an average of 2.4 per match. Put another way, they have to win at least 20 of those games and not lose more than one of the rest.

Aston Villa

Two weeks ago Villa were right behind the leaders and with upcoming games against Newcastle United and Middlesbrough, Villa had a chance to show that they were European contenders. Two disappointing loses later and it is clear that Villa are pretenders not contenders.