I've got a new blog now, yeah?
If you like this - or even if you don't - take a look at my new media blog, Man Bites News.Underneath a deluge, Chelsea once again delivered. Having already defeated Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool at home this season, the league leaders won away at Arsenal with a ruthless performance that cut the hosts 11 points adrift of their victorious opponents.
Like the rain, the home fans’ booing of Ashley Cole continued throughout most of the first half, but the man who left Arsenal so acrimoniously to join their London rivals offered the best possible response at the end of the first half, setting up two goals and silencing the hostile crowd.
After forty minutes, Cole floated a cross between Arsenal’s two centre-backs and onto the boot of Didier Drogba, whose delicate flicked finish sailed into the top corner of the net. Two minutes later, another teasing delivery from Cole yielded the same result: with Almunia indecisive, Tomas Vermaelen attempted to clear as the cross dropped in the six-yard box but could only slash the slippery ball into his own goal.
Drogba has been credited with effectively ending the career of Philippe Senderos after a couple of particularly terrorising performances against the Arsenal defender, and he may well have done the same here to the club’s title ambitions for this season. The Ivorian scored a second with a well-taken free-kick on the edge of the box five minutes before full-time, his tenth in eleven games against the Gunners. His towering performance today once again showed his knack for delivering in the most important of games.
Arsenal’s front six were, as ever, full of inventive flicks and smart runs, but against the accomplished defenders of Chelsea they struggled to get close to Petr Cech’s goal. In the first half, Samir Nasri forced a smart save with a low, driven shot from outside the area but Andrey Arshavin and lone striker Eduardo both miscontrolled when careering into the box as the Blues’ back-four, assisted by dogged performances from the deep-lying John Obi Mikel and Michael Essien, kept them from creating any real chances.
The best opportunity before the goals fell to a former Arsenal player rather than a current one, but Nicolas Anelka appeared to be dragged down by his international team-mate Bacary Sagna after latching on to a through ball in the box, causing him to slash his shot poorly.
Arsenal thought they had pulled a goal back early in the second-half, with Arshavin shooting into an empty net after Cech dropped the ball, but referee Andre Mariner ruled that Eduardo had fouled the goalkeeper in his attempt to volley. A superb tackle from John Terry then denied Eduardo just as he swept into the penalty area. Despite Arsene Wenger’s introduction of young attackers Theo Walcott and Carlos Vela, Chelsea remained just as likely to be the next scorers, as they soaked up pressure before bursting forward on the break.
Manuel Almunia produced a strong save after a clearing header from William Gallas pinged off Frank Lampard and towards the bottom corner of the goal, and Lampard went close a second time, with Almunia clawing the ball away from his feet as the midfielder attempted to round the goalkeeper. Walcott’s second-half performance typified his team’s troubles, lacking in incision and precision, but Vela and Eduardo were just as guilty of failing to deliver any true threat. With his top scorer Robin van Persie unlikely to play again this season, Wenger will hope that one of his young charges can come good.
Carlo Ancelotti, on the other hand, will have little to worry about this evening after another drubbing, another clean sheet and another title challenger seemingly vanquished. Despite the lousy London weather, Chelsea can bask in the afterglow of their latest successful weekend.
After thumping Croatia 5-1 at home, the England team already have one hand on the World Cup trophy. It’s clear that James, Johnson, Heskey et al will soon be mentioned in the same reverential tones as Banks, Moore and Hurst, but let’s spare a thought for the 2010 team that never was: a fine XI, made up entirely of English world-beaters that almost certainly won’t be joining Fabio Capello on the team’s flight to South Africa…
Trying to keep up with the latest hot US television shows is a time-consuming pursuit but, like a limp-wristed nun, I just can’t shake the habit. Thankfully, summer in London provides an excellent opportunity to delve into programmes (it’s not like you’re missing out on some lovely weather or anything), and I’ve just motored through a truly fantastic sitcom. There are only 13 episodes so far, and it’s a half-hour show – twenty minutes without ad breaks – so there’s no excuses for not diving in.
In their pre-season predictions, Guardian writers reckoned Liverpool would win the league, but after just two games the newspaper’s chief football writer, Kevin McCarra, was tipping them to slip to fifth. Their third fixture was supposed to be a banker against Aston Villa, recipients of a 5-0 hiding in the same fixture last season; however, another insipid performance following the shocking opener against Tottenham Hotspur saw Liverpool slump to a 3-1 home defeat. Is their title challenge over before September? Don’t count on it.
Manchester City’s capacious war chest funded another capture last night, with the purchase of striker Emmanuel Adebayor from Arsenal for a fee in the region of £25m. Many scoffed at early claims that the Abu Dhabi United Group would bring fantasy football to the club, but after another audacious summer of transfer activity, are City finally realistic title contenders?
It may not have been as significant a moment in music as Dylan going electric, but when Regina Spektor’s 2006 album, Begin To Hope, saw the anti-folk phenom’s sparse compositions molested by a producer’s pop tricks, scores of fans felt every bit as wronged as John ‘Judas!’ Cordwell. Pleasingly, new release Far represents a step in the right direction, with Spektor clearly more comfortable with the new tools placed at her keyboard-caressing fingertips.
Remember tennis? They play it for a few weeks in the south of London every summer, yeah? Well it’s back, baby, and for once there’s a Brit with more than a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the grand slam tournament that has evaded its host nation for over thirty years – more than seventy in the men’s. But do we back our (well, Scotland’s) Andy Murray, or the insouciant Swiss who could overtake Pete Sampras to become the most successful grand slam player ever?
This week the protracted transfer of Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid inched closer to its conclusion, with Manchester United accepting a world-record £80m bid. Details of Ronaldo’s long-rumoured agreement with the Madrid side also emerged, with talk of a clause which would see the Portugese guaranteed a wage increase for every one of his five contracted seasons. It’s a good start, but it’s mired in the traditional realm of remuneration; there’s potential for far more creativity than that, gentlemen.
Two men from Sky News recently visited the University of York to talk about the future of media. As is to expected in the current climate, it was hardly the feel good hit of the year.
Am I the only one slightly suspicious about the timing of this latest wave of political apoplexy? We all had a pretty strong hunch that the majority of MPs were dishonest, thieving scumbags but now that a few documents have been leaked that sentence, stored away somewhere in our brains, has been slapped into italics, underlined and translated into some obnoxious font – all just a scant few weeks before the latest series of Big Brother begins. Isn’t it a little convenient that Chris Rennard, Michael Martin et al are losing their jobs just as Davina prepares to introduce our latest shower of housemates?
