Monday, August 18, 2014

EPL Week 1 Review

It was great to have the Premier League back this weekend. With 26 goals scored in the 10 matches, there was plenty of entertainment to go around. But how often do you get to watch bird poop fly directly into Ashley Young's open mouth? 

The Champions Man City did just enough to win their opener at Newcastle. Sp*rs enjoyed a last-minute win at West Ham, keeping a clean sheet despite conceding a penalty and losing Kyle Naughton after his hand-ball in the first half. Sunderland's Seb Larsson equalized at West Brom, the Baggies conceding late from a winning position like they did so many times last season. Leicester rescued a draw against Everton in their first match back in the Premier League. Aston Villa won at the Brittania Stadium--one of the more difficult places to win last season. And QPR had a penalty saved late to lose to Hull City. 

I covered Arsenal's victory over Crystal Palace in full detail on Saturday. Here's a look back at 3 more of the weekend's best matches.

Manchester United 1 - Swansea City 2

The Louis Van Gaal era started with a thud as United lost to Swansea at Old Trafford for the first time in club history. United was missing 8 first team players but that is no excuse for a club of their stature. Everything about the home performance was unconvincing. Van Gaal has a lot of work to do with this average group of players.

Credit Swansea, who utilized their numerical advantage on the wings against United's 3-5-2 formation to create both of their goals. Gylfi Sigurdsson created one goal and scored the other in a man-of-the-match performance. 

When Swansea had the ball on the wing the United midfield didn't give the defense enough help. Swansea could easily cut the ball back to the top of the box and find their players unmarked. Ander Herrera looks like he will need quite some time adjusting a more defensive role in physical England, and Darren Fletcher was equally poor, failing to track back on several occasions. Neither is the bulldog ball-winner Nigel De Jong was for Van Gaal's Dutch World Cup team. 

The other major thing I noticed watching this version of Van Gaal's 3-5-2 was that the outside midfielders, Young and Adnan Januzaj (who came on for Jesse Lingard after the young player was injured on his debut), played much higher up the pitch than in the Dutch version. 

At the World Cup, Holland's formation often looked more like a 5-3-2 than a 3-5-2. These players' positioning was the root of United's problems. Too often Wayne Routledge, Nathan Dyer, and Sigurdsson were able to get in behind Young and Januzaj, stretching Jones and young Tyler Blackett out to the sideline, making the entire defense outnumbered and under pressure. 

I would not be at all surprised if Ajax's Daley Blind, who played in Young's left wing role so well for Holland, is brought to Old Trafford this week. His father, Danny Blind, is one of Van Gaal's assistant coaches. 

In addition, I think United will try to target more central defenders, such as Sporting's Marcos Rojo or Mehdi Benatia of Roma, who are more familiar with playing in this type of system as it is more common in Italy and South America. There simply aren't enough quality defenders at Old Trafford right now, and the ones that are there have played with 4 at the back their entire careers.

The 3-5-2 was so ineffective that Van Gaal scrapped it at half-time, taking Chicharito off for Nani and switching to a 4-3-3. But the home side weren't much better in the new formation.

Wayne Rooney did score the equalizer, and he nearly took the lead with a free kick that hit the upright, but other than that I felt he was very poor. Many of his passes were played too late and intercepted. Far too often the United attack ended with him. Juan Mata was largely invisible, and it said a lot that United perhaps looked their most dangerous when Marouane Fellaini was brought on late as a target man in a desperate effort to equalize the scoreline.

Swansea played well and deserved the 3 points, but United looked extremely poor. With David Moyes no longer around to play the scapegoat, finally attention is being given to the lackluster squad Sir Alex Ferguson passed on to his successor. 

I would highly recommend reading the Mail's exclusive interview with Moyes, published Saturday, in which Moyes claims he wasn't given enough time to succeed or fail at Old Trafford, as he had planned to run the club through a multiple-season rebuild. If you can read between the lines, Moyes clearly feels he was thrown under the bus by another man who was struggling in his new role at the club--Ed Woodward.

Woodward, who took over for David Gill as chief executive last June, has been in charge of negotiating transfers for 3 windows now. He has spent over 110m on Fellaini, Mata, Herrera, and Luke Shaw. What a waste of money!

The clock is ticking. This window will be closed at the end of the month, and United need several more players if they are going to get back into the Champions League, let alone challenge for the title. United can't afford to fail to bring in these players if they want to reach their former glory, but they also literally can't afford for Woodward to overpay for any more of their targets. 

Needless to say, the next few weeks will be very anxious ones for Manchester United supporters across the globe.

Liverpool 2 - Southampton 1

The post-Suarez era began at Anfield on Sunday and the Reds looked boring without him. A moment of brilliance opened the scoring, as Jordan Henderson played a fantastic through-ball with his weak foot to Raheem Sterling, who timed his run perfectly to score with ease. But the Reds didn't create much after that, and Southampton were unlucky not to score from a fantastic James Ward-Prowse whipped free kick that got caught in the wind and was heading for the upper 90. Simon Mignolet did really well to save but he paid a price, crashing into his far post in the process.

In the second half the Saints grew into the match, creating more chances than the hosts. New signing Dusan Tadic was the best player on the pitch. His first touch was always great, and his creativity was first-rate. The Serbian created an absurd 133 chances at Twente last season, and it was easy to see why. He combined really well with fellow newcomer Ryan Bertrand on the left wing, befuddling Liverpool's Javi Manquillo, and his back-heeled flick to Nathaniel Clyne led to Southampton's equalizer.

Minutes later Tadic was at it again, cutting a pass back to the excellent Ward-Prowse inside the penalty area. Ward-Prowse passed it square to an unmarked Steven Davis when he might have shot, and Davis's effort was too close to Mignolet.

When Southampton manager Ronald Koeman withdrew Tadic in the 77th minute, the Saints lost a bit of momentum. Liverpool took advantage. They got the lead again when Daniel Sturridge flicked Sterling's header in at the far post after Southampton struggled to clear the ball from multiple crosses. It was a poacher's goal by Sturridge, but a fortunate one. Southampton's 6'4 center-half Florin Gardos was not yet fit after his recent arrival from Bucharest, but he almost certainly would have done better to clear the ball than the vertically-challenged Maya Yoshida. Also, the referee missed a fairly blatant handball by Rickie Lambert early in the build-up.

Southampton was able to create another great chance before the match was over. New signing Graziano Pelle had struggled to deal with the physicality of Martin Skrtel in the first half but he grew into the game, and imposed himself strongly in the second. His chest-down to Morgan Schneiderlin set up the Frenchman with a golden chance inside the box. Schneiderlin's rocketed a half-volley toward goal, and Mignolet somehow got a fingertip to it to push the ball onto the crossbar. The rebound fell to Shane Long, but the Saints' most expensive signing of the summer somehow pushed his header wide of the empty net. 

Liverpool escaped with the three points yesterday. The Reds were the worse side on the day, failing to create much and allowing Southampton to get chances in dangerous positions. Due to the scoreline, many parallels will be drawn with Arsenal's 2-1 win at home against Palace, but in truth the two matches were entirely different. While Palace struggled to complete passes and only had 2 shots on goal, Southampton bossed large portions of the match at Anfield and often looked like the better attacking team.

It was just the first day, but my first impression of Liverpool is that they will have a lot to worry about this year. After spending nearly 50m luring away 3 of Southampton's best players in the summer, this was a match they were supposed to dominate. This version of Liverpool was slow, lacking creativity. 

And Southampton, who some picked to be relegated this year, looked like they will have nothing to worry about. I could easily see them replicating last year's 8th place finish. 

Burnley 1 - Chelsea 3

Newcomers Burnley scored the opener and then were absolutely torn apart by Chelsea, whose 3 goals came in 20 minutes after Scott Arfield's goal.

Nemanja Matic bossed the game, Bratislav Ivanovic was outstanding and Diego Costa marked his debut with a goal, but it was the performance of Cesc Fabregas which shined brightest. His assist to Andre Schurrle for Chelsea's second goal was incredible, as he softly cushioned a half-volley perfectly into the path of the German for an easy finish. Watching him make such a great pass in Chelsea blue nearly made me vomit. 

Chelsea looks like they'll have the creativity to open up defenses much easier this year. They sometimes struggled against the lower sides last year, especially away from home, but the additional quality of Costa and Fabregas (and a full season with the excellent Matic) should be enough to overcome some of last year's issues. And when Mourinho wants to break out his famous bus against the bigger clubs, he still has Mikel and Ramires to jam the midfield. Of all of the EPL's clubs on display this weekend, Chelsea clearly looked like the most improved.

But in all fairness, Burnley were absolutely dreadful. Chelsea passed in circles around Burnley's 4-4-2, Burnley failing to put any serious pressure on the ball even when Chelsea had it in their defensive third. And on the rare occasions when the home side won possession, they could hardly string 3 passes together before gifting the ball back to the Blues.

While watching I got the feeling that lots of goals are going to be scored at Turf Moor this year, and not by the Clarets either.

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