Luck-o-Meter (20)

Well, I suppose the first big element of 'LUCK' affecting this gameweek was the panic over Friday and Saturday about a slew of 'bad weather' postponements being likely/possible. That would have had a HUGE impact if it had come to pass, but... it seems we've dodged that bullet.

A few debatable calls in the Spurs v Newcastle game - but I think an increasingly beleaguered Postecoglou is clutching at straws if he's really claiming they all went wrongly against Spurs... or that that would have made any difference anyway, when they were so comprehensively outplayed for most of the game. The handball claim against Joelinton just before Isak's equaliser was rightly dismissed by VAR: Bergvall fired the ball straight at him from a few yards away, his arm was innocently by his side, and he did try to pull the hand away from the contact - it was unfortunate for Spurs that the ball deflected so conveniently into Guimaraes' path, but there was nothing culpable about that. There was even less in the claim against Dan Burn on the half-way line (and the Spurs players didn't seem to make much of it - even though it would have been a second yellow-card for him, early in the game): he was initially spreading his arms out wide (presumably to distract the Spurs player on the ball, to limit his view, or perhaps his future path of movement - but a silly and dangerous thing to do, when he might try to play the ball past you), but then he pulled them back to his side and turned slightly away as the ball was hit at him; and, even more crucially, it hit the middle of his upper-arm - which is an allowed area to control the ball with anyway under the adapted rules; so, nothing in that one. With Joelinton's forearm in the back of Bergvall's head - well, it looked accidental, as if he just bumped into him because he slipped and lost his footing at that moment; there was a suspicion of the accidentally-on-purpose about it, but... again, none of the Spurs players really complained that much; and a red card would have been very harsh, I think. Set against these empty claims, we had Kulusevski's shoulder-charging Anthony Gordon in the face (and breaking his nose, by the look of it), in the penalty area. Again, it might have been an 'accidental' collision, but to me there looked to be more intent about it than there had been with the earlier Joelinton incident; and when there's a penalty at stake, we often see a kick awarded for such a consequential impact, regardless of 'intent'. So, actually, Ange - you got off lightly. (I suspect the big man might be looking for a new job soon. This kind of self-pitying whingeing about imagined injustices carries a whiff of despair about it.)

Villa and Leicester really both looked like sides that wouldn't trouble anyone in the top half of the table here, and the home team were somewhat lucky to come away with the win, after sloppy play from Justin gifted them the chance of a late winner. If Mavididi hadn't blazed the best chance of the game wide early in the second half, the result might have been different. Again, no refereeing controversies here: Bailey's falling-over in the box for a penalty claim looked extremely optimistic, not to say delusional - rightly ignored. Barkley's clean, low drive from a few yards outside the box to take the lead was the only outstanding moment in a pretty dull game.

Bournemouth clearly should have had a penalty when Mangala kicked Ouattara in the midriff; accidental or not, you can't kick someone like that in the penalty area! This seemed to be another instance where VAR just didn't want to call their on-pitch colleague a 'clear and obvious' idiot. The home side completely dominated the game, but were struggling to break down Everton's typically dogged defence - until Huijsen, Semenyo, Kerkez and Brooks conjured a superb team move that might be one of the leading 'Goal of the Season' contenders.

Chelsea's miserable luck with penalties continued at Palace: apparently VAR thought Tyrick Mitchell got 'something' of the ball when wiping out Neto on the edge of his box late in the game - he didn't. And it shouldn't make any difference anyway; you can't just kick a player's feet out from under him, and claim you got a toe on the ball as a defence. The number of stone-cold penalties Chelsea have been denied this season is just getting ridiculous now: Palmer could probably have been above 200 points already, if our referees knew what they were doing! The sublime Sancho-Palmer link-up for the opening goal was the only high point in yet another dour, uninspiring match. Chelsea, still strangely misfiring all around, were not able to capitalise on this early breakthrough, and eventually paid the price when Palace came back into the game in the closing phase, and nicked an equaliser through Mateta. The FPL 'sheep' are despairing of Nicolas Jackson; but I think he's still looking quite sharp, and will be getting back among the goals any day now.

West Ham actually gave a very good account of themselves at the Etihad, and if Kudus and Soucek had been able to convert their very good early chances, the game might have panned out very differently (even Pep admitted as much in his post match interviews, acknowledging that City had still been quite poor in this game, and were lucky not to go behind). The major turning-point, and the major injustice, was the referee's dreadful decision to call back Summerville for a non-foul when he was clean through on goal (Ake had simply fallen over, and left the ball free for the West Ham striker to steal). And they were then desperately unlucky to fall behind to a huge deflection off Coufal beyond his keeper. The Hammers unfortunately lost their way for a while either side of half-time, but also finished quite strongly - with the lively Summerville missing another good chance near the end, after Fullkrug had already notched a consolation goal; and then, just moments later, Paqueta's improvised shot beat Ortega and grazed the outside of the far post. The Haaland faithful are, of course, crowing about the big Norwegian's 'return to form'; but I don't think there's ever been anything much wrong with his form - it's the rest of the team that's been useless. And they still are: the City defence looked worse than West Ham's in this game.

There didn't appear to be any controversy in Brentford's comfortable win at Southampton: van den Berg's goal from a corner was rightly disallowed for a bit of wrestling on the edge of the six-yard box. The only big surprise, really, was Wissa blazing the best chance of game miles over the top. But Brentford still ended up with 5, thanks to a late flurry. Southampton, of course, will be in the Championship again next year. Can they at least rally enough to cause an occasional problem to some opponents? Even that's looking doubtful.

Brighton's penalty against Arsenal was, I felt, a bit soft: one of those where both players were going for the ball, and there was an accidental, mutual contact in the follow-through. It always looks worse when it's head-to-head contact, but really, Joao Pedro was moving towards Saliba more than vice versa - seen them given, seen them not given (maybe it's a karmic balancing-up, because Joao Pedro was himself the victim of such a bad decision the other way in the previous game). The only other big surprise of a drab stalemate of a game was Arsenal conjuring a free header from one of their trademark set-pieces in the closing minute - but it falling to Partey rather than Gabriel, and him not being able to get it on target. Arsenal were probably keeping something in reserve, ahead of the Cup semi-final against Newcastle on Tuesday; but they seem to be misfiring a bit at the moment. Credit, though, to Hurzeler, for revamping Brighton's formation at half-time, and getting them into the game more after the break.

The major talking point at Craven Cottage was whether Leif Davis should have got an early red card for 'denial of a goal-scoring opportunity' when tripping Harry Wilson. It was a very tight call, which might have gone either way; but I don't like to see players sent off like that - unless it's a really egregious offence, rugby-tackling an attacker to the floor when they're obviously clean through.... The contact here was nearly 30 yards out (and really, it might have been clumsy/accidental rather than deliberate: Davis realised he wasn't going to be able to put in a challenge for the ball and pulled out of that, but was moving towards the opponent too fast to avoid running into his trailing leg...), Wison isn't super-quick, and there were three other Ipswich defenders more or less in line with him and tracking back quickly, one in the centre who would probably have been close enough to put in a block on any attempted shot; so.... a fair enough call, I think. And VAR, for once, was actually doing its job in this game. I think we can forgive the referee for initially missing the foul on Wilson for the equalising penalty: he had tripped over his own feet, and went down rather spectacularly - Morsy's very slight contact on his left calf before this was hard to see. But the 'second look' came to Fulham's rescue. (Wilson was extremely fortunate not to get a yellow card, or worse, for his excessive reaction in the referee's face about the initial decision....)  Ipswich's penalty a little later was even softer - but again a correct decision: Castagne had landed a light kick on Delap's boot as he swished at the ball, and that's enough. Particularly heart-breaking for Ipswich that Jack Clarke's fierce drive had come back off the post only 30 seconds before they conceded a second penalty; they really seemed to have done enough to deserve the win, against a very lacklustre Fulham. There were two oustanding saves in this game, Walton's low reaction stop from Raul's header early on, and Leno going at full stretch to get a hand to Broadhead's thumping drive in the second half. Not that much else all that exciting in the play from either side, though, either in attack or defence.

An aside: Ipswich describe their away strip this year as 'maroon' - but it's nowhere near that (at least, not on TV pictures); obviously more of a cerise. I suppose it's nice to have such a unique strip; and it would probably be very helpful when playing in fog or snow.... But I do find it a bit painful on the eyes, I must say.

The biggest surprise about the week's biggest game was that it went ahead at all - with heroic efforts needed from the Anfield ground staff to clear a reported 2-foot deep covering of snow from the pitch in the last few hours before kick-off. However, recently dismal Manchester United dramatically getting their shit together and proving to be the better team was, for some, perhaps even more of a surprise! Liverpool had their 'feet of clay' moment here: they weren't terrible, but it was a strangely flat performance from them, they didn't seem able to respond to the unexpected vigour and self-belief manifested by their visitors; and Trent Alexander-Arnold, perhaps distracted by his Spanish lessons, appeared to be playing in slow-motion.... Salah had a fairly quiet game; and Onana very nearly saved his penalty! Mercifully, the refereeing was pretty good here: Michael Oliver somehow missed the De Ligt handball initially, but revised his decision after visiting the pitchside monitor. (United fans will feel it was harsh, as the ball flicked towards him from Macallister's head at very close range; but his arm was already raised unnaturally high - and he then raised it even higher, towards the ball, as if making an instinctive movement to swat it away: no question about it being a penalty.) The major unexpected element of the match was Lisandro Martinez's tremendous opening goal - a ripper from a tight angle out on the left, reminiscent of Michael Keane's surprising 'Goal of the Month' earlier this season. Well, that and.... United contriving a great chance on the edge of the six-yard box in the closing seconds of the game which might have let them snatch an historic victory - but it was somehow Harry Maguire waiting in the space for the cutback, and he predictably shanked his effort miles over the bar. Oh well....

And Forest go from strength to strength, racking up yet another win - their sixth in a row?!- against Wolves on Monday night. To be fair, Wolves did occasionally look dangerous going forward, and might have got something out of the game, but for a goal-line block by Murillo and a couple of sharp saves from Sels. No refereeing snafus in this one, by the looks of it - a good way to end the gameweek.

So, Bournemouth and Chelsea (the year's unluckiest sides thus far!!) were denied clear penalties, but Brighton got one they probably shouldn't have: Leif Davis was very lucky to escape a red card, the ref denied Crysencio Summerville a 'clear goal-scoring opportunity' with a ridiculous intervention at The Etihad, and there were perhaps a few questionable decisions at Spurs.... But no goals wrongly disallowed, and no stupidly tight, possibly wrong offside decisions for once! By the abysmally low standards we have come to expect of PGMOL this season, this week was actually not at all bad for refereeing.

The 'Team of the Week' doesn't hold too many surprises either: Barkley, Van den Berg, Macallister, and Savinho are somewhat unusual inclusions in that list - not nearly so many, nor nearly so wacky as many of the collections of players that has produced in the first half of the season. Palace and Brighton managing draws against Chelsea and Arsenal, and perhaps United achieving the same at Liverpool, were modestly 'unexpected' results, but hardly bookie-breaking turn-ups. However, there was enough variety - enough of a mix of expectedness and unexpectedness - in this week's returns that there was an unusually broad spread of FPL manager scores: in my national league (quite an easy one to monitor closely, because there are only 700 or so players - but it's very competitive at the top end), there were an awful lot of disappointing 30s and 40s from people who usually get well above the global average. I think that just about gets us to 5 out of 10 on the Luck-o-Meter for this week.

And DON'T FORGET The Boycott:

#QuitFPLinGW23         #DownWithTheNewChip