Almost everyone looked desperately weary and out-of-sorts in the last batch of midweek games: late-season fatigue is starting to kick in big-time,... and injuries are piling up as a result. Also, with the quarter-finals of the European competitions coming up next week, the teams involved in those are likely to be using a lot of 'rest rotations'. So, one of the largest elements of luck in a Gameweek like this is just correctly guessing which players are going to turn out. At the back end of the season, we inevitably find ourselves sometimes only having 9 or 10 players on the field.
Everton v Arsenal was a proverbial game of two halves: the home side strangely short of verve in the first half, but much more focused and aggressive in the second, really causing Arsenal some anxiety. The penalty award against Lewis-Skelly was unfortunate, perhaps even 'harsh' - but not, I think, incorrect: he did make slight contact with Harrison's leg as he fell over into him. The argument about the decision should properly rest on whether a free-kick should have been awarded outside the area instead, for the wrestling which had preceded this very minimal trip.
Brighton turned in a rather lacklustre performance at Palace, and were fortunate not to lose by more. Anthony Taylor didn't have a great game - booking Nketiah unfairly for 'simulation', when he should in fact have had a penalty for Estupinan's slight but unmistakable trip on him, which led to him getting sent off shortly afterwards - though that second challenge was probably worthy of a straight red; as was Marc Guehi's planting his boot in an opponent's midriff, also unaccountably only drawing a yellow from Taylor (although also a second yellow). More 'funny business' here with the BPS too: although the system rated it close between Mateta, Welbeck, and Eze, it is unfathomable to me how Eze, who supplied both assists and had a good low shot superbly saved by Verbruggen, was placed third rather than first in that trio... and how Munoz wasn't better than all three of them!
Ipswich are starting to show more fight and cohesion, and Delap has always been dangerous for them up front - but it's all too late. They were made to work for it, but ultimately Wolves came through fairly comfortably for the win that all but guarantees their survival. And Jørgen Strand Larsen is cementing his claim as the best budget forward pick at the moment.
West Ham were woefully ineffectual in the first half, only started to mount a threat after Fullkrug came on 10 minutes into the second - but even then, Bournemouth still generally looked much the better team, and they will be kicking themselves that they twice fell asleep in defence to throw away the 3 points that should rightfully have been theirs here. There didn't seem to be any problem with the refereeing here; although it was annoying that VAR twice took quite a long time to confirm Evanilson's brace of goals - when he was nowhere near offside for either of them.
For the second time in a few days, Villa came away with a win they scarcely deserved. Forest were brutally punished for their sluggish start; they were so bad in the opening 20 or 30 minutes that they might easily have gone more than 2 behind. But Nuno did an inspired reorganisation at half-time, and the second half - apart from inevitably being caught on the break a few times, through being over-extended; Rogers and Rashford both failed to capitalise on breakaways which left them with only Sels to beat - it was really all Forest in the second half. Forest were discombulated by the absence of their thus-far ever-present right-back, Ola Aina, and their talismanic striker, Chris Wood (still struggling to get over the hip problem he picked up on international duty), and his usual stand-in, Taiwo Awoniyi, late victim of a hamstring strain - obliging them to play Elanga and Hudson-Odoi rather narrower to try to compensate for being without a central striker. But the real problem was Nuno's somewhat bizarre decision to change to a back-five - which did not work at all at the start of the game. Ultimately, they created more than enough chances to have got at least a draw here; so, hopefully, this was just a brief blip for them, rather than the beginning of a wobble.
Curious decision from Maresca to rest Palmer and Jackson for the visit to Brentford. (He's really more worried about a visit from Legia Warsaw in the Conference League than securing Champions League qualification through a strong domestic finish?? It's more likely, I think, that there are still fitness issues of some sort with that pair.) We've seen over the last three months or so that without Jackson or Palmer, Chelsea really don't look a top third side; without Jackson and Palmer, they look a bottom third side. And so it was here. A few moments of excitement, a few good saves from both keepers, the inevitable near-miss with a curler from the edge of the box from Palmer when he got on for a half-hour cameo. His omission will be a sore blow to his faithful followers in FPL (he's still held by more than 40%, despite having been deserted by around 3 million managers since the turn of the year). At least there were no refereeing screw-ups in this one, it seems (although the Beeb seem to be trying to downplay those as much as possible these days; and, since they couldn't find many 'highlights' from this game worth showing, it's very possible that their brief rundown omitted some moments of controversy).
Speaking of wobbles,.... are Liverpool having one?? Kelleher, though very good, isn't Alisson. And Curtis Jones, for all his abilities, is not a right-back - and having such an obviously weak link on that side of the pitch clearly unsettles the rest of the back four,.... and leaves Salah starved of service. Liverpool looked immediately far more dangerous after Conor Bradley came on in the second half. Credit to Fulham, though, for putting on a superb, battling performance to unsettle the champions-elect. While Liverpool might feel they did enough to earn a point in the last quarter of the game, Fullham were really well worth the win; in fact, they should have taken the lead in the opening minutes, when two of their players were wiped out in the box in quick succession, by Kelleher and Van Dijk, but the referee saw nothing untoward in either collision, and VAR apparently considered the second incident an 'accident', and didn't deign to offer a comment on Kelleher's obvious foul (although the League apparently tweeted later that VAR deemed that one also just a 'coming together' - whatever they hell they think that's supposed to mean!). For the overall course of the game, the booking - or not - of your goalkeeper and/or your star centre-back in the third minute might have even more impact than a penalty award. Liverpool were outrageously lucky with this one; and they still couldn't capitalise on it! In the second half, too, Luis Diaz was very lucky not to be yellow-carded for a ridiculous dive in the box - not a great performance from referee Chris Kavanagh in this one. Macallister and Muniz both came up with 'Goal of the Season' contenders, and Harvey Elliott might have had one too - but his fierce curling effort late in the game smacked against the woodwork.
A particuarly astounding VAR screw-up at Spurs, where the home side's apparent second goal, a neat hooked volley from Bergvall, was ruled 'offside'; this bizarre call took nearly 5 minutes, and came as a gobsmacking surprise, since clearly no-one on the pitch or in the ground thought that it was; and indeed, the freezeframe selected for display appeared to clearly show all Spurs players onside rather than off - the lines having been somehow superimposed in the wrong colours....?? Not as calamitously BAD as the Luis Diaz decision last year, but possibly the worst one we've seen this season. Ramsdale might have been a bit lucky to escape a booking for handling the ball outside his area; but the view on TV was not definitive - it looked to me as if he had taken his hand off the ball just as he slid over the line with it. (Not a huge issue anyway; but these things do have small points impacts for some FPL managers....) The greater sense of injustice in this game comes from Brennan Johnson not being allowed to take the last-minute penalty to complete his hattrick - what on earth was going on with that? He looked very disconsolate at the decision to let Tel take it instead; and anyone that owns him would have felt even more so. (He got maximum bonus points anyway, but still....)
In the opening minute or so of the Manchester derby, Ruben Dias's bumbling into Garnacho to send him tumbling did clearly seem to occur just inside the penalty area - but, yet again, VAR seems to have just shrugged and said, "Yeah, whatever you think..." to the ref's initial, impulsive call otherwise. This is a case where it's surely clearcut enough for them to just overrule him (without any loss of face!!); or if not, because there's some 'subjective' element about where the contact took place or how decisive it was, surely he should be sent to the monitor to decide the matter. VAR just doesn't seem to be doing its job any more most of the time. United had much the better of a fairly drab game, but as usual, couldn't muster many decent efforts on goal; but City couldn't manage anything, apart from a couple of long-range fizzers from Marmoush - to me, they're really not looking like a top half team at the moment, or certainly not top-third; probably don't deserve to be qualifying for any European competition, let alone the Champions League. (Another BPS conundrum in this one: how the hell did Josko Gvardiol win the maximum bonus - when he wasn't namechecked in the TV highlights even once?! Now, admittedly, modern-day commentators aren't as reliable about identifying the player on the ball - regularly, promptly, correctly - as they used to be in my distant youth; but since United appeared to have most of the game, and were attacking primarily down the left through Dorgu and Garnacho,.... it does seem highly likely that he wasn't directly involved that much. He shared top spot with Andre Onana, who similarly did fairly little in the game; I suppose everybody else just did even less....)
Newcastle did enough to breeze past Leicester on Monday night, and Isak - despite doubts and rumours - did manage to start (although he looked decidedly out of sorts, and came off 20 minutes before the end); Gordon, alas, was still absent. A brace for Murphy (now owned by just over 10%) was a nice boost for some, but many (well, 2.5%!!) are ruing the fact that Schar's inspired attempt to chip the keeper from 5 yards inside his own half crashed against the face of the crossbar (providing the assist for Murphy's second, so Schar wasn't completely unrewarded for the effort; but he would have got 4 or 5 more points if it had gone in directly!). Patson Daka was particularly unfortunate in the dying minutes to see his fierce shot hit both posts before rebounding perfectly into Pope's arms (but it might not have been allowed to stand anyway, as the linesman flagged for a very dubious offside against Jamie Vardy, who'd supplied the final pass to him).
A moderately terrible week from the officials, then (not the worst we've seen, by a long way), with United and Palace both being denied a penalty, and Fulham too (a particularly egregious one - twice over!), Spurs having a goal bafflingly disallowed for offside, and two Palace players luckily escaping straight red cards (although they were both second yellows, so it didn't save them from a sending-off or unfairly impact the match; it will affect the length of their suspensions, though).
'Form' and fortune are all over the place at this time of year: results tend to become more and more random, harder and harder to predict in the final phase of the season. This week, we had minor 'upsets' with Manchester United holding City to a draw, West Ham doing likewise with Bournemouth, and Brentford with Chelsea; a rather bigger upset with Everton holding Arsenal to a draw, and really quite huge upsets with Villa beating Forest and Fulham beating Liverpool (very comfortably!). While the few expected wins were not as comfortable as anticipated. The 'Team of the Week' again features a conspicuous absence of any of the big names - many of whom didn't play, or didn't start: no Wood, or Palmer or Saka at first; and nothing from Salah, Isak, Marmoush, Mbeumo, Bruno F., Son, Mitoma... The list of top returners is instead peppered with low-owned randoms like Andre Onana, Reece James, Pablo Sarabia, Illiman Ndiaye, Donyell Malen, and Southampton's Matheus Fernandes (who's owned by less than 5,000 people; although one might wonder why he's owned by more than zero...). WTF??? Funny old world, indeed.
I think this is just about an 8 out of 10 on the 'Luck-o-Meter', with the combination of unexpected selections, a few bad refereeing decisions, and improbable game events and surprise results.
DON'T FORGET The Boycott. The dratted 'Assistant Manager' chip is in play now. I took the high road by quitting playing the game for the rest of the season. [I worry that, if people don't do this, the new chip may become a permanent feature of the game - and it will completely ruin it.] If you don't feel like joining me in such an emphatic gesture, please at least think about refusing to use the Assistant Manager chip.
Please also criticise and complain about it online as much as possible. And raise objections to it with any football or media figures you know how to contact, and - if possible - try to find a way to protest about it directly to the FPL hierarchy (and let me know how, if you manage that!).
#QuitFPLinGW23 #DownWithTheNewChip
