Football was all over the place on Saturday so, with such a fragmented line-up, did you seriously expect the BBC to roll out Gary Lineker? Come on, he must have a three top club minimum in his contract for him to host. So, it was Gabby Logan once, the sub keeper of presenters and she was joined by professional clown Martin Keown and man of many words but none of them important Trevor Sinclair.
It was to Bournemouth first where the Cherries were fresh off fighting Zlatan Ibrahimovic last weekend. The first rule of Fight Club is that anyone who takes part will be given a ban by the FA so we were without Tyler-one Dur-Mings. That did not take any Googling whatsoever.
They were taking on West Ham who were perturbed in the week by Dimitri Payet’s assertion that the team was boring. Rightly so, Payet’s clearly never seen a Middlesbrough game. I don’t blame him though. If I had the choice, I certainly wouldn’t watch a Middlesbrough game.
Well, that was entertaining. Despite Bournemouth’s best attempts to keep their ill-timed poor run of form going they did eventually manage to win it. Benik Afobe went for the Salomon Rondon option of missing every presentable chance known to man so it was left to Josh King to show somebody how to finish. Algeria’s Steve Stone had an eventful day managing to rugby tackle a man and set up West Ham’s star striker Michail Antonio for another goal.
Highlight of the analysis was Trevor confirming that Josh King “wants to penetrate”. Cheeky.
It was off to Hull next where the Foreign Guy’s Patchwork team took on Swansea with Paul “sacked by Derby” Clement. Both sides have been in decent form since a change of boss and I’ve been so bold as to call Hull “possibly the best team in the league right now”. And if anyone wishes to disagree with me on that, I will defend myself harder than Chris Sutton defends Scottish football.
What a difference a manager can make. Oumar Niasse is Everton’s worst signing by a long way yet he’s looking like a semi-competent footballer under Foreign Guy. Poor Swansea had plenty of chances but couldn’t find their finishing touch. Needed more Borja Baston. Actually, scrap that. Still, they did get a late goal through Alfie Mawson who celebrated in comical old-timey fast forward getting back to the halfway line.
On the analysis front. Martin pointed out that Niasse scored twice. Apparently, that was game changing. As was Llorente going off injured. Obvious can be considered stated.
We finished off at Goodison Park where sneaky Everton hosted the Wall and Tony the Tactician. Poor Wall haven’t had a good time away from their fortress this season with wins a rarity. Then again, they had a torrid time last week at home so maybe Tony isn’t the messiah after all. Everton are quietly sneaking around near the European places. That’s about it really.
The players may have worked hard Tony but The Wall lost again. It’s boo boo face Tony once more as his boys were totally outperformed by those sneaky Toffees who snuck the ball into the net three times. Chief sneak was Romelu Lukaku who’s now scored his highest number of Premier League goals in a season. If you cared.
Erm… wait. What’s this? It’s a Brucie Bonus FA Cup highlight show tacked on to the end of Match of the Day! So it would be rude if I didn’t lazily tack on these two Cup ties at the end of PTP wouldn’t it? Let’s do this…
It was to the Emirates first where perma-crisis Arsenal took on non-league Lincoln. Poor Arsene and the boys had to suffer the humiliation of being not as good as Bayern Munich in midweek while Lincoln are in non-league. I have little else on Lincoln. They’re in non-league. And did I mention they’re in non-league.
Arsenal won but did they really win? Frankly, no. Unless they had scored 15 goals in 10 minutes and demonically possessed three of the Lincoln players then Arsenal were always going to be panned for their performance. I get the feeling now that ArsenalFanTV might as well just start doing all their post-game videos before the season starts. Their pre-game protest was cute too. “Wexit” is Jonathan Ross talking politics not a protest guys.
We finish at the Riverside where the World’s Most Boring Team hosted Manchester City. Boro are so incredibly boring that I can’t even fail to be funny for them. Claudio Bravo must have been looking at this game and thinking “yes, guaranteed clean sheet this week!” In fairness to Bravo, his Fabien Barthez impression is near spot-on. All he needs is a chrome dome and an offer from Tesco.
Well, I’m not getting that time back. Boro were poor and dull. City scored twice. Boro are out. Good.
So, what have we learned this week on PTP? The FA doesn’t like Fight Club, never ask Bournemouth to try and accomplish something, Josh King’s a keen (and saucy) bean, there are cracks in the Wall, Hull are still excellent and Martin Keown and Trevor Sinclair are atrocious.