After their superb late, late comeback against Swansea Mauricio Pochettino labelled his side as having “the mentality of champions!” Only one slight problem with that Poch my old mate, I think Chelsea might end up champions. How about you aim for “the mentality not to throw away second place this time!” eh? Tottenham’s fight back was brilliant, and if there is any chance that Chelsea don’t fancy closing this out it looks as though they would be the team to take advantage. Dele Alli, an English midfielder scoring by the bucketful. Well, since Lampard and Gerrard called it a day we need another player the national side can fail to make the most of.
I wonder what was said in the Emirates dressing room at half time. I cannot imagine Wenger said, “come on lads, if we don’t beat West Ham they’ll keep me on for another year” which is the only rousing speech I can imagine would wake up the Arsenal team from their slumber. Bilic had said he had expected the vote of confidence in the week, and I reckon he knows what a vote of confidence really means. West Ham are right in it, that is for sure.
Flipping back to Chelsea, they saw off Pep’s “pull eleven names out of a hat XI” 2-1 at the Bridge. It was not a night for goalkeepers, mind you, it has not been a season for goalkeepers if you are bald and Catalan. Conte has turned Hazard back into a world beater, which Real Madrid will be very grateful for.
If I played for Liverpool, stop laughing at the back, I would most probably never pass the ball back to Mignolet. Not that Bournemouth’s opener was the Liverpool keeper’s fault, no that was Wijnaldum’s in its entirety. Liverpool then went and did the hard bit in getting right back in it only to do the inevitable. How many chances does one team need to clear a long throw? This is not the first time many a Sunday side will have looked at the defending at Anfield and gone, “well that makes us look fairly cohesive as a unit”. Liverpool do remain third though, somehow.
So what have we learned this week? 4th place isn’t over for Arsenal or United, especially if Jose can bully his strikers into finding their confidence once more. Hey, if you only have one management trick, now is the time to use it over and over again. At the other end, the game is most certainly up for Boro, especially when they manage to score two in a game and still lose. Hull though, they might just survive. It’ll be one from West Ham, Palace, Hull and Swansea who join Boro and that load of rubbish at the bottom. I’d pick a team, except I’d get it completely wrong.