Fulham v Tottenham

With Harry Redknapp watching from home, recovering from his recent operation, his Tottenham team faced a tough away game at Craven Cottage against Fulham.

Fulham started the brighter with an early shot saved by Friedel off the goal line, but Tottenham were the first to score just after 9 minutes, a Bale shot hit Baird on the shin and deflected into the goal.

Later in the first half Parker was accidentally struck on the nose by a Sidwell elbow and was taken off to be patched up.

Fulham had a few chances during the rest of the first half, to mention a Murphy free-kick, which was headed away by Adebayor, then a clever back heel by Bale sent Lennon racing towards the goal and with a left right shuffle he shoots with his left and scores. Now 0,2 down, things went from bad to worse with Grygera falling in a lot of pain from what looked like a twisted knee.

In the second half, Tottenham started well with a one-two between Bale and Adebayor, but the shot from Bale was harmless. Then Fulham had a real chance with a Hangerland header which was saved by Friedel, that was it from this moment and Fulham didn't look back they pinned Tottenham back into there own half, pushing hard for a goal, then finally in the 56^th minute from a Duff corner a header from King hit Kaboul and went in.

Fulham were now well on top and continued to pile on the pressure for that equaliser with several shots from Dembele and a great shot from Baird which all were saved by Friedel. Dempsey shot just wide and later had a header saved. Zamora also had a shot saved, the pressure just kept coming. There was a big scramble in the Tottenham penalty area in the final minutes with Friedel making yet another save and Modric stopping the ball on the line.

Then in the final minute a cruel blow for Fulham with a Dafoe shot that hit Kelly and went in for a goal.

Final score Fulham 1, Tottenham 3.

I think that Fulham deserved a draw at least with the amount of possession they had and the amount of attempts at goal. Only thing that stopped them was Man of the Match Brad Friedel.

Fulham are now down to 15^th place in the premiership while Tottenham stay 5^th but still have that game in hand, looking good at the moment.

Written by http://www.kitupforfootball.com

Derby Day in Manchester

Yesterdays Manchester Derby match lived up to expectations as a classic, certainly one that will not be forgotten. Man Utd were left wondering what had happened while Man City showed us all what they are capable off.

With Roberto Mancini celebrating his 100^th game in charge of Man City, he saw his team show Man Utd just how far they have come by showing the kind of display often associated with man Utd.

Alex Ferguson said, 'it was our worse day ever.' Utd went 0,1 down just a minute after the half time break, with Jonny Evans being sent off for pulling back Balotelli, this was the start of a one way tide of goals from Man City, with Balotelli scoring his second, the goals just kept on coming, Aguero scored the third then Man Utd got a goal back with Fletcher, that was it as City then scored a fourth with Edin Dzeko, a fifth with David Silva and Dzeko capped it all with a Sixth.

Certainly one for Utd to ponder on, but likely not for long, its early in the season yet and they will recover to fight another day.

City however will have enjoyed this one, now leading the premiership by 5 points but they will have to come down to earth fast, ready for the next match away to Wolves in the Carling Cup.

Another derby game was held in London at Loftus Road with QPR playing Chelsea, this certainly had all the hallmarks of a derby game with plenty of passion shown from both teams. But it just wasn't Chelsea's day with two red cards and seven yellow. This didn't stop them though, playing very well, often looking the better team, however with all the possession, they just couldn't get the ball in the net. QPR on the other hand scored from the penalty spot with Heider Helguson hitting the winner and only goal in the game.

Premiership Results on Sunday 23^rd Oct 2011.

Manchester Utd 1,6 Manchester City

QPR 1,0 Chelsea

Arsenal 3,1 Stoke

Blackburn 1,2 Spurs

Fulham 1,3 Everton

Written by  http://www.kitupforfootball.com

Champions League or Championship?

Further to my previous post, last nights instalment of championship football saw some surprising results:

Barnsley v Burnley 2,0

Blackpool v Doncaster 2,1

Crystal Palace v Bristol City 1,0

Ipswich v Portsmouth 1,0

Leeds v Coventry 1,1

Millwall v Brighton 1,1

Nott'm For v Middlesbro 2,0

Peterboro v Cardiff 4,3

Reading v Derby 2,2

Southampton v West Ham 1,0

With a good performance from Southampton, managing another home win against West Ham, that now gives them 26 points, 5 clear from the rest of the table.

West Ham still hold on to second place, with 21 points, the same as Middlesbro and Derby, who both drew away from home. Just one point behind closely follows Crystal Palace and Ipswich, who both won there matches at home.

The bottom three places are taken up with Bristol City who are bottom with 6 points and above them is Doncaster on 8 points and Millwall on 9 points, all 3 teams lost last night.

Tonight Leicester play Watford at 7.45pm, my prediction is a 2,0 home win to Leicester.

Oh I forgot to mention about the Champions league, with both Man Utd playing away to O Galati and Man City playing at home to Villarreal.

For me Man Utd showed us what they can do with there experience in this competition winning 2,0 and Rooney scoring with 2 penalty's.

Man City however, were very hesitant in everything they did, they almost seemed unsure in what to do, struggling to get the ball up front. However they managed to get the result winning 2,1 with Aguero scoring the winner in the last minutes.

It was a shame that none of the championship games were shown as from the live reports on Sky tv they certainly were the most exciting!

Written by http://www.kitupforfootball.com

Saints hold on to top spot!

Southampton are still holding onto top spot in the championship, after a 1,1 draw away to Derby County at Pride Park. With Southampton dominating possession, it was Derby's goalkeeper, Frank Fielding who kept Derby County in the game with several saves made throughout. Derby took the lead early in the game with a Theo Robinson's goal in the 3^rd minute, being the quickest to the ball after a Kelvin Davies parry, although there was suspicion of offside. With Southampton's Adam Lallana out of the game with a foot injury, Richard Chaplow played well in the midfield, with Guly de Prado and Jose Fonte adding to the attempts on goal.

Southampton kept up the pressure and were rewarded with a Rickie Lambert goal in the 61^st minute.

In the interview after the game Nigel Adkins felt the saints were worthy of all three points.

On the down side, the referee, gave saints players 4 yellow cards which may play a part in future games.

Next Southampton entertain West Ham on Tuesday which should bring in the crowds and already so early in the season a very important game.

Being one of the pundits favourites to do well this season Southampton are certainly keeping up the good form that earned them promotion last season from league one. But its early yet and there are some good teams in the championship all fighting for those two automatic promotion places.

My feeling at best, is a 2^nd place finish at the end of the season.

Written by http://www.kitupforfootball.com

What a game!

What a game! Just watched the North London derby at White Hart lane, with Tottenham Hotspur against Arsenal on the telly and enjoyed every minute of it. In front of a packed crowd and with the England manager watching closely, the game had all the ingredients of a great attacking game, and true to tradition, the game was played at a great pace, you could see that the players were up for this one. Arsenal certainly couldn't afford to lose this one, which would leave them still close to the relegation zone and it showed with an early chance from Theo Walcott, who's deflected shot, of Ledley King went just wide of the post.

I felt that there was not really much in it between the two teams. Although Arsenal still have that uncertainty about them, especially in the defence, allowing Parker a shot that went straight to the Arsenal goalkeeper, Szczesney.

Spurs started the game on the front foot also and eventually 5 minutes before half time Rafael van der Vaart got the opener which looked suspiciously like the ball struck his arm.

After the break, the gunners came out attacking and got their reward with an Aaron Ramsey goal 6min into the second half.

The fast pace of the game kept on going with no clear chances falling on either side, then a cracking goal, a 25 yard shot came from Kyle Walker with just 13 minutes to go, which looked like it dipped causing Szczesney to get his hands to the ball but without success. That would have done Walker a lot of good in front of Capello.

After Tottenham had taken the lead Arsenal stepped it up again to try and get the equaliser, but just simply ran out of time. Even with 5 extra time minutes you could not tell who might have scored next.

What a great derby game! With Tottenham feeling the happier now climbing to sixth place in the premiership and looking equally as strong as last season.

Arsenal, however are in fifteenth place, but on what I watched today I don't see them staying there for much longer, not sure though if they can make it to a European position in the league.

Written by: http://www.kitupforfootball.com

Transfers, an exciting last day!

That's it for the transfer market until January next year, and there has been some heavy activity within the premiership on the last day with some big names on the move at the last minute!

Below is the list of some of the players coming into the premiership on the last day of the transfer window:

Player/ To/ From

Mikel Arteta/ Arsenal/ Everton

Yossi Benayoun/ Arsenal/ Chelsea

Andre Santos/ Arsenal/ Fenerbahce

Alan Hutton/ Aston Villa/  Spurs

Jermaine Jenas/ Aston Villa/ Spurs

Denis Stracqualursi/ Everton/ Tigre

Bryan Ruiz/ Fulham/ FC Twente

Muamer Tankovic/ Fulham/ IFK Norrkoping

Craig Bellamy/ Liverpool/ Man City

Owen Hargreaves/ Man City/ Free

Anton Ferdinand/ QPR/ Sunderland

Jason Puncheon/ QPR/ Southampton

Cameron Jerome/ Stoke/  Brum

Peter Crouch/ Stoke/ Spurs

Wilson Palacios/ Stoke/ Spurs

Nicklas Bendtner/ Sunderland/ Arsenal

Scott Parker/ Spurs/ West Ham

Patrick van Aanholt/ Wigan/ Chelsea

Shaun Maloney/ Wigan/ Celtic

With a total sum of £485 million spent this transfer window, you could both gasp at the huge amount of money spent and wonder, is it all worth it? Or you could rub your hands together and look forward to the rest of the season.

Some pretty good reading if you are a Stoke fan, with a proven and reliable striker in Peter Crouch.

Arsenal to may have plugged a few gaps, don't think we will see any more embarrassing results again this season!

Still going to be the same top four, but in what order, the transfers don't really give anything away on that question.

One thing that seems noticeable is the lack of buying players from the lower leagues. The pressure these days are so great to do well enough just to stay in the premiership, demands buying the best you can buy. Could this be a concern for our future International team? Maybe squad rules need to be more limited, well only time will tell.

One thing is for sure, no matter what you think, we know its going to be a great season and we all can't wait to see how the new players will fit in.

Written by http://www.kitupforfootball.com

Goal-Line Technology

One of the main topics of debate at the moment is goal-line technology, ever since the England v Germany game in the 2010 World Cup with Frank Lampard's disallowed goal the introduction of the technology has been debated.

The technology is long overdue, it is available and already in use in other sports, e.g. Tennis. But for some reason FIFA has been reluctant and resisted the call for technology.

Further to this in our own Premiership we have seen some difficult decisions made by referee's in particular the Bank holiday game between Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea, did the whole ball go over the line? The linesman thought yes but he was some distance from the line of play so for me, he could only guess.

Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp certainly wants to see the technology introduced. In the interview after the game, he stated, 'We can put a man on the moon but we cant decide if a ball crossed the line, its beyond belief'.

With a new taskforce set up headed by FIFA president Sepp Blatter, it is the intention to introduce the technology for the next World Cup in 2014 and will almost certainly start using the technology in time for the 2012-13 season after once more formally inviting tenders for products in development to be tested. Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore is also hopeful that the technology could be introduced in time for the 2012-13 season.

There will be two rounds of testing and to proceed to the second round technologies must show 90% accuracy in seeing whether both a static or a moving ball is across the line.

These technologies must also inform the referee about goal-line incidents both by a vibration and a display signal to his watch, wherever he is on the pitch. All of this testing will be carried out in daylight and under floodlight conditions.

The testing will continue until June next year ready and with the hope of using it for the 2012-13 season.

I would have liked a similar system that is in place by Hawk-Eye at Wimbledon, to enable the fans to see the result on a large screen, rather than the referee just blowing his whistle and saying goal or no goal. However another argument is that very little time is lost this way and the game continues on almost as normal.

Written by http://www.kitupforfootball.com