The Monday Miscellany

Sunday was a curious day in the Premier League, as Chelsea played like Manchester Utd, Manchester Utd played like Newcastle and Newcastle played like Chelsea. Chelsea’s performance was the most exciting, signalling a new adventurous approach under the stewardship of Luiz Felipe Scolari, but in one respect Newcastle’s was the most encouraging. By having the courage to try to pose a constant attacking threat, they demonstrated to the rest of the Premier League that the way to get a result against one of the ‘big four’ is not to put nine men behind the ball and hope for a lucky day and a 0-0 draw (hello, Portsmouth).

Newcastle have signed some truly terrible players in recent years but their two Argentinean summer signings both impressed on the débuts against the toughest of oppositions. Defender Fabrizio Coloccini would appear to be the solid and dependable defender Newcastle have been craving since about 1959, while Jonás Gutiérrez not only threatened on the left-wing but displayed a work rate and energy lacking in too many of Newcastle’s recent imports.

The irony is, even Newcastle’s notoriously optimistic fans have not been approaching the season with their usual unrelenting keenness. Uncertainties surrounding Mike Ashley’s ownership, injuries to Viduka and Owen and the Joey Barton scandal have combined with the credit crunch to cause many fans not to renew their season tickets. Those who travelled to Manchester with typical passion and vocal energy were richly, and unexpectedly, rewarded.

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Chelsea were simply frightening in their disembowelling of Portsmouth at Stamford Bridge on Sunday, with Deco having the best début for the club I’ve seen since Mario Stanic scored twice in a 4-2 win against West Ham in August 2000, one a magnificent volley from thirty yards after juggling the ball on his knee. But they were aided and abetted by a truly awful Portsmouth performance, who were every bit as poor as they were in the league towards the end of last season, only now they cannot use the distraction of a forthcoming FA Cup Final as an excuse. Still, it was nice to see Lassana Diarra having his most productive game for Chelsea.

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When the Czech Republic visit Wembley on Wednesday night they will be without two key players. Tomás Rosicky is merely injured but Jan Koller has a proper excuse. His new team, Russian side Krylia Sovetov Samara, have just played a league match at Luch-Energiya of Vladivostock and the 12-hour flight from the Eastern tip of Russia to London would render him unplayable. Fabio Capello, of course, would never consider flying an ageing star halfway around the world just to play a friendly.

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I am an agnostic, but during Manchester City’s UEFA Cup matches against EB/Streymur Islands I began to wonder if there is a god controlling our language as the Faroese side have a goalkeeper whose name René Tórgard, Tórgard roughly translating as ‘goalkeeper’. If there is, it is probably the same ethereal figure that waved his linguistic wand during Manchester Utd’s 2001-02 Premiership campaign. Having replaced Jaap Stam with the ageing Frenchman Laurent Blanc, United’s first five league defeats came against Bolton, Liverpool, Arsenal, Newcastle and Chelsea. Now, if only I could think of an acronym to help recall those five teams in future…

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At the climax of the film Psycho, two characters turn out to be different parts of the same person. The same might be about to happen at Stoke City, who last Friday signed two Senegalese internationals named Mr A. Faye, though whether anybody has seen both Abdoulaye and Amdy on the same pitch at the same time is not yet clear.

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Those pamphleteers of gospel the Daily Mirror reported this week, with a seemingly straight face, that Everton boss David Moyes is ready to table a £10m offer for Manchester City’s Michael Johnson after watching the central midfielder in midweek. Having watched the same match as Moyes, in which Manchester City feebly succumbed 1-0 at home to Scandinavian hardly-household-names FC Midtjylland, I’m surprised Everton, hardly known as free-spending, felt any City players merited a bid of more than the price of a return flight to Denmark.

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Arsenal and Chelsea supporters should swap clubs. Arsenal fans want their team to knuckle down and grind out wins without all the fannying about that resulted in them playing 86 first time passes against West Brom (beating the previous Premier League record of eight) but still having to hang on to a single-goal lead for 85 minutes. At Stamford Bridge, meanwhile, heaven and earth have been moved to get Chelsea to play with style to satisfy their catatonic supporters and unimpressed owner.

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This week my spellchecker has a piece of advice for those of you thinking of going for an Italian; Portsmouth’s French midfielder becomes ‘Lasagna: Diarrhoea’. And finally, is it just me, or do the four Sikh men who have season tickets behind the away dugout at Old Trafford sit in a slightly different configuration for each match?