Title contenders? Think again . . .

Okay. Let us revise the list of title contenders. I was goddamn right. There are only three contenders – Chelsea, Man Utd and Liverpool. What? Arsenal? Oh! Don’t say that! How can they be in the contest for title? All right, you mean the champions league qualifying spot contender. That fits better. All the glitters of the last season’s Champions league finals have long gone.

Meanwhile, Man Utd is flying high. 9 points in 3 matches. The first goal by Silvestre was a beauty. Looks like the team has really settled down and have started understanding each other very well. The winning goal by Ryan Giggs looked offside to me. Anyway, Man Utd were clearly the dominant team and are playing great football. They will be really tested in the month of September, when they meet some good quality teams such as Benfica, Arsenal, Tottenham & Newcastle. And the best of rivalries would be renewed on Sep 17, when they meet Arsenal at the Old Trafford.

Liverpool nets three points. Another long strike. This time from Daniel Agger. It’s really hard to believe that he thought that would score from that distance and he really shot with that intention. I’m not saying it is a lucky strike. It was one hell of a shot, but considering that this was his first goal in club football in all of 3 years, it might take another half decade for him to repeat this scene. I saw Peter Crouch score a wonderful goal. Yes, I did see. In fact, that was a fantastic team goal by Liverpool. Sharp throughball from Gerrard, smart flick from Garcia and a striker’s move by Crouch.

And when will Arsenal convert their chances into goals? Same old crap again. Make 20 passes and lose the ball. Rosicky made a good run and from a angle where he could have buried it, he just crossed in front of the goal only to be mess up and lose the ball. That was a clear chance. And Henry did lose the ball a few times from shootable areas. And there was at least two one-on-one chances which he missed in a very embarrassing manner. This is Henry’s second poor match he certainly needs to be in form if Arsenal has to make any impact. His poor form continued in his shots, freekicks and corners as well. At times, it was too humiliating for a great player of his calibre.

When 3 minutes of extra time was announced, it looked like Arsenal are never going to win even in 30 more minutes. After being a little animated, Arsene Wenger looked like he had given up in the last 10 minutes or so. He was sitting back, resting his face on fists and looking down, just like his team was on the pitch. Arsenal needs to work really hard this season than ever before. I always thought that Arsenal would only finish at 4 or 5. If they claim that they are title contenders, this is definitely not going to take them anywhere above 5. Only good news for Arsenal is that even Tottenham is slipping in the charts.

Lehmann was also very scrappy, he did make two or three blunders that went unpunished. And finally after around 40 minutes, Man City got a deserving penalty that followed a deserving yellow card for Robin van Persie. All the real scoring chances came from Robin van Persie. Even the last quarter sub Young Theo did not quite work tonight but he is a great prospect and he has impressed in every match so far. Probably Arsene should play him for more than 45 minutes. I should say I was pleasantly surprised with Man City’s game. When they had to defend, they did it with their all and they did enough justice in their attack too. And they did not put 10 men behind the ball like Aston Villa did last week. Arsenal had more possession, more shots on target, more set-pieces more everything but did not dominate. Despite the risk of Arsenal fans’ possible foul language, let me say, in the end, that the better team won.