So Week 2 of the new Barclays Premier League season is over and following the fixtures on Saturday, there were Sunday wins for Chelsea and Man City whilst on Monday evening, Man Utd also gained their first win of the season.

I feel I have to start with the Chelsea game, but not because of Chelsea but because of Wigan.  Yes, Wigan lost this game 1 - 0 but quite frankly did not deserve to.  As far as I’m concerned, apart from one moment of sheer quality from Chelsea new boy Deco after only 4 minutes, Wigan were the better team and played some lovely football.  I have to say, I sat there actually feeling sorry that they lost.  Very unjust!

But let’s not take anything away from Chelsea and in particular Deco.  There’s not much you can do, whether you’re the manager, defender or goalkeeper when a guy of Deco’s quality steps up and strikes a free-kick like he did against Wigan.  It was unstoppable.

Wigan fans must have been fearing the worst after the performance Chelsea produced the week earlier against Portsmouth and with a goal so early, it didn’t look good.  But from that point on I thought Wigan were excellent, in particular some of their new signing, especially Palacios in the first half.

Steve Bruce, the Wigan manager pretty much summed it up after the game when he said, 

“Chelsea have had a bad day in my opinion, but one piece of brilliance by Deco has won it for them.

“Our keeper has hardly had a save to make. My players gave me everything they had apart from a goal.”

Chelsea basically did on Sunday what Liverpool had managed to do on Saturday, win they not playing anyway near their best.  I suppose if you want to win the Title, they are the games you have to win.  Last year Liverpool either lost or drew most of those games.  If they can keep that “lucky” habit up the same as Chelsea and Man Utd seem to do, then this season could be a very interesting fight right to the end of the season.  Fingers crossed!

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Sunday also saw Mark Hughes and Man City put  a little of the off pitch problems behind them as they swept aside a poor and 10 man West Ham Utd in front of their Chairman, the ex Thai Primer Minister Thaskin Shinawatra. 

The game also saw the first sending off of the season, West Ham’s Mark Noble was booked for deliberately handling the ball after he was fairly tackled and in doing saw prevented the opposition player escaping with the ball.  Then just a few minutes later he produced a horrible “studs showing” tackle that on another day would have merited a straight red card.  However, one this occasion it was a second yellow and from that point West Ham never looked in the game and perhaps were a little luck only to end the game 3 - 0 down.

West Ham seem to have problems at the moment.  As I write this Alan Curbishley’s defender Anton Ferdinand, brother of Rio, is under going a medical at Sunderland.  Only a few days ago Curbishley was saying Ferdinand wasn’t going anywhere.  Now today there are reports that Man City want to buy Craig Bellamy who only joined the Hammers last year from Liverpool.  Curbishley was being interviewed on television earlier today claiming that Ferdinand was going anywhere either.  So look out for Bellamy wearing the light blue shirt by next week.

The final game of the weekend came at Portsmouth who entertained Man Utd.  A little like Chelsea, Utd perhaps weren’t firing on all cylinders last night and only won 1 - 0.  The goal was also most likely an own goal by Sol Campbell.  You really have to watch the replays very carefully to work out who actually got the last touch.  Darren Fletcher was claiming his second goal in 2 games but I’m not so sure.

Portsmouth are having an awful start to the season after such a good one last year.  They are currently bottom of the table with no points to show from their first two games.  It can only get better for Harry Redknapp and Tony Adams.  Who, it has to be said, looked totally cheesed off last night sat on the Portsmouth bench.  A lot of head shaking going on, but I don’t think you can blame them, quite frankly.  Harry needs to turn things around quickly.  His new striking partnership of Crouch and Defoe haven’t got their act together at all yet.

Rik
The Soccer Bloggger

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