Quickfire Premier League round-up

This weekend of Premier League football wasn’t as goal filled as last week but there were crucial results at top and bottom. This is quick fire round up of each game in a sentence.

Fulham 2-4 Reading

Relegated Reading put on a goal scoring show against a Fulham side who were equally uninterested in defending to produce a game high on entertainment but low on quality with a distinctly ‘school’s out’ feel, although if Wigan and Sunderland win their game in hand they will only be two points off the drop zone suddenly.

Norwich 1-2 Aston Villa

Villa continued their recent good run to claim another key win which has taken them to 40 points and, barring some catastrophic turn of events against them, they are surely now safe. But for Norwich, their lack of goals has seen them slide very slowly towards trouble and are now just three points above Wigan who have a game in hand on them.

Swansea 0-0 Man City

Despite having FA Cup final places to play for, it was another dull showing from City who couldn’t find a way to crack a resilient Swansea defence and when they did carve an unmissable opportunity, Edin Dzeko found a way to miss it.

Spurs 1-0 Southampton

SuperBale to the rescue for Spurs yet again as his team mates found no way to score against Southampton with the Welshman double marked against his old side. But one little mistake from the Saints allowed him to wriggle in to some space and cut in from the right before the inevitable long range wonder goal to ask the question of where Spurs would be without him.

West Brom 2-3 Wigan Athletic

Wigan’s blueprint for escape requires a talisman and at the moment that is Shaun Maloney who produced another fine display to lay on two goals to get Wigan right back in the fight to stay up with a drifting Swansea arriving at the DW on Tuesday as their game in hand.

West Ham 0-0 Newcastle

West Ham continue to look solid if uninspiring, the Sam Allardyce staple, whilst his old club Newcastle made four changes from last week’s tactical debacle which gave them more balance. But they look racked with nerves and couldn’t find a way past the West Ham defence.

QPR 0-1 Arsenal

Theo Walcott scored after 20 seconds but Arsenal didn’t pose anything like enough of a threat thereafter against a QPR team which has shown it will wilt under even the slightest of adversity, and in the end Arsenal were fortunate not to squander a win which would have cost them a top four spot.

Liverpool 0-0 Everton

Liverpool continue to sway from one extreme to the other as they have now recorded three 0-0s in their last five games, a period in which they’ve scored eight, and again looked very dangerous. But once they didn’t score in the first 30 minutes, a blank looked inevitable as the confidence they must surely have gained from beating Newcastle 6-0 vanished, and Everton should have won but for an inexplicably disallowed goal for Sylvain Distin.

Man United 0-1 Chelsea

The Man United second string showed none of the fight or quality that they were expected to and gave a wobbly looking Chelsea an easy ride. But despite this, it still took Chelsea all of the 90 minutes to eventually crack them with a Juan Mata grubber finding it’s way in to the net for a win which, if backed up with another against Spurs on Wednesday, will see them in the Champions League next year after all.