5 most hilarious individual mistakes in the Premier League this season

While it’s often unfair to single out one player as being responsible for a team’s loss – there are after all eleven players in a team and fourteen usually involved if you count substitutes – it’s still easy to do so if a serious individual mistake costs a team some valuable points.

The Premier League has seen some classic – and costly – individual errors over the years – remember Steven Gerrard’s legendary slip against Chelsea in 2013/14? – and this season has been no different. Here are 5 of the most hilarious individual mistakes of the Premier League in 2017/18...thus far.

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#1 Petr Cech vs. Swansea City

Petr Cech has been one of the Premier League’s most reliable goalkeepers over the past decade or so, and although most would agree he’s a little past his prime these days, he’s still a formidable figure in Arsenal’s goal – just look at his performance last weekend against Tottenham for evidence of that, as Spurs could’ve had four or five goals had it not been for the Czech keeper.

Unfortunately though, as his reflexes have slowly begun to dwindle, he’s become more prone to making errors. And this season none were more glaring than his mistake against relegation-threatened Swansea, who managed to pull off a shocking 3-1 victory over the Gunners in late January.

Arsenal had taken the lead in the 33rd minute but found themselves pegged back just one minute later, and the teams remained tied going into the second half. Arsenal bossed the early going, but couldn’t find a goal.

Cue Cech. He sliced a simple back pass from Shkodran Mustafi directly into the path of Jordan Ayew, who probably couldn’t believe his luck as he scored one of the easiest goals of his career.

Arsenal pushed for an equaliser but left themselves open and a third Swansea goal in the 86th minute made the result academic. Cech’s error was massively costly and left Arsenal trailing badly in the race for the Champions League qualifying places.

#2 Chris Smalling vs. Newcastle United

Despite making some decent development a couple of seasons ago, Chris Smalling has always been prone to errors, largely because of his tendency to switch off at key moments.

Coming into 2017/18 it looked like Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho had finally had enough of him, and would use Eric Bailly and Phil Jones as his main defensive partnership, but recently Smalling has found himself back in the starting line-up.

Against Newcastle, this proved to be hugely costly for United. For once, Smalling’s mistake wasn’t a defensive one either. For reasons only known by him, Smalling mis-controlled a pass from Phil Jones and as he bumbled past Jonjo Shelvey, he decided to take a dive.

The referee spotted the con instantly, booking Smalling and awarding Newcastle a free-kick – from which they promptly set up a wonderful goal.

United then attacked and attacked, but couldn’t find an equaliser and came away with a terrible loss – one that now has them in danger of missing out on the Champions League, if form is anything to go by.

Quite why Smalling chose to dive is a mystery but by the end of the season, this error could be looked back upon as the moment in which United’s season began to go wrong.

#3 Dejan Lovren vs. Tottenham Hotspur

The October clash between Tottenham and Liverpool was built up as one of the season’s biggest games to that point, but it turned into a one-sided hammering and it was largely down to one man – Liverpool defender Dejan Lovren.

In a performance that bad, it’s hard to pinpoint one key error. Lovren was so terrible that manager Jurgen Klopp substituted him on 31 minutes.

So where to start? Well, Lovren looked shaky to begin with but realistically, the game was all over after just 12 minutes, thanks to two Spurs goals largely caused by the Croatian.

Firstly he completely missed a chipped pass from Keiran Trippier – turning a simple problem into a deadly one, and Harry Kane was allowed to run onto the ball, round the keeper and score an easy goal.

Just eight minutes later things got worse – a long throw from Hugo Lloris was totally misjudged by Lovren, who let the ball skid past his head directly into the path of Kane, who then sprinted through Liverpool’s defence – missing one of their central defenders of course – and crossed for Heung-Min Son to score a second.

Lovren was hauled off twenty minutes later, but the damage was already done and Tottenham ran out 4-1 winners.

In an even bigger shock, despite claiming he could’ve defended better wearing trainers, Klopp has stuck with Lovren and he remains one of Liverpool’s first-choice centre-backs.

#4 Granit Xhaka vs. Watford

Swiss midfielder Granit Xhaka was signed to give Arsenal’s midfield some much-needed steel, but he’s often been found wanting this season and has come under massive criticism from the fans for supposedly switching off at key times.

He made costly errors against both Stoke and Liverpool early in the season, but his lowest point was definitely against Watford in October.

Arsenal had taken the lead in the game but were pegged back by an equaliser in the 71st minute, and from then it was clear that Watford felt like they could get a winner. Deep into injury time, the Hornets kept pushing and eventually, a chance came.

A shot was blocked by Per Mertesacker and rebounded into the path of Tom Cleverley – whose run had gone unnoticed by Xhaka – and the former Manchester United midfielder hammered home.

Gunners fans were furious with the Swiss midfielder, who could probably have prevented the goal had he bothered to track Cleverley’s late run into the box.

They were enraged even further when some grainy footage appeared to show Xhaka picking his nose rather than keeping an eye on his opponent. It was a hugely costly mistake in a poor season for Xhaka.

#5 Tiemoue Bakayoko vs. Watford

When Watford played Chelsea in early February, a total capitulation from the Blues leading to a 4-1 defeat was one of the last things everyone expected.

But despite most of Chelsea’s side looking poor, the one name on everyone’s lips was French midfielder Tiemoue Bakayoko – an expensive summer signing who has yet to justify his price tag.

In one of the most dreadful individual performances in recent memory, Bakayoko seemingly forgot that he had the ability to control the ball at all.

In 30 horrifying minutes, he lost possession on multiple occasions – 7 times in 28 touches in fact – and misplaced 4 of 12 passes too.

To cap it all off, he received two yellow cards in the space of five minutes – both for crude tackles after he’d lost the ball – and left Chelsea with ten men for the majority of the game.

In a Chelsea career simply littered with errors and mistakes thus far, this was easily the worst offence of the French midfielder’s season.

Not only did it trigger a very embarrassing loss for Chelsea, but it also bought into question the competence of manager Antonio Conte for keeping so much faith in Bakayoko despite his multiple issues.