This has been a great weekend in football for me! Well, in terms of the results at least.
Liverpool grabs all three points against Brentford
With all due respect to Brentford and their courageous style of play, this really was not even a contest. Normally against overly attacking teams like Liverpool and Barcelona, mid to low table teams tend to play a very low block heavy defensive game. This makes the game extremely boring. Kudos to Brentford for not resorting to the dark arts and trying to go out there and play some entertaining football.
With that however comes the risk of keeping yourself too exposed at the back and their defense could just not cope with the brilliance of the Liverpool attack. Liverpool would have already been 3-0 up before half time, but 2 were disallowed for offside. I felt Darwin Nunez's first disallowed goal for offside was very harsh.
Mo Salah bagged himself 2 more goals before Diogo Jota sealed the game with a screamer from outside the box! 3 points safe and sound!
Barcelona struggle massively against Alaves, but secures the win!
This was by far one of the most frustrating Barcelona performances, and definitely the most nerve wrecking one for me this weekend. We went down a goal within like what...20 seconds of the start?! INSANE! And it did not get better at all in the first half. How we were not down by 4 or 5 goals in the first half is beyond me. Watching Barca try to play football yesterday was so painful and I was just hoping this would just end.
The second half was however much improved. Whatever locker room talk Xavi had delivered, worked. My problem here is, if the same exact team could play so well in the second half, what on earth was stopping them from playing properly in the first half! Barcelona were quickly rewarded as we got the equalizer within 6 minutes of the restart.
The comeback was completed by Lewandowski's penalty as Alaves conceded quite a straightforward penalty.
Important win nonetheless. We really could not afford to drop more points in la liga. 2 points behind Madrid already seems too big by the way we have been playing.
Blockbuster at Stamford Bridge!
My oh my! The weekend reserved its master blaster or whatever you wanna call it for the absolute last eh! What a game, what a crazy, crazy game at the Stamford Bridge!
I am neither a Man city supporter, nor a Chelsea fan. And these games I usually watch half heartedly without much emotion invested. However, Man City dropping points would be fantabulous as Liverpool could then reduce the gap at the top. Hence, I was actually strongly rooting for Chelsea.
Chelsea have had a dismal campaign so far, barring the 4-1 thrashing they handed to the 9 men spurs last weekend. So, when City went ahead with the controversial penalty (which was very very soft call - NO OTHER team in the entire league would get that pen. But city has oil money, so...), I was like, okay that's game done and dusted for chelsea. However, the fight chelsea showed yesterday was nothing short of Mesmerizing. They in fact took the lead soon after and I was hoping for the best - a Man City defeat!
However they did get back into the game and even took the lead quite early in the second half. Chelsea deserves an immense amount of credit for not giving up despite City taking the lead over them twice. Jackson equalized with little over 20 minutes left to play.
And when it seemed Chelsea had done enough to secure a draw, Man City took the lead again with 5 minutes of normal time left. This surely was it then, right?!
WRONG!
There was still twist left in the tale, and fight left in chelsea!
A 95th minute penalty ensured chelsea had something to show for the unbelievable courage they displayed the whole game.
And who else to score the final goal if not for Cole Palmer, who just months ago joined Chelsea from Man City themselves!
A fairytale ending to a fairytale weekend! Fitting!
