Premier League Week One - Winners and Losers

Winners:


Sund(I)erland

A great result for the newly-promoted Wearsiders. No-one gave them a chance of beating "top four material" Spurs, but despite squandering more than one good chance, the Black Cats came out on top thanks to Michael Chopra's late winner. Paul McShane also put in a noteworthy performance, keeping Dimitar "Pele" Berbatov firmly in his back pocket. A hugely encouraging start.

Manchester City

Another hugely encouraging start. Elano looks a class act, and Bianchi will clearly get goals. He might have made us want to tear our eyes out whilst in charge of England, but Svennis seems to have City playing some good football. A good result against a much-fancied West Ham side.
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Liverpool

I could easily change this section to read "Jamie Carragher", who must have been the most relieved man in Villa Park after Stevie G baled the Reds out of the hole Carra's rash handball had landed them in. But an aggressive, determined performance meant Liverpool were good value for their win, so I'll include the whole side here.

Blackburn

You're one-nil down, and now Benni McCarthy's f**ked. Let's be honest, if any of us were Sparky, we'd have been chuffed with a draw. But their strength in depth up front shone through, as Derbyshire, and little-fancied debutant Santa Cruz handed them an away win. Santa Cruz might be this year's McCarthy, Premier League sides may learn to write him off at their peril.
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Newcastle

Another section in which I could be writing about one man - Sam Allardyce must have felt like Christmas had come early when Newcastle went 3-0 up inside half an hour. I was convinced teletext was broken. Turns out it was true, and the Geordies find themselves top of the table. I wouldn't bet on them to win it though.

Birmingham

If they'd gone down 3-0 they'd have been pleased not to have disgraced themselves. So to twice bloody Chelsea's nose and nearly give Mourinho a heart attack, they'll be encouraged by their performance. A game they never in their wildest dreams expected to get anything from, even their defeat will have raised expectations, coming in the manner that it did. A good showing against many people's title favourites.

Arsenal

Hleb scored a goal, and Arsenal didn't drop points after managing to miss hundreds of chances. I make that a 100% improvement on last season.

Chelsea

An entirely expected victory, and one that they nearly f**ked up. But they set a new record for home games without defeat, so I'll tip my cap to them here.


Losers

Tottenham
Oh dear. One defeat does not a season make, so we shouldn't write them off yet, but they must be pretty embarrassed after crowing about top four all summer. Quite frankly, they were s**te.

Tal Ben-Haim

He didn't have a particularly bad game, in my opinion. But he's the man charged with making sure Chelsea don't suffer last season's problems in the absence of John Terry. And on day one, he failed spectacularly to do this. Conceding two at home to Birmingham would be forgiveable in Terry's absence...were it not for the fact that since January Mourinho has been telling us signing Ben Haim would plug the gap.

Bolton

A horrible start for Sammy Lee. Phil Gartside is another who must be embarrassed today, after spending the whole summer telling us how crap Sam Allardyce is, and how Lee is the real architect of their success. Not on that showing Phil.

Manchester United

...and "limpy" Shrek Rooney. Failure to overcome a 10 man Reading team at home will serve as a forewarning of what awaits them this season - teams are scared of them, and this means breaking them down will not be an easy task. Tevez will help, but they'll miss the Scouse Scally and will hope not to repeat this weekend's misdemeanour for a while, as Liverpool have demonstrated the penalties for starting slowly.

Fulham

So near and yet so far. They had their chances to wrap this one up too, and so unlike Birmingham, will probably go away gutted rather than encouraged. Showed enough to suggest they'll be ok this season though, unlike...

Middlesbrough

Losing at home after being one-nil up to a McCarthy-less Blackburn is not a good start. Selling Yakubu over the next two weeks will make it a disastrous one. They need to hang on to him tight, or it'll be a long hard season at the Riverside.

Portsmouth

Time will tell how respectable a point at Derby really is, but at the moment it looks like two points dropped for Harry's boys.

West Ham

Everyone's favourite collection of the biggest tossers in the game looked poor on Saturday, Curbishley's expensively assembled side need to recover and deliver quickly. Looked devoid of ideas now they're Tevez-less. The true extent to which they'd grown to rely on him was painfully evident, although perhaps it'll just take the new boys some time to settle.

My Fantasy League Team

Ashton and Bojinov starting on the bench, McCarthy getting injured just before the 2 appearance points cutoff time, and Ronaldo doing f**k all. Thanks lads.