Premier League Week 8: Liverpool Falter, United Surge, Arsenal March On, Chelsea Find New Heroes
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Ruben Amorim finally enjoyed a statement victory in a week where Liverpool’s superstars struggled, Erling Haaland continued to fire, and Arsenal dug in for a crucial away victory, writes Manik Sharma. |
Liverpool’s Mo Salah problem has come before anticipated SOME PLAYERS end up becoming so iconic and critical to their club’s success that they are near irreplaceable. No amount of cash thrown at agents and scouts, for example, could ever replace the exemplary, outrageous years of planetary conquests that Mo Salah, the Egyptian phenomenon on Liverpool’s right wing, has accrued for the last eight or nine seasons. It’s near miraculous that Salah has competed for the league’s crown for top goal-scorer for each of the seasons that he has spent at the club. A feat so staggering, it can really only be compared to Ronaldo and Messi, given the anatomy of Salah’s position on a football pitch — neither was really ever a striker. But while Messi and Ronaldo continued to be effective into their mid-thirties, Salah’s touch and vision seem to have begun to desert him. The pace was always going to wind up, but alarmingly, Salah seems unsure of when to stick, twist or shoot. Given his pedigree, he could still find his rhythm and put together astounding numbers on the board before the season wraps up. But the fact that he was always going to be irreplaceable is a problem Arne Slot — given the choice — would have chosen to deal with a couple of seasons later. Right now, it's one of the many headaches throbbing across the man’s bald head. WATCH | Liverpool vs Man UTD here |
United show signs of grit and progress under Amorim Ruben Amorim can finally see light at the end of the horrid, now-world-renowned tunnel of misery that is the Man Utd coach’s position. He isn’t out of the woods just yet. United have, for the first time under his tutelage, won two games on the trot. That bit guarantees neither form nor a sea change of impact. All it says, for now, is that something has begun to crackle in the pot that Amorim has hopelessly, at times delusionally, stirred for months now. At Anfield, his team started well, endured a bit of a shellacking for the majority of the game, and still found the stomach to pinch a winner at the last. Harry Maguire’s match-winner could be framed and hung at Old Trafford, not for its momentousness alone but because it would constitute not one, but three United players attempting to head the ball into the Liverpool goal. Who got there first is merely academic. The collective image is the message. If United can string together a couple of good performances, they have a decent enough squad to mount a challenge for European places. But this is United, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet. Chelsea’s match-winners are coming from elsewhere An away game to Nottingham Forest doesn’t sound as ominous or demanding, given the club’s struggles this season. More on that later. But at Forest, Chelsea, missing key players in pretty much each pocket on the pitch, weathered a fiery first half from Forest, who should have at least led by half-time. But Chelsea, though quiet for the first part of the game, had things under control and spewed enough attacking venom to show they can hurt teams even without their first-choice attacking players on the pitch. By the second half, Forest ran out of steam, and Chelsea eked goals out of set pieces to settle a game that was asking to be won. It’s the sign of a team that’s beginning to manage games — embodied rather comically by a piece of paper that several Chelsea players seem so keenly to refer to in the dying moments of the match. Whatever coach Enzo Maresca had written on it, it worked. |
Erling Haaland can do no wrong at the moment Erling Haaland has already hit double digits in Premier League goals this season. Without his jaw-dropping consistency, City would be scraping the lower rungs of the league table. Against a sprightly and dogged Everton side, Haaland scored a brace and should have really had a hat-trick — something we’ve just gotten used to saying. It’s bizarre and a bit maddening to think that Haaland’s consistency is only matched by his profligacy. He scores so many, and yet he should score more. This, in a season where City’s creative engine has only just started to purr. Guardiola is still trying to fill the De Bruyne vacuum, but he must be going to sleep at night thanking his one lodestar — the Norwegian striker who has single-handedly rolled City’s cold start to the season into a hot, though still unconvincing pursuit of title-chasing Arsenal. Arsenal produce another solid win Arsenal couldn’t have had a better week. A tough away game to Fulham. Plenty of scoring chances, and some familiar set-piece magic to seal all three points. The predictability of the goal notwithstanding — surely teams can work out Arsenal’s prodigious manipulation of deadball situations — this was another performance that cemented Arteta’s team as the likeliest to take over the baton from Liverpool. The fact that the latter sunk to a fourth straight defeat in all competitions, and were shipped out to the lowly rank of fifth in the table, ought to give Arteta the kind of psychological boost that turns — to use a Jurgen Klopp reference no less — doubters into believers. This is Arsenal’s year. They have to believe. Watch the Arsenal vs Fulham match here |
Postscript: The terrible tale of Ange Postecoglou Few managers have faced the kind of flak that the Australian manager, who, a few seasons ago, as a newly minted Spurs coach, was the most exciting thing to have happened to English football. Free-minded, open, and maybe far too earnest for a sport of such high stakes, the entrenched nature of football’s cynicism probably has no space for dissenters like the now-sacked Postecoglou. He is, after all, the manager who, with 9 men down against the same Chelsea, tried to win a football game rather than settle for a draw. That sort of all-heart, poeticism isn’t welcome in elite sport anymore. The Forest job, given the circumstances of the previous manager’s exit, never called for a Postecoglou-like idealist. That the pragmatists who own and run the world couldn’t see this says more about the state of the sport than it does about Postecoglou’s alarming inadequacy in a sport that seems hell bent on deserting him, or men of his ilk. Premier League matches come to you live and exclusive on JioHotstar, with an OTTplay subscription for only Rs 149 per month. Don’t miss a minute! |
Bhagwat Chapter One: Raakshas Is An Effective Police Procedural
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Bhagwat might come across as a reiteration of familiar tropes in the digital space, but the film, within its finite runtime, treats them with care and proves to be no less effective than the rest. Ishita Sengupta reviews.
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POLICE PROCEDURALS in Hindi films tend to follow a pattern. The gritty undersides of the crime are portrayed in alliance with the heroic arc of the law keeper. The more horrific the crime, the more elevated is the heroism of the officer. On paper, Bhagwat Chapter One: Raakshas is primed to be another reiteration. A troubled police officer is faced with an elusive killer as one case knots to another. Yet, Akshay Shere’s feature film sidesteps histrionics to unfold as a sobering depiction of society in tandem with the potency of law. The design is not ingenious, and neither does Bhagwat Chapter One: Raakshas complicate it. The outline ends up being both effective and rewarding. When Vishwas Bhagwat (Arshad Warsi) arrives at Robertsganj on punishment transfer, he is told of the case of a missing girl, Poonam. This has caused riots in the city, and politicians have only amplified the chaos by rendering communal colour to the incident. Rumours are thick in the air that the girl eloped with someone called “Abdul”. Being new to the place, Vishwas is both defiant and unaware of the extent of the rot. ALSO READ | Jitendra Kumar on Bhagwat: My move to thrillers is 'expanding' my image, not 'breaking away' Next to this unravels another tale — a love story at first glance. A diffident man called Samir ( Jitendra Kumar) is trying to impress a girl, Meera (Ayesha Kaduskar). She resists with a smile, giving him enough reason to keep trying. When she finally relents, they decide to elope. Meera is still hesitant, but Sameer reminds her of his religion (he is a Muslim) and therefore of the upheavals in store. Continue Reading... |
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