Premier League Week 17: Chelsea-Newcastle Draw As Arsenal & City Cruise; United Sent Packing
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Aston Villa clinched a statement win against struggling Man United as Liverpool won against woeful Spurs, and City and Arsenal consolidated their title credentials. Manik Sharma writes.
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Cherki pulls the strings as City destroy West Ham WEST HAM AREN'T ANYONE'S BET to pull off a surprise win away to one of the league’s heavyweights these days, but the chasm between them and City’s slick one-touch was almost concerning to behold. City, well and truly, mixed things up, with Erlind Halaand scoring a near-customary brace — both goals purely instinctual. To that bouquet of commons, he also added a deft assist for the in-form Reijnders. But beyond the striker’s headline-grabbing prolificity, there’s also been the gradual but evident ascent of Rayan Cherki’s influence on the City team. Cherki ran the show against West Ham, and even though he didn’t get onto the scoresheet himself, he was at the centre of everything impressive that City did with the ball. The question of who’d fill the Bernardo Silva-shaped hole once the Portuguese leaves this brilliant team may be answered by the similarly silky and yet more explosive Cherki. It says something that the Frenchman has effectively relegated Savinho and Marmoush to the bench with his consistently impressive performances. WATCH | Man City cruise past West Ham 3-0, here on JioHotstar, now available with your OTTplay Premium subscription. |
Gyokeres pulls Arsenal over the line against dogged Everton Everton under David Moyes is an impenetrable team any time of the week. They aren’t laden with stars, nor can they boast of aesthetically rich players who glide along the turf. But they are a handful against pretty much anyone in the league. Arsenal toiled and tried, but the blue half of Merseyside isn’t as brittle as the red half. Arsenal have made it a habit of manufacturing luck against solid opposition, and here again, a flailing hand by an Everton defender bailed them out. They hit the post, had their chances, but never quite looked like dispatching their opponents with ease. It’s all too effortful at the moment. For the second game running, the Gunners were helped by a stroke of luck — a theme of late — but Mikel Arteta won’t mind how he wins, as long as he wins with City breathing ever so loudly over their shoulder. Watch Everton vs Arsenal highlights here on OTTplay. Reece James powers Chelsea back against Newcastle There is no shred of doubt that Reece James is the best right back in the league — or possibly the world. This season, however, he has been deployed by Enzo Maresca in Chelsea’s midfield because, with all their options on the wings, Chelsea are surprisingly short of top-quality midfielders. James’ versatility, strength and quality on the ball allow him to step into just about every pocket and make a difference. Away to a hostile Newcastle United and 2-0 down, the Chelsea captain led from the front by scoring a spectacular free kick, making last-ditch tackles to block definitive chances, and dragging his relatively amateur colleagues into a brawl with an intimidating Newcastle side. The criticism that Chelsea’s young boys can’t ‘man up’ against some of the league’s toughest teams will be levelled at them frequently, but this performance was evidence that they absolutely can. Maresca would hope he can keep James fit after a couple of injury-ravaged years. |
Liverpool’s poor defence almost falters at the last against Spurs This clash between two of the most unpredictable teams in the league was going to be anything but dull. And both Spurs and Liverpool, duly delivered with a game that exhibited little quality but was chock-full of controversy, angst, and possibly even anger at the abject trajectory either club’s fortunes have taken thus far this season. Xavi Simons went from hero to asinine villain in a week with a horrible challenge on Virgil Van Dijk. But not for the first time this season did Liverpool look awkward against 10 men willing to park the bus against a robust but also underconfident attack. The Reds simply couldn’t take advantage. Instead, they presented Spurs with plenty of opportunities to stay interested in a game even with a man less. The image of both Konate and Van Dijk trying to clear the ball but missing, before Richarlison pounced, spoke a thousand words. It’s impossible to say what either team will produce next week, which makes them two of the league’s most thrilling yet untrustable teams. Rogers stamps his quality in putting Man Utd away On their way to a record-breaking run of consecutive wins, Villa perhaps faced their trickiest test yet. Not because United are any good, or boast half the squad that Villa do, but because United also have nothing to lose. For Villa, though, this was the moment to put distance between themselves and the chasing pack that will continue to falter for the rest of the season. But the game itself played out as a tepid, unimpressive exhibition of little quality. Except for one man — Morgan Rogers. Barring Harry Kane, Rogers is possibly the best English footballer on the planet at the moment. He scored a sensational brace here, conjuring goals out of nothing, to clinch a game that was crying out for a spark or some sort of inspiration. Villa have now turned the top into a formidable top three. And though a title challenge might be beyond them, there is no reason why Unai Emery’s team can’t keep their position come the end of the season. Watch the match highlights here. |
Postscript: AFCON imposed exile. Bad for most. Good for some. With the continental African cup commencing in late December, a number of players from Premier League clubs will be heading to the tournament. Gone are the days when squads were so thin that a month’s absence could derail entire seasons — think Drogba and Essien with prime Chelsea — but for cases like Liverpool, Salah’s departure could actually provide the team with a month’s window of no-nonsense football. The same can’t be said, however, for Man Utd’s excellent left-sided pair of Mbuemo and Amad. Both players have been critical to United’s upturn in form over the last two months. Amorim will secretly hope that neither goes deep into the tournament. Premier League matches come to you live and exclusive on JioHotstar, with an OTTplay Premium subscription for only Rs 149 per month. Don’t miss a minute! |
Twists Without Teeth: Madhuri Dixit’s Mrs Deshpande Never Quite Lands |
Mrs Deshpande assumes brisk cleverness can be a good replacement for substance. You finish the series with no thoughts, just a dull feeling that you’ve been hustled. Swetha Ramakrishnan reviews.
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IT'S NOT EVERY DAY that Madhuri Dixit plays a serial killer, but one thinks she knows this fact, too. Perhaps that might explain why the legendary actress decided she was going to sport a creepy half-smile throughout her latest series, Nagesh Kukunoor’s Mrs Deshpande. Perhaps she was inspired by Dexter or Hannibal, but the series itself ultimately has nothing in common with these two, despite having a rather interesting premise. With red herrings abound, and twists that you perhaps won’t see coming (one of the better aspects of the show), Mrs Deshpande is strictly a middling affair. A serial killer within a serial-killer story, Dixit plays Seema Deshpande, who’s in Hyderabad jail for a series of murders she committed 25 years ago. We see her doing yoga every day and cooking food for all the inmates. She’s the resident maushi, clearly. In current-day Mumbai, a fresh new set of murders happens that mimic the same murders from back in the day, and so the police reach out to Mrs Deshpande for her help in understanding the motive and modus operandi of the new culprit. Stream the latest films and shows with OTTplay's Power Play monthly pack, for only Rs 149. |
As is wont for a genre like this, nothing is really what it seems in the beginning. Why Mrs Deshpande carried out the murders from 25 years ago stays a mystery till the very last episode, and by the time you get there, you’d have crossed a maze of twists and turns. Don’t even bother making predictions because you most likely won’t be able to crack it. That’s only because there are no hints dropped about what the outcome could be. The six-part series uses every episode to explore a red herring, only to abandon it completely, and not-so-swiftly move on to the next. Having said that, I didn’t see a lot of the twists coming, so the intrigue factor is high. You will try to finish the series to get to the end, which is something, I guess? Madhuri seems a bit contrived, and there’s no diplomatic way to say this. It’s like there is a running commentary in her head that she has to seem menacing, and she chose a half-smile as the way to do it. The police seem to be taking many leaps of faith with her (which seems slightly out of character for Mumbai police), whether it's the commissioner, Arun (Priyanshu Chatterjee) or an officer in charge of the case, Tejas (Siddharth Chandekar). The gasp-inducing twists also make it seem like everything in the narrative is rushed so we can get to the final episode and land one last sensationalist reveal. Usually, when you’re unable to come to a conclusion in a murder-mystery or thriller, it’s a good thing, but in Mrs Deshpande, it speaks to how much the audience is taken for granted. Madhuri Dixit on her serial killer role in Mrs Deshpande: 'Character with a lot of layers. She's like an onion...' |
We’re at a point in the content watching ecosystem where you can cringe binge a “bad” show or brain rot with something low stakes, but a show with a good premise and promise, that ends up letting you down, can be far more frustrating. I kept waiting for the story to get better, deeper, richer, more high-stakes politics, but with every episode, Mrs Deshpande chooses lazy and instant gratification. To her credit, Madhuri Dixit tries hard, and some action sequences are well-executed, but I couldn’t shake off the fact that something was inherently missing. Perhaps this is what happens when you put too many eggs into the celebrity basket. Mrs Deshpande assumes brisk cleverness can be a good replacement for substance. You finish the series with no thoughts, just a dull feeling that you’ve been hustled. This isn’t slow-burning in the least; it’s a flicker that never fully becomes a flame. No amount of stardom can cover up a show that refuses to do the hard work of earning its edginess. Mrs Deshpande is currently streaming on JioHotstar, now available with your OTTplay Premium subscription. |
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