"Attack wins you matches but defence wins you the league", used to say Sir Alex Ferguson. While Manchester United is still some way from having the perfect defence but in David De Gea they already have a world class goalkeeper who is only going to get frighteningly better, considering he's only 23 at the moment. Last evening, the Spaniard pulled off one of the best goalkeeping performances in the history of the Premier League making three stupendous saves in the last 10 minutes to go with a first half penalty save from Leighton Baines, ensuring his side a crucial win. Targeted and vilified by a biased English media in his first season, De Gea has grown considerably in stature and is now consistently showing the talent which made Ferguson pay £17.8 million, a British record for a goalkeeper. The only Manchester United player to have had a good season under David Moyes, De Gea is now firmly established as United's No.1 and must be eyeing repeating the feat with the Spanish national team. "One day he'll retire us all", said Iker Casillas on seeing a young David De Gea in action. Consistently brilliant for two years now, for David De Gea, that day may be here and now.
Two years ago, when Chelsea parted with a reported £32million pounds to acquire Eden Hazard, the Belgian was the brightest talent across Europe and there was talk of him emulating Messi and Ronaldo. Such is the nature of football that after two slightly underwhelming but decent seasons, Hazard is already being questioned by some on whether he can turn potential into performance and the Belgian answered some of that criticism quite emphatically in Sunday's London derby. Winning and converting the penalty which was the decisive difference for much of the match, Eden Hazard was the standout player on the pitch ahead of luminous stars like Cesc Fabregas, Diego Costa, Mesut Ozil and Sanchez. With Costa shackled and Fabregas being hounded at every touch, the young left winger took it on himself to win the match for his team, running at the Arsenal defence with pace and trickery, one jinxing run after another. In the process he also dispelled the notion that Chelsea can be stopped by shutting down Fabregas and Costa. At 23 and with two gruelling seasons of the Premier League behind him, Hazard looks well on his way to really kick on this season and fulfil his early promise.
Over the last five years, Arsenal have collected a mere 26 points out of a maximum of 93 against the Premier League's top four teams. Is it a coincidence then, that they are now classed as perennial 4th placed side, good enough to dispatch off most of the sides in the league and yet never quite possessing the class to challenge for the title. There has been much debate about Arsene Wenger passing up the chance to resign Cesc Fabregas and yet, if they get an option of taking one player off that Chelsea team sheet, it should be Nemanja Matic. The biggest problem for Arsenal is not the lack of a creative playmaker rather it is the absence of a midfield anchor man, one who would shield the back four and allow touch players like Ozil and Sanchez to go about their work without worrying about losing the ball and having to track back. Just as Manchester United have never really replaced Roy Keane, so too have Arsenal been unable to replace Patrick Viera and it has cost them in every game against elite level opposition.
Earlier last week, Brendan Rodgers came out and said that Mario Balotelli was the best that Liverpool could get essentially telling the maverick Italian that he was far from their first choice option when they were in the market for a striker. How prudent the comment was will only be known over the course of the season once we have seen how the player reacts to this public criticism. Players generally react in two diametrically opposite ways in such situations, some take it on the chin and work to prove their critics wrong while others lose confidence, form and let the doubts overcome their natural ability. Going by the evidence of Balotelli's tumultuous career thus far, there seems a high possibility of him going the second way. Players like to be loved and none more so than the strikers, for whom more than everyone else, success is defined by a single quantitative measure, the number of goals scored. As such, I'm not sure that this rebuke by Rodgers achieves anything and at worst, has the potential to completely demoralise an expensive signing.
After 82 minutes of being frustrated Manchester City finally broke the deadlock against Aston Villa, courtesy a 20 yard screamer from Yaya Toure. The African behemoth scored 20 league goals last season, quite a few them absolutely crucial and the fact remains that his form more often than not dictates City's form. On song, Toure is like a freight train, hurtling past you at speed and often, impossible to stop. The trouble for City, however, is that too often this season, the train is merely chugging along and not gathering full speed. Even against Villa, before his goal, the Ivory Coast midfielder had endured a frustrating afternoon, knocking out simple passes out of play and failing to control routine ones. His touch was off again and he seemed increasingly laborious on the field, yet he somehow roused himself to provide the decisive intervention in the match. Manchester City, for the sake of their title aspirations, would desperately hope that the train gathers some momentum now.
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