BPL round up game week 9

It was a weekend of significant movement for several clubs, with Manchester United assuming a delicate one point advantage over Chelsea and taking first place, while Liverpool continued its bad form with a one nil defeat to Sunderland, moving them down to 8th place.

Starting with the Sunderland Liverpool match, which I'm sure all of our readership have heard about, and the bizarre beach ball goal. I didn't delight in watching Sunderland work Liverpool over (however watching them almost beat Man U was like crack to me), and I felt that Sunderland's solitary goal should have been disallowed. Darren Bent's goal technically should have been nullified after it deflected off a Liverpool FC official beach ball (Manchester United fans have reportedly bought the rest of the beach balls to throw at the team when they travel to Anfeild next week) which had been released onto the field by a Liverpool fan. The rules state that when an object interferes with play the ball is ruled "dead" and a free kick should be given. Despite this unfortunate turn of events, even more unfortunate was Liverpool's form. Saturday's game really made you realize that when you take away the brilliance of Torres and the rock solid performances of Gerrard, Liverpool is an extremely ordinary team. With the exception of Kyut and Benayoun, the entire team looked lax and uninspired. Not that LFC's dismal performance should take the credit for the win. Bent looked extremely dangerous, as did Jones, and the two look like they could develop into one of the leagues more fruitful partnerships. The problems could potentially snowball out of control for Liverpool if they continue to show bad form. The team is hugely in debt, without any promising reserves or youth and thus tied to the transfer market, in danger of losing out of the champions league (and thus all the TV money from its broadcasting), and facing Manchester United next week. Lets face it, the real savior of Liverpool at this point isn't a player, its some wealthy Arab sheik.

Chelsea had a royal fuckup in their match at Villa Park on Saturday. In their defense its been a busy week for CFC players. An amazing 17 members of the first team were away on international duty. Still, this figure may have justified the lax marking Chelsea displayed in Villa's first goal scoring corner, but it certainly doesn't justify the exact same mistake later on in the game. Chelsea certainly still have it in them to win the title, and I fully except them to despite this disaster of a game. John Terry's fit after the Villa goal convinced me that if Chelsea ever makes a defensive mistake again hes going to jump up and down in place and scream at the ball, something no Chelsea defender wants to see their grown captain doing.

Elsewhere in the league Fulham displayed some good form beating Hull, obviously the problem for Hull being that Jozy Altidore only played 22 minutes, while United won a tense victory against Bolton, helped by a Zak Knight own goal. This will be the second time in two consecutive games that United has earned points on the table due to an own goal, I guess there just really good at making defenders mess up.