Money Can't Buy Me Love!

"Do I really have to do EVERYTHING?"

I neglected to mention in my weekly Examiner missive "Suck On That BFS" that with all the stick Arsène took for not substituting Santi and perhaps worsening his injury when he spent the second-half "playing on one leg" at Carrow Road, it was interesting watching Stoke yesterday to note that Shaqiri started that match with his thigh heavily strapped.

After the Swiss player's fabulous contribution to both of Stoke's goals, I wonder if the Potters fans will be laying into Mark Hughes for playing him when he wasn't fit?

And despite my contempt for statistics, it was remarkable to see the details shown on Goals On Sunday to demonstrate how the Chelsea starting XI that lost at the Bridge yesterday cost a total of 213 million quid (with £73 mill on the bench!), while the Cherries side that beat them were bought for a mere £2.5 mill.

With Manuel Pellegrini surely having a larf, moaning that his City squad lacks sufficient depth in strength (with negligible resources at their disposal compared to City, one can only imagine the reaction of most other managers to the Engineer's complaints!) the rash of recent unpredictable results only goes to reiterate quite how well the likes of Leicester, Stoke and Bournemouth are doing, in making up for what they might lack in costly natural talent, with their work-rate and desire.

And with the increasing pressure for le Prof to spend come January, it's a timely reminder that there's no guarantee of a return on spending big bucks!

Meanwhile, with Arsène bringing on Gibbs and Chambers in the second-half, we ended yesterday's game with SIX defenders (plus the Flamster) on the pitch, at home, against Sunderland!! Is it any wonder that it took us until injury time for Aaron Ramsey to score a third and secure us some much needed breathing space?

While I can appreciate that Wenger's actions were dictated by the few remaining fit players left available to him on the bench, having so few offensive players out on the pitch seemed incredibly negative and hardly sent out the right signals to encourage the rest of the team to go for it.

They also produced a stat on Goals On Sunday to show that Mezut Özil has created more chances and provided more assists than any other player in Europe (let alone the rest of the Premiership) and studying Mezut through my binoculars yesterday, there were times when our German playmaker was stomping around, rightly protesting with his body language "do I really have to do EVERYTHING".

With Aaron Ramsey occupying his preferred central role in Santi Cazorla's absence, my neighbour commented in the opening minutes that he wasn't sure where Ramsey was playing and with him being so unaccustomed to playing in this position, it appeared as if Aaron himself was uncertain where he was meant to be. Yet despite spending most of the match moaning at Ramsey's lack of timing and misplaced passes, I guess we should at least be encouraged that he was getting in the positions to be able to make such mistakes and hopefully, both he and the Ox can bring themselves back to the boil with all possible alacrity, in order to take some of the pressure off Mezut?

COYG
Bernard