Sport Update for October

At time of writing the Premier League is only five games into the season but with the international break in place and the next set of fixtures not kicking off until the 10th of the month, now might be the time to take a look at any early season clues there might be which help us to decide the final destination of the title and who is going to be battling against relegation. At the top, even at this early stage, the table is taking on a familiar shape. Manchester City have won all of their first five games and lead and we have Arsenal in second, having won four of their first five. That doesn’t tell the whole story though. In their most recent game Arsenal went to Brighton and got a 3-0 drubbing whilst City, although coming out on top against Sunderland 5-3, gave up a host of chances and were fortunate not to concede more goals in the match before running out the eventual winners.

I was surprised to see that the bookmakers still make the Gunners slight favourites to retain the title after the latest set of results and I think this has something to do with the fact that City have Enzo Maresca as their manager, who took over from Pep Guardiola at the start of the season. Obviously Guardiola is a hard act to follow, to say the least and like eight other teams at the start of this year’s campaign who started with new faces at the helm, people seem to be taking a let’s wait and see approach before voicing their opinions. It was an interesting set of results all round in the final set of fixtures before the break. Coventry, who had lost their first four games without scoring and had shipped 10 goals in the process, went to Nottingham Forest without their two first choice strikers and won 0-1, Spurs, who keep getting made favourites in games they have no right to be favourites in, hosted Aston Villa and conceded three goals before finally finding the net twice late in the game, their first goals of the season, to make the score 2-3. The manager at Spurs, Roberto De Zerbi, is going to have some serious questions to answer soon, especially given the amount of money they spent in the close season.

At Liverpool, Andoli Iraola seems to be getting a good response from the players and given the quality of the squad, they could be dangerous in the league and a lively outsider in the Champions League. Meanwhile at Chelsea, Xabi Alonso was going along nicely and his team were scoring goals for fun until the wheels came off at Brentford, who gave them a 3-0 beating at the Community Stadium. Like Liverpool, Chelsea are stacked with quality players and it may be prudent to reserve judgement on both teams until we have more results to go on. Amongst the others, both the aforementioned Brighton and Brentford will be a danger to all, without perhaps the depth of squads required to make a sustained challenge for the title. Hull City, who everyone expected to be the season’s whipping boys, have responded with a great run of four games undefeated including two wins and even the defeat at Newcastle was an excellent performance, having gone two down early the Tigers roared back and were unlucky not to get a point after battering the Newcastle goal late in the second half. And what to make of Manchester United? Looks like the same old story, pre season optimism followed by early season disappointment. We shall see.

The Premier League gets going again with a full set of fixtures on the 10th and the only other sport that has a busy month is F1, where we have races on the 4th in Bahrain, the 11th in Singapore and the US on the 25th. We’ll take a closer look at the standings next month. That’s about it for October. Happy viewing everyone.