1) Can Sherwood’s straightforward approach have an instant impact at Aston Villa?
The cross came over. It seemed to hang in the air for an eternity. There, a chance, a brilliant opportunity to break a goalless cycle that had become crippling. The FA Cup was both an opportunity for Aston Villa to inject some life into a stagnant campaign and to achieve something tangible in an increasingly open competition. With the likes of Chelsea, Manchester City and Tottenham already knocked out, a trophy was possible, if only they could convert this chance. And there, at the far post, rising like a salmon from a trampoline, was Tim Sherwood, powering the header home to score the winner for his new side. All hail Tim! Well done Tim!
At least, that was the impression you got from some of the coverage, which handed the credit for Villa’s win to the new manager who enjoyed a nice view from the stands and gave a half-time team talk, rather than the players on the pitch or the man who picked the team, Scott Marshall.
Now, if Villa get anything from a tough first game proper for Sherwood, against Stoke on Saturday, then we can start dishing out the credit. Sherwood’s straightforward approach (not, incidentally, a criticism) is just the sort to make an immediate impact after a campaign of such torpor so far – indeed, Ashley Westwood has described his first training sessions as “electric”, a word even Paul Lambert’s mother would hesitate before using about the former Villa boss. “Short term is what it’s all about now,” said Sherwood this week, and of course he’s quite right. Whether Sherwood is the right man for Villa in the long term is perhaps doubtful, but in the short term he should at least turn this season around. NM
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2) Swansea’s search for intensity
Garry Monk was quick to identify the problem when Swansea City lost 2-0 to West Bromwich Albion last week. “The first half was pretty even, but in the second half we didn’t play with any tempo or intensity,” Swansea’s manager said. “We need that sharpness and crispness in our passing if we are going to win games in the Premier League, and we didn’t have that here.”
Yet being able to see the problem is not the same as solving it and Swansea’s form since the turn of the year must be a concern for Monk. They have won once in the league since Boxing Day, Blackburn Rovers knocked them out of the FA Cup and Monk even found himself apologising to José Mourinho for not giving Chelsea more of a game after Swansea had been beaten 5-0 by the league leaders last month. Chelsea led 4-0 by the 36th minute.
Losing Wilfried Bony to Manchester City was a huge blow and his replacement, Bafétimbi Gomis, is still finding his feet in the Premier League. Gomis has shown flashes of the talent that made him a France international, but the striker has struggled for consistency, his only league goal for Swansea so far coming in the 2-1 win over Arsenal in November. Yet Gomis’s team-mates must start to take more responsibility and, with Louis van Gaal’s Manchester United plodding their way to the Liberty Stadium, it is time for Swansea to rediscover the spark that saw them win at Old Trafford on the opening day of the season. The return of Gylfi Sigurdsson from suspension should help Swansea in their quest for attacking fluency. JS
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3) Can Pardew relocate some of the magic?
In his first few games back at Selhurst Park, it looked like Alan Pardew was an actual magician, a controller of the spirit world who had harnessed his powers to make his team win a few games after the point-free slog of the previous few months under Neil Warnock. Dover were dealt with in the fuss-free manner you would expect, before three impressive league wins against Tottenham, Burnley and Southampton were recorded. However, after that they lost to Everton, snuck past Leicester then drew with Newcastle and were defeated by Liverpool, which are in themselves not necessarily a catastrophic set of results, but ones that could suggest that those initial victories were down to little more than the new manager bounce. Pardew at least has something closer to a full range of options available to him, with Yannick Bolasie theoretically available from the start and James McArthur back in the frame again. They face Arsenal, so a victory over Arsène Wenger’s side could be just the thing to convince everyone that Pardew’s tenure at Palace is a little more substantial. NM
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4) Bony’s City debut
While Swansea continue to adjust to life without Bony, the man himself will hopefully be making his debut for City against Newcastle United. The most attractive football that City have played under Manuel Pellegrini came during that heady spell when Sergio Agüero and Álvaro Negredo were wreaking havoc up front together in the first half of last season, yet their devastating partnership was broken up when the former tweaked a hamstring in the 5-1 win over Tottenham Hotspur last January and the latter aggravated a shoulder injury.
Negredo was a shadow of his normal rampaging self after that setback, culminating in City loaning him to Valencia last summer, yet neither Edin Dzeko nor Stevan Jovetic has been able to cement himself as Agüero’s regular partner. Dzeko made several vital contributions in the title run-in last season, but the Bosnian has not scored since September, while Jovetic’s days at City are numbered following the club’s decision to omit him from their Champions League squad.
That has made the champions too reliant on the brilliant Agüero, but the best striker in England has not been able to put together a sustained run of matches without eventually feeling that familiar twinge in his hamstrings, which is where Bony comes in. Bony should relieve the pressure on Agüero and if he hits the ground running, City could yet claw themselves back into the title race.
It will be interesting, however, to see how Bony and Agüero link up. Bony usually played as a lone striker for Swansea and some forwards fare better on their own. Negredo’s blend of power and intelligence was a wonderful foil for Agüero, but will Bony strike up the same understanding with the Argentinian? Will they have the right balance? In theory, Bony’s clever touch and Agüero’s buzzing movement will help them make space for each other, yet sometimes partnerships that look mouthwatering on paper – Wayne Rooney and Robin van Persie, for instance – do not work out. Alan Shearer and Teddy Sheringham was a better blend than Alan Shearer and Michael Owen. JS
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5) Can Chelsea get a bit of spark back?
To say they’re fairly comfortably the best team in the country, Chelsea have not looked awfully good in recent weeks. There was the defeat to Bradford in the FA Cup, a draw against Manchester City we could most charitably describe as “attritional”, unconvincing wins over Aston Villa and Everton before Tuesday night’s slog against Paris St-Germain. There’s nothing to panic over here of course, but José Mourinho’s side appear to have been devoid of a spark, a team not so much going through the motions as pausing to tread water in the middle of a long swim.
This is perhaps not a surprise when you consider the size of Chelsea’s squad – Mourinho prefers to work with a smaller group of players, but he currently has eight who have made 20 or more league starts this season, with another two on 19 and a couple of ever-presents. Is this starting to have an impact? The players themselves are too good to allow too many results to slip or for easy points to be squandered, but the cracks in the squad are beginning to show. Against PSG at least four of the starting lineup played while half-fit, while Diego Costa looked rusty after his time out through suspension. Mourinho doesn’t like rotation, and you would think a home game against Burnley would be the ideal time to give a few other players a go. Equally, though, they could do with an emphatic performance, a big win to give their season another bit of fizz. Juan Cuadrado could get a game, while it would be a surprise if Fàbregas started this one given his sluggishness in Paris. Whatever happens, Chelsea should win easily, but it would be more beneficial for their season if they did so in style. NM
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6) Short-term thinking can improve Ramsey’s long-term prospects
“If someone keeps us up now we’d be nuts to change him. But even if we don’t stay up, and we have to be real about it, I think Chris could still be the man that takes us to the promised land.” Tony Fernandes has been trying to motivate Chris Ramsey this week … if you ignore all the bits where he implied the interim QPR manager had been given the gig because he could not get his first choice just now, nobody else tickled his fancy and, well, Ramsey was kicking around anyway, so why not let him sit in the big chair for a bit? “It wasn’t a make-belief Tony Fernandes tweet,” said the Rangers chairman about his assertion that he had found a “dream manager” before Ramsey was appointed. “It was someone I was very keen on. Things conspired that in the end we felt we’d go with Chris. We spoke to about five people and no one felt right at the time.”
Still, it was at least encouraging for Ramsey that his future will seemingly be decided on performances, particularly given his first-hand experience of the alternative situation last season. Sherwood was never going to get the Tottenham job beyond last May no matter how well he and Ramsey did at White Hart Lane, so one imagines it will be refreshing to hear he has a chance of something more lasting. And things have started pretty well, Ramsey managing to halt the desperate away record QPR had under Harry Redknapp with victory at Sunderland. QPR looked doomed under Redknapp, so if Ramsey can get a tune out of them and keep them in the Premier League, then he will have well deserved a permanent job. NM
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7) A re-energised Southampton
There are fears that Southampton are showing signs of strain. It has been a bit of a grind for them since their win at Old Trafford last month. They have been knocked out of the FA Cup by Crystal Palace, Swansea smashed-and-grabbed their way to an unlikely victory at St Mary’s, they needed a last-minute goal from Sadio Mané to beat Queens Park Rangers and in their last match, they were blunted by a West Ham side that was effectively down to nine men following Adrián’s red card and Andy Carroll’s injury. Southampton have been disrupted by injuries and the lack of cover for Graziano Pellè in attack has left the Italian looking weary. Failing to sign another striker during the transfer window could prove a costly mistake. Yet Southampton’s exit from the FA Cup may have been a blessing in disguise. It meant that they had last weekend off and they should be refreshed when they host Liverpool, who faced Besiktas in the Europa League on Thursday night. Victory for Southampton would move them seven points clear of Brendan Rodgers’s improving side. JS
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8) Allardyce needs to bounce back
Sam Allardyce is under pressure again following West Ham’s collapse against West Brom in the FA Cup last Saturday. With Chelsea, City, Southampton and Tottenham already out, hopes were high for a proper cup run, but they were abysmal at The Hawthorns, flat from the first whistle, leggy, lifeless and well beaten by Tony Pulis’s side. It finished 4-0, it could have been worse and the disappointment of crashing out in that manner was enough for some disgruntled supporters to voice their disapproval of Allardyce in the away end. A video also emerged of the co-owner, David Sullivan, being confronted by a couple of fans outside the ground and, in that context, it is hardly a surprise that West Ham now seem unlikely to offer Allardyce a new contract when his current deal runs out at the end of the season. Yet it is not so long ago that Allardyce had West Ham riding high in the top four and, while they have not played well in the past month or so, he still has time to silence the critics and keep his job. There needs to be a vast improvement against Tottenham, though. JS
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9) What was Poyet’s open letter all about, eh?
Weird things, open letters. Particularly in the case of Gus Poyet, who penned one such missive to the Sunderland fans this week, a letter that it appeared nobody at the club had really read – or if they had, not terribly closely, given the number of uncorrected errors in it. Poyet’s rather rambling effort was ostensibly designed to get the Sunderland fans back on side after a tricky week in which he appeared to blame said fans and then the media for the under-performance of his side, when most people might prefer to point the finger at the manager and players who have lost their last two games to Bradford and QPR. “So let’s make sure that we don’t let anyone to break our relationship,” wrote Poyet, simultaneously trying to create some sort of bond between himself and the fans while also indicating that someone is trying to break that relationship, thus carving out a(nother) neat excuse for the next time Sunderland lose a game. One would think that the best way for a manager to create a relationship with the fans is not via pleas or platitudes, but by winning a few games. Three points at West Brom on Saturday will do more for Poyet’s popularity in Sunderland than any sort of daft open letter. NM
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10) Time for Everton to throw off the shackles
It was looking bleak for Everton when they lost 2-0 at Hull on New Year’s Day. Yet they have stabilised since then and it took a late goal from Willian for Chelsea to beat them last week. That was the first goal Everton had conceded in four matches and although they have only won once in 2015, Roberto Martínez has been flexible enough to place more emphasis on his defence. Everton have tightened up at the back and they are starting to cut out the errors. Yet they are still searching for the right balance, having scored once in their past four matches. The visit of Leicester City is an opportunity for them to play with more freedom. JS
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