Premier League 2011, Week 14: 10-Man Liverpool Fall To Fulham

With only ten men, Liverpool found it difficult to attack - about all they managed in the final few minutes was to injury Murphy, whose loss (depending on the severity) will take some of the gloss off a big 1-0 win for Fulham. If they had played sensibly with eleven, Liverpool would have had the three points. As it was, they didn’t.

It’s also been really stupid. Almost every chance has come as the direct result of a player making an awful mistake (typically Bryan Ruiz, who is busy making everyone who ever thought he was good look very silly right now). Both teams are playing badly, and if either one of them would stop making fundamental errors in both decision making and execution, they’d absolutely slaughter the other.

So... keep up the entertainment, I suppose.

Liverpool lineup (4-4-2): Reina; Enrique, Agger, Skrtel, Johnson; Bellamy, Adam, Spearing, Henderson; Carroll, Suarez

Fulham lineup (4-4-2): Schwarzer; J. Riise, Senderos, Hangeland, Kelly; Dembele, Murphy, Etuhu, Dempsey; Ruiz, Zamora

Game Date / Time: Monday, December 6. 3:00 pm ET, 8:00 pm GMT

Venue: Craven Cottage, London, England

To cap off a rather disappointing day for Sunderland, they had two players clean through at the very end of injury time when Wolves Ahmed Elmohamady took advantage of a botched Wolves offside trap on a free kick. With a simple square pass to Bendter the only thing preventing the visitors going level, the linesman called the whole thing back for an imaginary offside, Phil Dowd blew the whistle, and the game was done.

Martin O’Neill has some work to do.

Perhaps Lee Mason was feeling a certain amount of antipathy towards the home fans as a result of their predictably partisan behaviour, because he then proceeded to referee the rest of the match as though he’d never heard of the sport before. Clear fouls weren’t called for Everton. Phantom ones were given to Stoke. Apostolos Velios was given a headlock in the penalty area - apparently legal under the glorious reign of Lee Mason - and forced to try a bizarre scissor kick to make contact with a cross.

It’d be tempting to say that the game was diminished by all the injuries, but it probably wasn’t - it’s difficult to see any of the above having much of an impact on the match had they not gone off, because nobody else really bothered playing. One United had gone 1-0 up in the 20th minute, when Jones volleyed Nani’s sidefooted cross past a helpless Given, they stopped looking like an attacking force, playing stodgy, boring football for most of the rest of the game. Villa, for their part, were rubbish throughout, and a late surge forward as Alex McLeish’s side tried to at least pretend they knew how to attack wasn’t enough to put any sort of shine on an abject performance.

With Newcastle United sustaining their worst loss of the season to date with a 3-0 home defeat against Chelsea that saw the Magpies dropping out of the Premier League places, it’s a little cruel of fate to drop even more bad news on a club that managed to start the season so brightly. But bad news has been delivered regardless: Steven Taylor, who’s been a commanding presence at centre back all season long, has picked up an Achilles injury and... well, it doesn’t look good.

The prognosis for the defender is currently unclear, with Sky reporting that he could be out of action for as little(!) as six weeks but also that there are real fears that he won’t return this season. If Taylor does go down for an extended period of time, that’s terrible news for Newcastle, whose success has been built on a strong central partnership between Taylor and Fabricio Coloccini, who was also injured (albeit less seriously) during the Chelsea game. Even in a best case scenario for Alam Pardew, he’s going to have to pick up a centre half in the January transfer window, because fielding James Perch in the middle of the defence is one way to concede far more goals than the team can afford.

Having made sure all was safe, the 35-year-old goalkeeper collapsed in pain, clutching his left hamstring. Brad Guzen immediately began warming, and the Republic of Ireland international was carried off the pitch (where the stretcher was I’m not really sure) and replaced by his American backup.

The 23-year-old was forced onto a stretcher and it looks like a serious problem - he caught his left foot on the turf and twisted it in a really painful-looking way. We won’t know how bad that is until the doctors take a look, of course, but that looked like it could easily have been ligament damage. Hopefully it’s just a twist.

The second half was a similar story - it was the Yakubu show once again with Swansea completely unable to control the big man. Another header from another corner made it 3-1 before Luke Moore pulled a goal back. There was no comeback on the cards, however, mostly because of Yakubu, who managed to get Joe Allen sent off before converting a penalty (earned by Simon Vukcevic) to restore the two goal cushion. The match would finish 4-2, and that’s a big result for Steve Kean and company, who manage to haul themselves up to 18th place.

For more around the Premier League, including live coverage of this week’s action, check out our Premier League Week 14 StoryStream. For more on the two teams, check out Chelsea FC blog We Ain’t Got No History and Newcastle United blog Coming Home Newcastle. For more across the world of football, follow @SBNationSoccer on twitter.

It’s been a wild 45 minutes between Newcastle United and Chelsea. It should have produced about six goals and two red cards. Instead there has been just one goal and no red cards, but that hasn’t made the game any less fun. Chelsea lead by a score of 1-0 at halftime in an absolute thriller, and if the first half is any indication, there will be more goals in this one.

For more around the Premier League, including live coverage of this week’s action, check out our Premier League Week 14 StoryStream. For more on the two teams, check out Chelsea FC blog We Ain’t Got No History and Newcastle United blog Coming Home Newcastle. For more across the world of football, follow @SBNationSoccer on twitter.

Chelsea lineup (4-3-3): Cech; Ivanovic, D. Luiz, Terry, Cole; Ramires, Romeu, Lampard; Sturridge, Drogba, Mata

Substitutes: Turnbull, Bertrand, Bosingwa, Meireles, Malouda, Kalou, Torres

Note: Unless otherwise noted, all explanations are by Gene Um

5. Liverpool FC - The past two weekends have seen Liverpool hold up against City at Anfield and defeat Chelsea 2-1 away at Stamford Bridge. However, manager Kenny Dalglish’s Champions League qualification ambitions were dealt a major blow when it was announced that influential holding-midfielder Lucas Leiva would miss the remainder of the season after tearing his ACL.