Chris Hughton's Brighton have won the opening game of The Championship. They beat Forest 1-0 with Lua Lua getting the only goal.
Could be worse, we could be Sunderland. 3-0 down to Leicester after less than half an hour. Kaboul's debut doesn't seem to be going to plan, to put it mildly.
"As soon as Hazard feels the hands on the back, he gets his team a free kick." There’s a technical term for that. It’s called diving. Chelsea lucky to be a goal up at home. Thanks to an og. Is it Groundhog Day?
Courtois correctly red-carded for clipping. Terry yellow-carded for dissent, surprisingly. Gomis scores after creating the red card with a great run behind the Chelsea defenders. Great lofted pass from Shelvy.
They really are a bunch of outrageous cheaters and whiners, aren’t they? The good news is that Mourinho’s diatribe last year still seems to be backfiring. They’re the only top four team that don’t get gifted by refs at this point, and haven’t since Mourinho claimed, laughably, they were prejudiced the other way. My wife’s observation that Chelsea are old, and a number of people’s feeling that Swansea are quite a good team, both look accurate. After one game.
The downside to this early setback is that it'll probably send Mourinho into the market, as he won't have been impressed with that. Swansea will have mixed feelings, as it's a good result, but they could have easily won it in the 2nd half.
Petr Cech, what a debut! Arsenal have had an absolute shocker, big reality check for those thinking they'd win the title.
Thought Arsenal would demolish West Ham after the Hammers have spent the last month embarrassing themselves in Europa qualifying. I was so confident of it, I put Giroud, Cech and Walcott in my fantasy team haha. Football's a funny game.
Not sure this Arsenal keeper's good enough for the Premier League. They could do with bringing someone in while the window's open.
Ditto mate...well worth a **** score in the fantasy footie league to read the arsenal board at the moment and watching wenger do his victor meldrew impressions
How is Giroud still on the pitch? He was quite clearly knocked clean out and had to be rolled onto his side to make sure he didn't swallow his tongue! Concussions still not being taken seriously enough.
On a serious note, my concern with Cech was that he looked extremely good in a well-drilled, well organised side that are known for their defensive qualities. It's an entire other thing playing in the sticks when you have a back four and midfield that presses high up the pitch. He's not a sweeper 'keeper, so either our defence and midfield needs to drop slightly deeper or we put Ospina in goal because Cech will continue to look exposed if our defence performs like it did today.
I'm sure they'll get as much stick as we did for Lloris and he won't be allowed to play for a couple of weeks. Or not.
