Loïc Rémy is about to receive his reward, Francis Coquelin continues to impress for Arsenal and Tottenham’s defence remains a concern for Mauricio Pochettino
From left: Loïc Rémy, Francis Coquelin, Kyle Walker battles with Jamie Vardy and Graziano Pellè. Photograph: Rex/IPS/Action/BPI
1) Carrick revels in mastery of the understated
Even as low key, understated midfield janitorial performances go, it was a low key understated showing from Michael Carrick at Anfield. Carrick rarely broke into a run, made no tackles, blocked no shots, completed a routinely excellent 86% of his passes and was robbed by a hard-pressing Liverpool midfield in the buildup to Daniel Sturridge’s goal. And yet Carrick was still a crucial part of United’s win against a quicker, younger fluid Liverpool team that played with great spirit but found itself picked off by opponents who won the big points and who had, in Carrick, still the most effective deep-lying English playmaker of his generation and a slow-burn craftsman who simply makes his teams work.
It is unsurprising given his own love of the conductor-midfielder type that Carrick has been a feature of Louis van Gaal’s more settled teams of late. He has been a low-fi favourite of each of all three of his United managers and a finely-grooved component of all the best teams of his time at the club. Plus, Carrick is of course a distinctly Van Gaal-ish kind of player: an expert, unhurried manipulator of the ball, whose brain has always ticked over at a higher rate of revs than his legs. United have now lost seven times this season, only one of those when Carrick has started. With him in the team they average 2.3 points per game; without him that falls to 1.6. His role is simple: pass and move (slowly) take the ball in tight areas and keep it moving, and cover diligently in defence. The only real issue with Carrick is whether he can keep moving (just) long enough to play through that one-year contract extension and help the process trainer bed in his rhythms and methods. Sixteen years, 13 major honours and 31 England caps (fewer than Shaun Wright-Phillips) on from his debut for West Ham, Carrick remains a significant low-fi force. Barney Ronay
2) Mourinho set to reward Rémy for his patience
José Mourinho was indebted to Loïc Rémy for maintaining Chelsea’s healthy position atop the Premier League with the winning goal at the KC Stadium and the Frenchman may be repaid with a greater number of starts during the season run-in. A dozen of Rémy’s 15 league appearances for the London club, as was the case at the KC Stadium, have come from the bench. But with Diego Costa’s habitual hamstring trouble resurfacing, it may open up opportunities the other side of next week’s international break. “Probably, he deserves more than what I give him. Not many times but, sometimes, a coach can feel that he owes something to a player and with Rémy that’s the case. I feel I owe him something. He never complains,” said Mourinho, after Rémy made it four goals in as many appearances against Hull, following three for Newcastle last season. Costa has, according to Mourinho: “Fifteen days rest … with Chelsea.” It is anticipated, however, that he will report for duty with Spain later this week. Richard Gibson
3) Coquelin is keeping Arsenal in the title race
Since returning from a loan stint at Charlton Athletic in December, Francis Coquelin has shone for Arsène Wenger’s side. Without Coquelin to break up Newcastle’s attacks, Arsenal could easily have lost on Saturday. Granted, he made a few little errors as Newcastle increasingly pressed high up the pitch but the way in which he recovered from such minor mistakes spoke volumes about a 23-year-old who promises to become as important at the Emirates as Patrick Vieira once was at Highbury. Coquelin’s is a key position and he is proving to be one of its best exponents in the Premier League. Louise Taylor
4) Tottenham’s defensive deficiencies laid bare
Harry Kane dominated the news agenda with his hat-trick in Tottenham Hotspur’s 4-3 win over Leicester City but his team were far from comfortable and the blame, not for the first time, could be laid at their defence. One of the images of the afternoon was provided when Mauricio Pochettino saw red upon Leicester’s third goal – the Tottenham manager hurled his water bottle in fury – but the frustration had been building. Kyle Walker’s poor positional play was highlighted by Phil Neville on Match of the Day and, once again, he was made to look defensively suspect but he was not alone. Jan Vertonghen was blocked off too easily when Wes Morgan headed Leicester’s second while he was bullied by David Nugent on the third. Tottenham’s high line can lead to them looking vulnerable and Pochettino admitted that the balance between attack and defence was proving troublesome.
“When we conceded for 2-1, our full-backs are up and we tried to score [again],” Pochettino said. “This is our mentality and we need to keep this because we are Tottenham and we need to give our supporters exciting football. But we need to try to get more balance.”
It probably did not help that the goalkeeper, Hugo Lloris, was forced off with a knee injury in the early running but it was shocking to see how Tottenham allowed Leicester back into the game after Kane’s first two goals. Only four teams have conceded more than Tottenham in the Premier League this season and three of them are in the relegation places. Pochettino said that the relative youth of his defenders had to be considered but the former Argentina centre-half is not blind to the problems. David Hytner
5) Bony quickens Manchester City’s tempo
Wilfried Bony matched his calm finish in Saturday’s 3-0 win over West Bromwich Albion by providing a new dimension to Manchester City. Partnering Sergio Agüero in Manuel Pellegrini’s oft-seen 4-2-2-2, Bony occasionally dropped deep to be the side’s No10 and his ability to turn and run at the visiting defence quickened City’s play. This has been a problem for Manchester City: a lack of pace when moving the ball. The other boon for the champions is that Bony linked impressively with Agüero to suggest a new pairing that could return City to the goalscoring form of last season. As Pellegrini said: “I think always good players can play together. Last year we played the most amount of games with two strikers and we scored 158 goals. They are two good players.” Jamie Jackson
6) Allardyce should not be criticised for recent slump
West Ham dared to dream at Christmas, but Sam Allardyce knew better. “We were talking about finishing top four even though we knew it wouldn’t happen,” West Ham’s manager said and, sure enough, results began to slide after the turn of the year. Although the performances were often impressive, particularly against Manchester United, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur, West Ham stopped winning and they slipped out of contention for a European place, while the 4-0 defeat to West Brom in the FA Cup did not do Allardyce any favours. His hopes of getting a new contract at the end of the season remain in the balance.
Yet the rush to criticise Allardyce whenever West Ham’s form dips has become tedious. He is a good manager, he has the support of the dressing room and the margins between success and failure have been tight. “Performances have been very near to victories,” Allardyce said. “We would have had accolades had we held on to victory against Manchester United and Tottenham. We’d have still been eulogising about our season because we’d have beaten Manchester United, Tottenham, Liverpool and Manchester City.”
Allardyce has not got everything right this season. The diamond formation that worked so well in the first half of the season has sometimes been replaced with a more clunky 4-5-1 formation, which does not bring the best out of Stewart Downing, and he has not always made the right substitutions, particularly when he replaced Mark Noble with Carlton Cole when West Ham were leading 2-0 at White Hart Lane.
Overall, though, Allardyce has done his job well and he was right to point out that West Ham have suffered because of injuries. Their squad is not the biggest. “We have won today without Winston Reid, James Tomkins, Andy Carroll and Enner Valencia,” Allardyce said. “You tell me anybody else that has four regular players missing that would have got results?”
Diafra Sakho’s late winner against Sunderland had just secured West Ham’s first league win since 18 January and Allardyce is justified if he thinks that he deserves more respect. West Ham have progressed under him and regardless of what happens in their final eight matches, it has been a successful campaign for Allardyce’s side. Jacob Steinberg
7) Time for Swansea to get a bit of credit
Graziano Pellè is without a league goal since 20 December after a blistering start to his Premier League career.
It was easy to write Swansea off at the start of the season – and many people did – with questions being asked about how Garry Monk would cope in his first full season in charge. The fact that Swansea sit eighth in the table on 43 points and need only five more points from their remaining eight games to finish with their highest ever Premier League point total suggests things have not gone too badly. Monk deserves credit. He is a workaholic and the rewards are there for all to see.Saturday’s 1-0 win at Aston Villa was Swansea’s 11th clean sheet of the season – more than Manchester City and Arsenal have managed – while at the other end of the pitch they remain a joy to watch. Eyebrows were raised when Michel Vorm was sold to Tottenham Hotspur but Lukasz Fabianski has been a spectacular success and to get Gylfi Sigurdsson as part of the deal that saw Ben Davies move to Spurs was a masterstroke. Ki Sung-yueng is flourishing under Monk, after being discarded by Michael Laudrup, Jefferson Montero has shown flashes of brilliance and Federico Fernández looks a class act at centre-half. The big test in the summer will be whether they can find a replacement for Wilfried Bony, but that is a problem for another day. For now Swansea are sitting pretty. Stuart James
8) Pellè’s problems in front of goal a growing concern for Southampton
Kelvin Davis’s heroics attracted most of the attention but had the substitute goalkeeper not been able to deny a succession of Burnley chances, focus would have settled on a glaring miss by Graziano Pellè three minutes before the break and at a time when Southampton’s lead looked distinctly flimsy. The forward settled into English football seamlessly following his £8m move from Feyenoord, scoring 10 goals in his first 13 games for his new club. He has been becalmed since Christmas though, without a league goal since 20 December, and his snatched effort that hit the bar from six yards out spoke volumes about a striker short of confidence. Prior to Saturday’s win, Ronald Koeman’s side had scored just three goals in seven games and their goals against Burnley – Shane Long’s effort was set up by two fortunate deflections and was followed by Jason Shackell’s own-goal – hardly spoke of a side bristling with goal threat. Koeman’s team must regain their eye for goal if they are to avoid squandering the great progress they have made this season and the manager must decide if Pellè remains the man to shoulder that responsibility.
9) Low survival threshold unlikely to comfort QPR
Forty points is traditionally hailed as the tally that should ensure Premier League survival but usually less will do: in fact, in the last decade, Wolverhampton Wanderers are the only team who finished 17th in the table and actually reached 40 points. West Bromwich Albion stayed up in 2005 with just 34 points and the Queens Park Rangers manager Chris Ramsey evidently thinks that record low could be enough this season too, as he says that four wins from his side’s remaining eight matches could lift them out of trouble. He is probably right. Unfortunately for him, although they fought hard against Everton, Rangers still showed no sign of the quality needed to win half the matches they have left. Paul Doyle
10) Murray looks mint in Palace’s attack
Glenn Murray is not a fashionable forward. There are strikers in the Premier League – heck, even at Crystal Palace – that are quicker and have more tricks up their sleeve than the 31-year-old. But Murray has a masterful understanding of his own limitations and his attributes – a dogged willingness to run himself into the ground, his spacial awareness and ability to bring in others, canny finishing – have never seemed better. Murray’s goals and Wilfried Zaha’s dazzling feet fired Palace into the Premier League in 2013 and it is no surprise to see that as Murray has regained a starting berth, Zaha has also shone. The two fed off each other and both scored on Saturday against Stoke, with Murray providing the assist for Zaha’s strike. Injured for the majority of last season, he was loaned to Reading with a view to a permanent transfer at the beginning of this campaign. Now, he is once again among Palace’s most important players. Michael Butler
