Premiership Weekend Roundup: February 4-5

Chelsea 2 - 0 Liverpool

• Having the second-best defence in the league is great, but you're never going to win games if you are completely incapable of scoring goals. Having Peter Crouch on his own up front is pretty much useless, because it leaves him with nobody to knock the ball down to, and he's no good on set plays either -- just getting your head on the ball is not enough if you can't put it in the net.
  
• My understanding of zonal marking on set plays is admittedly shaky. But somehow I don't think it involves every single defender rushing out at the ball, leaving only the two men on the posts to mark the three men you've left wide open in the box.
  
• Okay, yes, you can't raise your hands to another player, you know you're going to get sent off. But damn, I can't entirely blame Pepe Reina for that -- god knows I've wanted to smack Arjen Robben more than once myself, just for being such a whiny little bitch (witness the way he went down like he'd been shot). Anyone know if he got booked for the tackle on Gudjohnsen as well, or was it just a straight red?
  
• Man of the Match: The wee linesman who kept flagging Chelsea offside in the first half. If only he'd been on that side of the pitch in the second half.

Manchester United 4 - 2 Fulham
Yet another "Who needs a central midfield?" performance from United. Except that this week they've decided to complement that with a complete absence of defence. All attack, all the time! Between this and the midweek game against Blackburn, they've scored seven goals. Fantastic. But they've also conceded six goals in those two games, which is, um, not so good. And I can't even blame it all on Mikael Silvestre, hard as I might try. I suppose it doesn't help that Sir Alex has been shifting players in and out of the back line all season, but they've got to get it together, especially with Rio out for another two games.

Birmingham 0 - 2 Arsenal
An interesting match-up: the team that pulled off a draw with Liverpool in midweek, versus the Arsenal youth team plus Thierry Henry. Birmingham had a player sent off for the second week in a row, and they probably could have used an own-goal or two to help them out. Arsenal, meanwhile, did a good job of showing that they don't need Sol Campbell (and just what the hell is wrong with him, anyway?).

Bolton 1 - 1 Wigan
This game put me to sleep. Literally. And then I had to drag myself out to a game of my own, against a team that had clearly spent too much time watching Bolton and whose only strategy was to whack the ball up to their big centre forward. And we lost. Ugh.

Other results
Tottenham 3 - 1 Charlton
Everton 1 - 0 Manchester City
Middlesbrough 0 - 4 Aston Villa
Newcastle 2 - 0 Portsmouth (shut up, Alan Shearer)
West Brom 2 - 0 Blackburn
West Ham 2 - 0 Sunderland