Happy New Year!

Maybe in 2008 my teams will start winning again.

United followed their 4-0 cruise over Sunderland on Boxing Day (I think Roy Keane gets closer to an aneurysm with every game) with a sloppy, disjointed performance against West Ham, who seem to be one of their bogey teams. United were up 1-0 when Cristiano had the perfect opportunity to put the game away with a penalty, only to send his shot wide. The penalty miss seemed to shake up United, and West Ham bounced back to score twice in five minutes from set-pieces. And the loss means that Arsenal jumped ahead of them back into first place.

Liverpool, meanwhile, were completely unable to break down Man City's defence, with Richard Dunne putting on a masterclass in defending. as did Jamie Carragher at the other end of the pitch. They didn't play terribly, at least -- they actually applied more pressure as the game went on, although they left most of it for the last 10 minutes. Anyway, it was a pleasant change from the midweek game, where they looked like they only bothered for the first 15 minutes or so, until Fernando Torres scored, and after that they figured "Hey, the kid's pretty good. He doesn't need us, he can beat them all by himself." Forgetting, of course, that a one-goal lead is never exactly safe, even against Derby, which meant that they needed a last-minute lesson in Being Steven Gerrard to secure the win.

But the game of the week -- quite possibly the game of the year -- was Tottenham's absofuckinglutely insane 6-4 win over Reading. It was level at one goal each going into halftime, but that was followed by eight goals in the second half, including five in 10 minutes, saw Tottenham eventually come out on top after an unbelievable back-and-forth match. Also unbelievable: Jermain Defoe's hair, which I cannot find a picture of, but it appeared to be this random stripe of hair catty-cornered across his head. I have no idea why.

Results
Birmingham 1-1 Fulham
Chelsea 2-1 Newcastle
Derby 1-2 Blackburn
Everton 1-4 Arsenal
Manchester City 0-0 Liverpool
Portsmouth 0-1 Middlesbrough
Sunderland 3-1 Bolton
West Ham 2-1 Manchester United
Wigan 1-2 Aston Villa