A good win yesterday against Blackburn in what ended up being a pretty comfortable game. Senderos scored the first heading in a corner in the 3rd minute, and Adebayor ended it with a well taken goal in injury time. 2-0, job done, top of the league with a five point lead.

Adebayor’s hot scoring streak continues with his 11th goal in 2008 in only 8 games. He has averaged almost 1.4 goals a game this year!! I can guarantee you there is no better striking rate in Europe in 2008. I think his new song gives him confidence, he has scored in every game since the song was created. His 2nd goal was very well taken, showed how confident the guy has become.

Blackburn didn’t really trouble us, and were very toothless to be honest. Without Savage (who is now Derby’s captain), Dunn, Pederson, Samba, Nelson, Derbyshire, and a couple more, they were very tame. I think there were less fouls in that game than any other previous game against Blackburn, which gave us a chance to play our game and create chances.

Hleb dominated the game and was man of the match by far. Fabregas, Sagna, Flamini, and Adebayor also had good games. The biggest surprise was seeing Gilberto play as well as he did. I thought he was very sharp, missed a few passes but made some nice ones too, and stopped their game once or twice too. Hopefully the international game during the weekend with Brazil helped him a bit at least regain some of his lost confidence or self belief.

In all honesty, before this season started, I didn’t think that we will be able to challenge for a top two spot. I’ve never been convinced with Liverpool, so I firmly believed that our main challenge would be to maintain 3rd place. Throughout the season I have been expecting a downturn in result and still didn’t think we would win the title. This doesn’t mean I don’t believe our squad is good enough. On the contrary, I believe if we keep our players, we should be considered CL contenders every year in a year or two from now. It was just a matter of not having enough players who can cope with the pressure. Not many of our squad can say they have won much silverware in their career, that is the only reason I thought it would take another year or two for this young team to gel together and to mature.

After today’s win, my eyes are finally open to the possibility of winning the title. It is definitely not over yet, but we have good chance if we continue to do well. The winner will be determined mostly by our game away at Old Trafford on April 12th. Manchester United’s schedule looks to be easier than ours, especially with their Liverpool, Arsenal, and Villa games all being at home. We play Chelsea and United away, which are very important games in deciding the title. I think the winner needs to surpass the 90 point barrier considering the upcoming games.

Of our remaining 12 games, we have 5 at home and 7 away. Villa, Boro, Liverpool, Reading, and Everton will be played at home, and we really need maximum points from these to win the title. Away, we play Birmingham, Wigan, Chelsea, Bolton, Man Utd, Derby, and Sunderland. This will be a very close race to the title!

This is an excellent excel file created by Aidan O’Byrne to try and predict the premiership run-in by predicting the results.

Premiership title run-in calculator

(right click and save)

Tonight we play Blackburn at home in an opportunity to extend our lead of the premiership after a great footballing weekend for us so far. Yesterday saw Chelsea held to a mind numbing 0-0 draw at home against Liverpool, and more importantly, Manchester United suffered their first loss at home this season. To make things worse for them, it was a local derby against Manchester City, and it was their first loss to them in Old Trafford in 34 years! This loss also broke their 13 match winning streak, which is their longest in 103 years!

Why am I mentioning this? Why should we care? Because it shows how good we have become. Even with a run of 13 winning games their best in a century, we are still leading the premiership! Arsene Wenger also proved himself a master in psychological warfare in matching Ferguson’s usual mind games when he said only 12 days ago about their one day trip to Saudi for a friendly:

“You can suffer in the next game as you travel, you come back, you need time to adjust and you switch off when you are away to a different country. So the focus could go a little bit and you can suffer.”

He was proven right with their recent performances and this result also must make Wenger’s words resonate somewhere in the back of Ferguson’s mind.

The day just got better later with the African Cup of Nations final ending in a very convincing win for Egypt, who proved to be the best team in the tournament by far. That Aboutrika guy is incredible, a midfielder with 81 goals in 128 games for Al-Ahly, and 10 in 33 for Egypt. He is a god to most Ahly fans and Egyptians fans overall, he was the main reason Al-Ahly went undefeated in 55 games in all competitions, a streak that lasted a year and half where they won everything possible, including the domestic league and cup and the African champions league. Aboutrika is a mix of Pires/Riquelme, not blessed with speed or strength, but incredible vision and reading of the game. His problem is his loyalty to his club, which is a shame since we don’t get to watch him against top competition continuously, and at 29, its hard seeing him go and start a career abroad.

Anyway I got sidetracked there, it was a good game with the only negative being Song’s injury which meant he had to limp off in the early minutes and was subbed. If he was playing, the game would have been different, I can guarantee that! He has been in excellent form for Cameroon like I said in my last post, and has actually been selected in the best African XI from the tournament. And just as a reminder, he is ONLY 20 years old!

Now to the game at hand tonight against Blackburn. We need to make up for the game we drew at Ewood Park earlier in the season, where Lehmann practically ended his career at Arsenal with a mistake from Dunn’s goal. It seems though that he will get a chance to redeem himself today with Almunia being sick. Our injury list is long and still hazy in terms of who might be fit just before the match. Alongside Almunia, at a worst case scenario, we could miss Flamini, Senderos, Rosicky, Djourou, Van Persie, Eboue, Toure, Song, Denilson, and Diaby. Hopefully from now till game time, we’ll have a few names back, hopefully Flamini being one of them.

Blackburn’s squad isn’t having any better luck for this game with their missing players. Players expected to be out through injury or suspension include Nelson, Samba, Dunn, and Pederson. Derbyshire might also miss the game with his girlfriend expecting to give birth anytime. Personally, I am glad that Samba and Pederson are out. Samba is a solid defenders who has proven his strength against us more than once, and Pederson can really whip in some great crosses. This still leaves them with Bentley, who is as good if not better in crossing than Pederson. On the receiving end of the crosses is the very dangerous Santa Cruz, who is very dangerous in the air, and is proving to be one of the buys of the season.

I expect alot of crosses and long shots from Blackburn, which means Gallas needs to be very alert, and it also means that if Toure is not available, Gilberto will more likely replace him instead of Hoyte, purely because of the height advantage. Hoyte has proven himself to be a very capable CB when he had to play in that position, and I personally think he plays better as a CB than he does as a RB, but its not a fair judgment since he only played there a couple of times.