F365 Opinion

Just how important will Sam Vokes' shocking miss prove to be?...

Winners

The League Leaders
A one-man team? Though observers of their relatively poor display at Wolves would argue otherwise, the statistics declare that Manchester United cope just fine, if not better, without Wayne Rooney.

United have won the last eight matches he has missed - before Saturday, the only league match he was absent from this season was with October's 2-1 win over Bolton - and they've lost just six of the 61 games he has sat out since his arrival at Old Trafford in August 2004. It's a statistic that perhaps only proves that statistics can be misleading, but United's win percentage is actually slightly higher for the matches Rooney has missed than it is for the games he has played in.


Arsenal
Arsenal's league record since March 2009 excluding games against the top two:

Played 34, Won 27, Lost 2, Drawn 5, Scored 95, Conceded 30.


Theo Walcott
"Today's Daily Mirror, by the way, includes another column titled 'Arsenal fans need to lay off Theo Walcott'. But do they? Last week, we suggested that one of the reasons Walcott has not improved since 2006 might be that his World Cup call-up fostered complacency and a belief that he had already 'made it'. That would perhaps explain why his game has stood still despite his incredible pace. Some negative attention might do him the world of good - especially if it motivates him into putting in some extra hours on the training ground learning how to cross a ball" - Whinging & Whining, February 23.

Can we claim an assist?


West Ham's Bogey Club
Wanderers' win was their sixth in a row against the Hammers.


Kevin Davies
Nobody would ever mention his lack of pace if he could play against West Ham more than twice a season: In Davies' last ten Premier League outings against the Hammers, he has scored eight times. In all other league matches, he averages a goal every four-and-a-half outings.


Rio Ferdinand
Ferdinand's return at Wolves was just his seventh league start of the season - Ledley King, not incidentally, has made twice as many - and the first game he has started alongside Nemanja Vidic since October.


Paul Scholes
With his winner at Wolves, Scholes followed the feats of Ryan Giggs and Wayne Rooney by becoming the third United player this season to reach the landmark of one hundred Premier League goals.

In full, the nineteen players (with the number of games required in brackets) to have scored a ton are: Alan Shearer (124), Thierry Henry (160), Ian Wright (173), Robbie Fowler (175), Les Ferdinand (175), Andy Cole (185), Michael Owen (185), Jimmy Hasselbaink (200), Rooney (247),Dwight Yorke (254), Teddy Sheringham (254), Matthew Le Tissier (254), Robbie Keane (255), Nicholas Anelka (258), Dion Dublin (271), Emile Heskey (407), Frank Lampard (414), Scholes (436), Giggs (534).


Aston Villa
Progression in the FA Cup adds another game to Villa's hectic schedule but that complication is outweighed by the removal of the monkey that was their record of failing to win a match in March since 2006. However, even after their comeback win at Reading, Villa could be forgiven for hankering for the start of April: the rest of this month finds them playing on the 13th, 16th, 20th, 24th and 27th.


Everton
Since Christmas, the Toffees have won all seven of their home league fixtures at a combined score of 16-3, but they would, we suspect, give up any of those victories for a replay of their FA Cup tie against Birmingham at the end of January. At this rate, and the win over Hull was their biggest since the 7-1 humiliation of Sunderland in November 2007, Everton could yet make their defeat to Brum the cup shock of the season *.


Mikel Arteta
A real class act. He can't get into Spain's squad but he would be a first-choice pick in a team comprised of non-big four Premier League players.


Jack Rodwell
Wonder out loud where Rodwell's future will be and you're likely to be told "Chelsea", "Old Trafford' or "you're talking to yourself again" in response. Yet the alternative debate it might spark is about the location of his best position. Rodwell looks capable of playing in any number of roles - centre half, defensive midfielder, offensive midfielder. It's a versatility born of considerable talent and it's that combination that means he has the potential to perform on any of football's grandest stages.


Losers

Chris Waddle
Only a man armed with a sizeable football brain could inform a TV audience of millions that Paul Scholes' goal was "not what Wolves wanted". Even Theo Walcott might have known that without being told.


Chelsea
Less than a month ago, they were nine points clear of Arsenal and held a two-point advantage over Manchester United despite playing a game less. For the moment, the erosion of that advantage is aggravating rather than alarming, but of considerable concern should be the reports this weekend that Michael Essien will not play again this season. The significance of his absence should not be underestimated.


Aaron Ramsey
It took just one week before it became official: The villain of the piece is not the-two-broken-legs-in-three-years Ryan Shawcross but the leg-broken-in-two-places Ramsey. What a terrible fellow he is and all credit to the Daily Mail for spotting it. According to their backpage lead on Saturday, his failure to mention Shawcross in Friday's press release 'could leave a lingering sense of bad feeling between the two clubs'. And there, no doubt, was the in-plaster Ramsey thinking he was the injured party and his snapped leg might be the cause of any ill feeling.


Arsenal's Medical Team
Arsene Wenger's myopic critics have been so fevered in their determination to denounce his alleged paranoia that they've managed to miss the glaring weakness in his complaints against the tackles that have ruled out Kieran Gibbs and Aaron Ramsey for the rest of the season. Of far greater harm to their campaign has been the appalling number of muscle strains they've suffered and just a tiny fraction of the 60-odd injuries they've reported since August have been caused by the excess of their opponents (it's also the case that, before Ramsey, the last Arsenal player to have his leg broken was Samir Nasri on the first day of pre-season training following some sort of clash with Abou Diaby).

On Saturday night, Wenger described Fabregas' hamstring problem as "a little one", but he has been forced off the field with the same complaint on four different occasions since the season's start - against Portsmouth, Burnley away, Villa and now Burnley at home - which surely adds up to a serious matter.

Arsenal should be able to cope without Ramsey for a few months and they should be able to cope without Fabregas against Porto in midweek. But it's the muscle injuries currently sidelining William Gallas, Johan Djourou and Sol Campbell which means that only Thomas Vermaelen's ever-present status this term stood between Wenger having to field Mikael Silvestre alongside Armand Traore in the centre of his defence this weekend.


Nicklas Bendtner
The good news is that he is frequently in the right position at the right time. The bad is that his failure to hit the target is habitual.


Wayne Rooney
Did none of the assembled hacks spot the obvious contradiction or did fear silence them? It was certainly curious that Sir Alex Ferguson's irritation, expressed at his press conference on Friday, over Wayne Rooney's midweek appearance for England went unchallenged despite his admission, made just minutes before, that "I have not played Michael Owen enough".

Hindsight makes for a flawless manager but it also argues that Ferguson should have rested Rooney for at least one of the home encounters played this year against Burnley, Hull, Portsmouth or West Ham. Nor can the United boss retort that he was short of striking alternatives for those games: Either or both Dimi Berbatov and Owen were substitutes for every one.


Darren Fletcher
Rooney's over-use is all the more peculiar given that Ferguson constantly rotates his midfield and regularly rests his premier central midfielder. Certainly when his schedule is compared to that of the midfielders he aspires to be rated alongside, Fletcher has it easy. Putting his feet up as an unused substitute against Wolves, the Scot's omission meant that he has made fewer league starts than Cesc Fabregas, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard this term. That was also two-thirds true of last season when Fletcher started 25 games, Fabregas 22, Lampard 37 and Gerrard 30.

A more energetic type of midfielder than his rivals, it makes logical sense that he requires a breather more often. But it's the ability of Fabregas, Gerrard and Lampard to churn out performance-days-after-previous performance for weeks and months at an end that puts them on a higher plane. It's not a disparagement of Fletcher but a rarely-made observation that the three outstanding performances of his career - against Arsenal in the cup in 2008, against Chelsea last January, and Man City in September - occurred after rests of three weeks, thirteen days, and eight days respectively.


Mame Biram Diouf
With the real thing also currently sidelined, United could do with Diouf emerging as this year's Federico Macheda. Alas, his error-strewn cameo at Molineux was somewhat inauspicious and his appalling headed misdirection from six yards would have cost the champions a couple of points if only Sam Vokes wasn't equally inaccurate.


Sam Vokes
He'll never have a better chance to score a Premier League goal. And after that miss, he might not ever have another opportunity.


Hull City
Is last season, when Hull won just one of their last twenty-two games, repeating itself? This time around, they've won just game since the end of November and once again may have to rely on the ineptitude of others for salvation.


Burnley
With an embarrassing return of Played 15, Drawn 1, Lost 14, the Clarets have the worst away record of any league side in England. The next-worst belongs to the mighty Gillingham, Darlington and Peterborough who have all collected a relatively-mammoth four points on their travels this term.

But don't write off Burnley, at least not until the results are in from their back-to-back home games against Stoke and Wolves later this week.


West Ham
Back in the mire with their next two matches at the homes of Chelsea and Arsenal.


Fulham
Their congested fixture list is turning into a pile-up. Between now and April 2, the already over-worked Cottagers must play another seven games.


Phil Dowd
Should he referee another Aston Villa game this season? According to reports, he won't be. But if that's the case, then isn't it also mandatory that he is barred from refereeing another Manchester United fixture? And if that's agreed upon, and such a precedent is set, then how long before Bolton demand that Mark Clattenburg is no longer permitted to take charge of one of their games? Or Liverpool request that they are kept away from Lee Mason? And so on and so on.

Every referee has made a mistake and every team has at least one hard-luck story to tell. The idea of sparing Villa and the discredited Dowd has obvious appeal but its long-term potential repercussions should be avoided. If the Premier League referees' department had any backbone, and faith in their employee, they'd appoint him for Villa's trip to Wigan next week.

Pete Gill

* With the exception of Man United 0 Leeds 1, of course.