Gameweek 22 – ‘I Am Champion’

Woot woot, happy Monday everyone and the Premier League table continues to evolve into one of the most interesting for some time with Manchester United once again sitting pretty at the top after a simply breath-taking showing late Saturday afternoon against the hapless Newcastle. By now I’m sure everyone’s seen or heard about it so I won’t waste your time waxing lyrical, but suffice to say they look better equipped than even 1999 to mount a serious Treble challenge at the moment. Arsenal’s slip up against Birmingham meanwhile lets the moderately entertaining Chelsea back into the frame after they played Spurs off the park at Stamford Bridge. Liverpool needed Fernando Torres to save them yet again after they were dismal at the Roverside, allowing Everton and Aston Villa to mount more pressure on them for the final European qualification spot.

Down at the other end of the table, good wins for Wigan and Sunderland improved their chances of staying afloat, while Derby, Bolton and Fulham look in real danger due to squads that simply are not good enough to compete week in, week out at this level…

Premier League Team of the Week (based on OPTA stats, Fantasypremierleague.com ratings and my own expert eye):

Keeper – Tim Howard (clean sheet and a couple of vital saves late on)

Defence – Stephen Warnock (gave Bolton nothing all game), Joleon Lescott (superb for not the first time this year), Juliano Belletti (another wondergoal from the Brazilian), Rio Ferdinand (pick of the Ferdinands this week as both were on the scoresheet)

Midfield – Christiano Ronaldo (what more is there to say?), Kieran Richardson (was the difference again for Roy Keane’s men), Ashley Young (cracking wingplay and more set-piece perfection)

Up Top – Carlos Tevez (sublime interplay with Rooney and brace for the season), John Carew (excellent display from the big chap), Dean Ashton (starting to look nearly back to his best, despite the hair)

Weekly Awards:

Goal of the Week – Juliano Belletti unleashes his second samb-astic (samba-tastic?) long range missle of the year -

Nutmeg of the Week – Wayne Rooney on part-time footballer, full-time joke, Jose Enrique at Old Trafford.

Save of the Week – Double save off the line by defender Steven Taylor to show yet again that he seems to be the only one at Newcastle with any idea what’s going on.

Skill of the Week – Shaun Wright-Phillips’ backheel to tee up Anelka for his first shot at goal in a Chelsea shirt, remarkably kept out by Spurs keeper Cerny.

Gaffe of the Week – Shay Given expertly plants his clearance straight into Capaca’s nuts to gift Tevez his first.

Miss of the Week – The normally lethal Eduardo glances his header straight into Taylor’s arms from 4 yards out in a frustrating afternoon at the Emarites.

Coolest Potential Rap Duo (should their careers go down the pan any time soon) of the Week – Little and large Villa gangstas John Carew and Gabriel Agbonlahor could definitely find a niche, with Big John obviously rhyming in his native Norweigan for extra confusion. I can also see Ashley Young guesting with some beatbox shit in the background too, if he can keep stay off the webcam that is…

Speculative Effort of the Week – Kieran Richardson smells his hat-trick and only the bar denies him a 25 yard wondergoal to complete it.

Nearest Lampard came to Contributing…er, of the Week – It’s too hard to say whether Frank’s injured or playing or even dead these days so let’s just say that if he was on, he was great, if not, Chelsea desperately missed his influence.

ASBO of the Week – The sharp-nosed engine room that is Lee Carsley did his best to wreck “most beautiful man in Croatia” Corluka’s leg in a nasty studs up challenge at Goodison.

Supersub of the Week – Big performance by out-of-favour Jason Roberts to win Blackburn the game, caused many problems and sealed victory with a great solo goal.

Sniper-on-the-roof of the Week – Ronaldo took a bullet to the shoulder as he went over Steven’s Taylor’s completely motionless planted leg early in the first half at Old Trafford.

Controversy of the Week – Michael Owen was clearly onside as he slotted the ball past van der Sar in the dying minutes of the goalless first half. Would that have changed the game, or would it have just ended 6 – 1?

Shit Celebration of the Week – SWP celebrates another decent performance with what can only described as a monkey-rave dance. Time to stop playing so much Donkey Kong Country Shauny…

Superhero Audition of the Week – Birmingham skipper Damien Johnson wears a mask to protect his fractured cheekbone. Not the mask though, that would’ve been way cooler.

Slapstick Comedy of the Week – Jeremie Aliadière takes out the linesman in an unforeseen sign of life from the weasel-faced wannabe. Sorry that’s harsh, he looks more like a rat actually.

Rugby Tactic of the Week – The bizarrely tattooed Kevin-Prince Boateng brilliantly brings down Joe Cole with a try-saving tackle on the halfway line. Quite why is not apparent though.

Quote of the Week – “Its important to play the right football, good football” Pearls of wisdom from Carlos Quiroz there, a few other teams could take notice of that mentality….

Hero of the Week – With a frankly staggering 22 goals this season already, of which three formed one of the best hat-tricks in Premier League history on Saturday, Christiano Ronaldo is this week’s hero. In 63 professional matches (for club and country), he has notched up a virtually unprecedented 38 goals. Now if only he stopped cheating…

Banner of the Week – Is he really the answer though?

Zero of the Week – With Liverpool losing further ground on the top 3, after another slice of Torres brilliance saved their blushes on Saturday, and Jurgen Klinsmann waiting in the wings to take over, it has to be Rafa Benitez. I really think that funny little beard might be cursed.

Personal Highlight of the Week – Manchester United’s second half performance was simply a pleasure to watch. I cannot over-estimate how much the scoreline actually flattered Newcastle, as for the first time in Premier League history, they looked comfortably to be heading towards double figures.

Young by Name but All Grown Up Downstairs

Another week and another Premier League star who wants to show a girl what he looks like naked and is then surprised when the press get hold of the snaps. This time it’s decent Aston Villa winger and England prospect Ashley Young, who put on a hot webcam show of himself stripping and then ‘meeting Lady Palm and her Five Lovely Daughters’ for beauty therapist Sarah Taylor, whom he had literally just met on the Webcamo dating site. This shocking story comes just weeks after struggling Portsmouth reject David Nugent texted photos of himself naked to a rather young lady he’d met out and about in the south coast slum paradise.

So picture the scene: you’re relaxing in a hotel room away from home just a few hours before making your England debut in a crucial qualifier against Russia. You’re nervous, looking for some stress relief, so what do you do? It’s too cold outside to go find a prozzie, and let’s face it, straight-on-straight male action is totally like 2006 man, so you fire up the old internet and search for spank bank material.

Minutes after finding Ms Taylor, he was “bombarding” her with seedy text messages, describing all sorts of niche sexual fantasies that STT has only ever heard of in court cases. Grabbing his enormous tool, described by the Bristol-born 21 year old beautician as looking like “a baby’s arm holding an apple,” Young then announced “I'd love to lick your nipples, making them nice and hard.” He then took it one step further, ignoring all website protocols: “I wanna have my cock between your tits and you sucking the top of my dick.” Who says romance is dead?

Pretty Sarah exclusively told us exclusively that she was somewhat put out: “I’d gone on for some flirty chat but what I got was a randy sex addict!” At first he seemed nice and friendly apparently, but it wasn’t long before he started to push forward and parade himself online. “I couldn’t believe someone was being so forward,” she cooed, “he’s got an impressive package but I was amazed he could just show it off like that.”

STT sympathises with young Young, and encourages him in the future to always wear a mask when treating his body like an amusement park online. Chicks love masks, especially Mexican amateur wrestling masks.

Cheryl on Posh (unfortunately no, not in that way)

I really wish people would leave poor (not literally) Victoria Beckham alone. Apparently David is in a huge grump at the moment so it’s taking both of her talents (I assume you can probably work out what those are for yourselves) to keep him from hitting the bottle and ‘doing a Britney.’ And now, to make matters worse, her supposed ‘gal pal’ and ‘BFF’ Cheryl Tweedy has come out and said that Posh is afraid to smile in public.

The Girls Aloud sexpot, who actually holds doctorates in psychology and psychiatry, reckons that the reason behind this is in fact deep-set insecurity. The Scouse Strumpet continued, telling a story about how she once tried to trick Posh into ditching her famous look of vacancy. Supposedly the two girls took their respective hubbies out for a hot double date, and Cheryl spent the whole night reciting the script from ‘The Contest’ episode of Seinfeld over and over again, just to encourage Posh to laugh in front of the paparazzi. “I was like, 'Go on, Victoria - just crack one smile!’ And she was laughing, but she was covering her mouth with her bag,” the honey-snatched-one told STT exclusively. This lack of a public smile baffled Ashley Cole especially, telling us that it completely put him off his McDonalds and ensured that the planned cut party between the four has had to be indefinitely postponed.

There is clearly something going on here, but the usually astute Cheryl might be barking up the wrong tree blaming Posh’s level of ‘self-awareness’ for her consistently miserable look; when you have kids named Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz, self-awareness is clearly not high on your list of priorities. When we hear more on this exciting mystery, don’t fear loyal reader, you will be the first to know…

Yowza..........