This weekend saw most matches in Premier League’s day 2 occur. It was another exciting matchday as new Tottenham Hotspurs boss Nuno Espirito Santo went back to old club Wolves to steal 3 points from them while two young teams, Crystal Palace and Brentford, battled out a 0-0 stalemate. There were many other big games this weekend.
Manchester City 5-0 Norwich City
Manchester City decided to make amends from their 1st game loss to Spurs by convincingly beating newly promoted team Norwich City 5 -0. The Citizens were brilliant in attack but also in defence, not even conceding a shot on target albeit a goal.
City’s opening goal was a lucky own goal from Norwich’s experienced keeper Tim Krul in the 7th minute. New signing Jack Grealish scored his first goal for the club in the 22nd minute. The goal was certainly not intended, with even pundit Tim Sherwood stating the goal as “The worst goal he’s ever going to score”. Throughout the game Norwich didn’t really fight back.
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Manchester City continued their dominance in the second half in the 64th minute when French center back Aymeric Laporte scored from a rebounded corner. Only 6 minutes later did Raheem Sterling slot in a well worked goal to make it 4-0. The game ended when Portuguese center back Ruben Dias coolly chipped it over the Norwich defenders to Riyad Mahrez who scored to end the game at 5-0.
Arsenal 0-2 Chelsea
The London derby also took place over the weekend. Arsenal came off a horrible previous match where they lost 2-0 against newly promoted Brentford. The Gunners were hoping for a good result in their first game home in front of their fans, against rivals Chelsea. That wasn’t the case as Chelsea, with the help of new signing Romelu Lukaku, beat their fellow Londoners 2-0.
Lukaku had to wait only 16 minutes to score his first goal for the Blues. The play started with the Belgian’s back to a defender but ended up with him easily scoring a tap-in. Chelsea continued to dominate the game, when in the 35th minute marauding right wingback Reese James finished a lovely goal in the top left corner.
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The 2 goals in the first half clearly demotivated the Arsenal players as they did nothing of significance in the second half. The game ended in a deserved 2-0 win for Chelsea. After the game, Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta stated that he had 9 unavailable player at his disposal, including star players Alexandre Lacazatte and Pierre Emerick Aubamayeng and new signing Ben White. That means two losses from two for the Gunners and unfortunately it gets worse from there as they are set to face champions Manchester City next weekend.
This weekend also saw Southampton surprisingly draw to Manchester United, Liverpool beat Burnley 2-0 and Danny Ings score an incredible bicycle kick to give Aston Villa all three points over Newcastle. Everton also drew 2-2 against Leeds in what was a fascinating battle between two experienced managers in Rafa Benitez and Marcelo Bielsa.
The Premier League is officially up and running and we are loving it.
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