Arsenal
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger admitted the Gunners are now outsiders for the title after defeat to Chelsea. “It is difficult to swallow a defeat like that when we felt we were the better team,” said Wenger. “Chelsea defended well until the last minute so you have got to give them credit. We are outsiders but we will fight until the last day of the season. I believe everyone can drop points. Let’s come back to win our next game first and then see where we stand.”
Aston Villa
Manager Martin O’Neill believes the arrival of fellow American Brad Guzan at the start of last season has brought the best out of 38-year-old keeper Brad Friedel. “I think he has been reinvigorated with the arrival of young Brad Guzan,” O’Neill said. “The two Americans coming together, there’s a bit of competition and I just think that Brad has been exceptional. In the last number of weeks his performances have been terrific.”
Birmingham City
Birmingham match-winner Kevin Phillips was delighted to have proved he can “still do a job” after his two goals saw off Wolverhamton Wanderers 2-1. The Blues trailed to a Kevin Doyle strike before 36-year-old Phillips turned the match on its head with a double in the last 10 minutes. Phillips felt the goals helped repay the faith shown in him by manager Alex McLeish. He said: “I think I showed I still have a bit left in me. People write you off over 30 but I am 36 now and I think I showed I can still do a job. It is just nice to get on the pitch. I have not had much game time lately. I said to myself I would have to be patient this year. I knew I would get my chance. You have to be mentally strong. You have to keep believing you will get your chance. It is a short career and I know I am not too far away from retiring. I want to play for as long as I possibly can at the highest level and moments like today make me want to play for longer.”
Blackburn Rovers
Sam Allardyce lamented his side’s defending for the first two goals against Stoke City which left them with a mountain to climb in the second half. “It was poor defending on two separate occasions in the first half,” Allardyce said after his team lost 3-0. It’s taken the game into Stoke’s hands and it’s pretty poor defending from our point of view to say the least. It’s one that we’ve worked at over the last few days and unfortunately the lads haven’t taken that onto the field. In a very competitive game like this you have got to do your job right in those areas and had we taken the opportunity to defend right, certainly on the second one, and just come in (at half-time) 1-0 down, we would have looked to have gone on from there.”
bolton wanderers
Goalkeeper Jussi Jaaskelainen feels performances are improving under new manager Owen Coyle despite winning just once in five league matches since he took charge. The 34-year-old said: “The pleasing thing for me was the clean sheet against Fulham. We defended well as a team, especially in the second half. We had been dropping too deep but the gaffer said at half-time to keep a higher line and I don’t think in the second half they had a kick towards our goal. You can see the work we have put in. That has never been a problem, but I think you can see that the midfield players go more with the runners now and we get much tighter to our markers. You can see that because we are getting clean sheets. These are the standards we are setting under the new gaffer, and we have to keep them up.”
burnley
Brian Laws hailed “a huge three points” after the Clarets withstood late West Ham United pressure to claim their first win in 13 Barclays Premier League matches. The win was also the first for Laws since taking over from Owen Coyle and he insisted his side’s performance proved they have what it takes to secure survival. Laws said: “It was a huge three points and when you talk about games you have to win this was one of them. There was so much pressure but the players were magnificent. David Nugent scored a fantastic goal and it set the tone of the game. It gave us great belief because we haven’t been in this position for such a long time. We’ve got to make this an uncomfortable place for any team coming here and the fans play a huge part in that. To play under that kind of pressure proves the players can get results.”
Chelsea
Carlo Ancelotti refused to rule Arsenal out of the title race even though the Gunners are now nine points behind the leaders after the 2-0 Stamford Bridge defeat. “Arsenal still have a possibility because they are a good team,” added the Italian. “It depends on the performances of Manchester United and Chelsea. I am not sure it will be a race with two horses.”
everton
David Moyes had no complaints about Steven Pienaar’s sending-off against Liverpool, especially as he thought the South African could have been dismissed in the first half for a knee-high challenge on Javier Mascherano. However, he felt his side deserved more out of the match. “I think there have been lots of derbies very similar; quite feisty and that’s why fans like them because they sometimes have a little bit extra in them,” said the Scot. “The first sending-off (Kyrgiakos) was a two-footed tackle, both feet off the ground. Fellaini has been for an x-ray but we think it is clear, which is good news. I’ve no complaints about Steven’s sending-off as there was a tackle earlier in the game where he might have been fortunate to stay on. I thought we certainly didn’t deserve to lose the game today. We might not have deserved to win it but we shouldn’t have lost it. We didn’t create enough chances with the extra man but, saying that, Liverpool didn’t either and their goal came from one set-piece – which in the past would have been us that might have done that but it was Liverpool.”
Fulham
Roy Hodgson was pleased to take a point against Bolton Wanderers as his team struggle to get their campaign back on track. The Cottagers had lost five successive matches before beating Portsmouth in midweek. Hodgson said: “It was a barrage of projectiles at some stages. You need people to stand up and you need the shape of your team to be right, especially now as we aren’t playing as well as we did earlier in the season. That is understandable because we have seven players missing at the moment and some of those are our most talented players. Bolton put us to the test today and I am delighted we rode our luck a bit. They had by far the better goal chances in the game but we have got a very good goalkeeper and a resilient, hard-working and determined team.”
Hull City
Assistant manager Brian Horton, who was in charge of Manchester City from 1993 to 1995, felt Hull’s fast start had set the tone for the victory over the Blues. “We got at them, like we did against Chelsea, set a high tempo from the start with the two up front causing problems,” he said. “The first half was as well as we’ve played for a long, long time. The Chelsea result has given them confidence and confidence is the magic word in football because all of a sudden we look a completely different side. We should have beaten Wolves and to come back and do what they did against two of the best sides in the country is a tremendous testament to the staff and the fans.”
Liverpool
Rafael Benitez hailed his side’s 1-0 victory in the 213th Merseyside derby as “massive”. Dirk Kuyt’s close-range header 10 minutes after half-time proved the difference as the Reds played the last 55 minutes with 10 men after Sotirios Kyrgiakos was dismissed for a two-footed challenge on Marouane Fellaini. Everton failed to capitalise on their numerical advantage and they had Steven Pienaar sent off for a second bookable offence in the fifth minute of second-half stoppage time. “It was massive for us. To win in a derby is really important – to win in a derby with 10 players at Anfield is more important,” said Benitez. “I was really pleased for the players and the fans because everyone was working so hard that I think at the end we deserved to win. From the beginning we were doing well in terms of work-rate and after the sending-off it was amazing to see all the players working so hard, defending and also going forward and trying to score.”
Manchester City
Roberto Mancini, who gave Patrick Vieira and Adam Johnson their debuts off the bench, admitted his side had been second best in the defeat to Hull City. “We didn’t play very well,” he said. “We know Hull at home is a different proposition, they played well. We started the game very, very slowly and there were things I didn’t like because the pitch is the same whether we play at home or away. If we want to make the top four, we must win away and we must fight. We must be aggressive away, not like the first half.”
Manchester United
Sir Alex Ferguson praised his players after they regained their place at the top of the Barclays Premier League with a 5-0 win over Portsmouth. Ferguson said: “We had a lot of pressure and possession of the ball but we were patient enough. That’s important when teams come and sit in the way they did here. Portsmouth were there to make it difficult but we got the goal just before half-time. We were a bit fortunate with the second one. Nani beat his man and was trying to play a cross across the box. It got a deflection and went past James and into the net. It was fortunate but nonetheless you have to take them. That opened the game for us in the second half. We went looking for goals and managed to get three more, the one from Berbatov was brilliant.”
Portsmouth
Portsmouth manager Avram Grant is refusing to throw in the towel despite his side rooted to the bottom of the table. He said: “Positive thinking is always better than negative thinking and as long as we have the chance we will fight. It is more difficult for us than other teams but sometimes difficult is a challenge. For me it’s a challenge. It would have been easy to go and no-one could blame me if I left a few weeks ago or one week ago but it is not my way. I want to show this character because it is important for the future of the club.”
Stoke City
Tony Pulis hailed Matthew Etherington’s match-winning performance against Blackburn as a fitting tribute to Sir Stanley Matthews. Etherington scored one goal and made another in the Potters’ 3-0 win at the Britannia Stadium, on the day the club commemorated Matthews’ final appearance in a Stoke shirt 45 years ago. It was yet another eye-catching display from the former West Ham United winger which Pulis felt was entirely appropriate for the occasion. “It was lovely for Matty to score, for a winger to score a goal of that quality, real quality,” said Pulis, who was also celebrating his 300th game in charge of Stoke. “I’ve just been told he (Matthews) didn’t score many goals but he provided bundles. I’m delighted, and delighted for the team and everyone at the football club.”
sunderland
Steve Bruce is digging in for a fight after Sunderland passed up the chance to drag themselves clear of the fight for Barclays Premier League survival. Saturday’s 1-1 home draw with Wigan Athletic, which came five days after a stalemate with Stoke City at the Stadium of Light, saw two matches the manager had identified as potentially season-defining come and go with barely a whimper. But Bruce, as befits a man who has never shirked a challenge either as a player or since he took his first steps in management, will respond in the only way he knows. He said: “That’s the way it’s going for us at the minute. But we have to keep at it. We can’t throw in the towel, that’s for sure. We will go again in the morning and get ready for Tuesday and hope we can go and turn our season around on Tuesday night. They are coming thick and fast and if we can get a good response down at Portsmouth, we know we are capable of going down there and winning the match.”
Tottenham Hotspur
Harry Redknapp expects plenty more twists and turns before the end of the season in the race for fourth place. He said: “Obviously it was a big result for Liverpool beating Everton. They ground out a result. It’s their weekend this week, it will be somebody else’s next week, somebody else’s the week after. Of course it’s going to be tight, it’s going to go all the way to the wire. You didn’t see Manchester City getting beat at Hull, not many people would have tipped that one, would they?”
west ham united
Gianfranco Zola insisted he was “not worried” by his side’s slip back into the relegation zone despite their woeful run extending to just one win from 10. Zola said: “We have to be quick because time is running out and the table requires it. But I’m not worried – I’m disappointed because we had enough to do better. We have to start using everything at our disposal. When you have teams like Burnley who are playing for their lives they’ll come and fight, and we have to do the same. We have to make sure we cut out our mistakes because it has been the story of our season – we’ve played some good football at times and lost games because of mistakes. It has been a little step back but we will come back stronger, I’m sure of that.”
Wigan Athletic
Mohamed Diame’s stunning goal in the draw with Sunderland came as a pleasant surprise to manager Roberto Martinez. Martinez said: “I am sure he was surprised as well because I haven’t seen him striking the ball like that before. But he deserved that because he works extremely hard for the team. Momo is settling in the Premier League with ease, which is a great compliment because playing in that position, it is full of athletes in the Premier League and he is enjoying his football. To see him striking a ball as clean as that, it was a great finish. I don’t think you will see a better finish today in the Premier League.”
wolverhampton wanderers
Mick McCarthy admitted the derby defeat to Birmingham City was a hammer blow given how well his players performed for the majority of the match. He said: “I have not been in our dressing room before and seen the lads as disappointed as that after a game. You feel hard done by, and it is hard, but we’ve got a game on Wednesday (against Tottenham), and that is the motivation we need. If we play like that in our remaining games, I don’t think we can be written off. I had no doubt that the team would perform today, and they have done that on many occasions this season.”
“We are getting clean sheets. These are the standards we are setting under the new gaffer” – Jussi Jaaskelainen
Credits: PremierLeague.com
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