The Weekend - Winners and Losers

(Courtesy of Steven Correy and thesportreview - Flickr)

An opportunity to look at who benefited from this weekend’s round of games and who would rather they hadn’t happened.

Winners:

Southampton: A solid win, a good performance and out of the relegation zone, all of a sudden things are looking much brighter for Nigel Adkins’ men.

West Brom: Absolutely flying, four wins on the bounce and The Baggies now sit in 3^rd position, it is extremely hard to believe that this is where they will finish but Steve Clarke and his side are giving themselves a very good chance of getting European football of some kind next season.

Andre Villas-Boas: Needed a win this weekend and got it. Combining a much needed 3 points with an emphatic performance and a return to form of his two main men, Defoe and Bale, AVB will be relieved to get out of a rut which had seen his side lose 3 on the bounce.

Jordi Gomez: Getting a perfect hat-trick and dragging your club to the kind of win which could see them stay safe for another season in the top flight plus sparing the blushes of usually super-keeper Ali Al-Habsi, Jordi Gomez is the hero of Wigan this weekend.

Losers:

Arsenal: Another poor performance Arsene Wenger’s side just cannot maintain any level of consistency, already 10 points off top spot you have to feel that their title hopes are already over for another season.

Liverpool: Just as things were going quite well The Reds typically shot themselves in the foot against supposedly lesser opposition. It is exactly these kind of games that Brendan Rodgers will have to get his team winning if they want to get a Europa League spot this season.

Newcastle: 3 defeats in a row see Newcastle drop into 14^th place and wondering how on earth it’s going so wrong.

New Managers: This weekend both Harry Redknapp and Rafa Benitez got a good look at the size of the task ahead of them. Rafa Benitez less so as he will probably be in the job only 7 months anyway (although a shock early exit from the Europa League might see him go as early as February), but Harry Redknapp is facing a task that seems too big even for his impressive capabilities.