Mid-Week Fixtures - Winners and Losers

(Courtesy of thesportreview and dalli58 - flickr)

The mid-week fixture list was bound to throw up some surprises so here’s a look at who will be grateful for the extra games and who will be complaining about a ‘congested fixture list.’

Winners:

Harry Redknapp: Didn’t lose his first game,  that was a pretty big achievement for a team who had lost 6 out of their 7 previous away games, and will set him up nicely for the inevitably long struggle he and his side are facing.

Andre Villas-Boas: Ensured, with a 2-1 win over Liverpool, that the West Ham win wasn’t just a flash in the pan and that his spurs side can get back on a winning run to push for 4^th place. Villas-Boas also made sure that his job is safe, as you always feel with him that he is a bad run away from hearing calls for his sacking.

Southampton: Now 4 games unbeaten, Nigel Adkins’ side are doing exactly what every relegation-endangered team should do in taking advantage of their run against the slightly easier sides. 8 points from a possible 12 sees them in 18^th and keeping pace with most of the bottom half of the table.

Paul Lambert: Having left Darren Bent out Lambert really needed a win, and he only just got it. But a win is a win and his side have climbed out of the relegation zone, but if he thinks that a dodgy 1-0 home win against Reading is a sign that things are changing then he is very wrong, this is still going to be a tough season for Villa.

Losers:

Martin O'Neill: If you can’t win against bottom of the table at home then you have some serious problems, even if it was Harry Redknapp’s first game in charge Sunderland drew a blank against a side that had conceded 14 goals in 7 away games before this one. Martin O’Neill suddenly finds himself favourite to get the sack next.

Alan Pardew: Another manager who has been making some unwanted progress towards the top of the ‘next to be sacked’ list. 4 defeats and a draw from the last 5 games is certainly sacking form and The Magpies are now in 14^th place, a far cry from last season’s top-4 aspirations.

Liverpool: A first defeat in 9 games but they have only managed 14 points from an available 27 in that run and find themselves languishing in 12^th place. Despite Brendan Rodgers claims that “we are very, very close to arriving in that zone that we want to be in” I think they are still more than a good January transfer window away from having the team necessary.

Rafa Benitez and Roman Abramovich: Rafa Benitez is here because he has an impossible job, only the most amazing circumstances would see him qualified as a success in his time here, and then he would still probably get released at the end of the year. Roman Abramovich because he has probably chosen the wrong man for the job and now faces the rest of the season without being able to sack him, although don’t put anything past Abramovich.