Out The Corridor Of Doubt, Into The Bridge

The Premier League continues this weekend with  a bumper schedule of fixtures and all eyes will turn to London as Chelsea's host rivals Arsenal at Stamford Bridge. Arsenal have made a shaky start to the season with a 4-3 opening day win at home to Leicester before losing at Stoke before a blowout at Anfield.

The have made somewhat of a recovery with wins against Bournemouth and FC Cologne, but their recent record of poor performances against the Premier League’s best leaves little hope for them to topple Chelsea especially at the Bridge.

Arsenal haven't won a game at the Bridge since Robin van Persie’s hat trick in a crazy 5-3 fixture six years ago. Since then, however Stamford Bridge has become the house of pain for the Gunners, and Chelsea have been looking good in recent weeks.

After their opening day wobble against Burnley Chelsea have won 4 in a row scoring 13 goals while conceding only two in the process.

But it's not all doom and gloom for Arsenal as the Gunners have beaten the Blues in two out of the last three games, which included a 3-0 win at the Emirates and a win in the FA Cup final at Wembley Stadium.

Thursday's Europa League fixture may have opened Wenger’s eyes as to how to approach the Chelsea game. Arsenal produced a game of two halves with a bland performance in the first, before rousing to a 3-1 win.

Arsenal need to do away with a back three and use a traditional back four. This will mitigate any chance of being exposed again like they were against Liverpool and for Pete’s sake give themselves a chance by sitting in during the first exchanges before going on attack.

Chelsea have exactly the style of play that could mean another dreadful day for Arsenal and hopefully Arsenal should show some awareness and adapt their style of play to their opposition.

The Reality That Liverpool Face

The Premier League returned to our screens with a bang as the fixture schedule whipped up another mammoth game with Manchester City taking on Liverpool. The game promised to be a high scoring affair and that proved to be the case with the Cityzens routing the Reds 5-0, underling the Manchester sides title credentials in the process.

The loss comes as a huge blow to Liverpool's title ambitions as a few weeks ago they were on the other side of the fence as they thrashed title pretenders Arsenal 4-0 before the international break. The loss for Liverpool couldn't have done more to help bring them back down to earth after a relatively good start.

Liverpool had Sadio Manè sent off for dangerous play and with Liverpool already a goal down things could only get worse. Liverpool proved to be ineffectual for the rest of the game as City executed a decent game plan.

As much as City deserve credit on the day you'd have to agree that Liverpool's deficiencies were rightly exposed as a simply executed game plan was all that was required to vanquish the Reds. City came into the game looking to sit in early on and deny Liverpool the space to do any damage.

This kept City in the game and it was inevitable, with David Silva and Kevin De Bruyne having a keen eye for a pass, that City would take advantage of Liverpool's soft spot: their defence. From there a bit of misfortune — with the red card — and the Reds’ house of cards collapsed as fast as Arsenal’s had at Anfield.

The catastrophe at the Etihad served to sober Liverpool to the reality of their situation; as good as they can be they just a mistake or two from being another Arsenal. Their predictability and lack of a strong defence will be their undoing against teams that won't go into games with the same naïveté as Arsenal had.

It should also be concerning to note that their weaknesses play right into the strengths of champions Chelsea and leaders Manchester United as both sides are based on a solid defence and with them sitting in Liverpool would be denied space in behind, rendering them  close to harmless when they are forced to play in front of their opponents.

Not to mention the height, aerial ability and speed of those sides will surely do much to trouble an already compromised defence. 

 Liverpool are without a doubt the league's most tantalizing side with all their options in attack, but their lack of investment in their defence will always come to bite them at crucial times just as it has in the past.

Former players Pull No Punches About Arsenal

This weekend's schedule of international fixtures meant the Premier League took a brief break from a fast start to the new season. Unfortunately for Arsenal the focus is still firmly on the Gunners after their routing at Anfield and failure to do business in the closing hours of the summer transfer window.

Former players have come out to blast player performance, the manager and in particular the board for its reluctance to let go of star man Alexis Sanchez. The Chilean made it no secret that he wanted to leave the club for a long time now and with the move his preferred move to Manchester City failing to materialize because Arsenal could not secure the signature of Monaco man Thomas Lemar.

Essentially the whole situation has been reportedly a sour note for Sanchez as the Chilean all but stated he wished to never play for Arsenal again. The whole transfer saga has led to former Arsenal forward Ian Wright to describe the decision as “ridiculous”.

Writing in a column for British tabloid the Sun Wright made a few scathing remarks about his former club. “Letting the deadline pass without selling Chilean striker Alexis Sanchez was just ridiculous. It did not make any sense in football or financial terms.

“Whether it is chief executive Ivan Gazidis or someone else who is in charge of the comings and goings, they need to be held to account for this total shambles.”

And you’d have to agree with Wright on the matter as keeping Sanchez is neither good for the player nor the club. Keeping Sanchez will prove to be a decision the Arsenal board will come to regret as it only fuels the obvious frustration and resentment of the Chilean has towards the club, and will further go on to create a toxic environment in the locker room.

Granted Arsenal might have been waiting out on a better offer for Sanchez, as they were well within their rights, but should have realised the urgency at which this decision had to be made.

And its not as if they didn’t have any other options; Arsenal could have just agreed to a cash plus player swap sending Sanchez off to Manchester and getting Sergio Aguero.

Aguero does seem to be in Pep Guardiola’s plans with him playing mostly off the bench and he’d surely have relished a chance to be Premier League starter and would add to Arsenal’s attack.

But hey, this is Arsenal where logic and common has been seemingly flying out the window with regularity and we thought Barcelona had it bad.

Make Way For Boxing's Real Super Fight

This year proved to be a banner year for the sport of boxing after the so called “Fight of the Century” between welterweight superstars Manny Pacquaio and Floyd Mayweather left more than a bitter taste in the mouths fans. The fight promised much, but delivered very little.

In 2017, heavyweights Anthony Joshua and Wladimir Klitschko enthralled fans in a titanic clash between the future and the past of the sport and did the sport proud in front of a full capacity audience at Wembley. Most recently the mega hyped “Money Fight” pitting Floyd Mayweather against MMA superstar Conor McGregor helped draw the public eye back to one of the world’s oldest sports.

The most intriguing point of the encounter proved be the antics and circus in the lead up to the clash rather than anything that happened in the ring.

With that circus out of the way, it’s time to get down to business. On the 16^th of September middleweight kingpin Gennady Gennadyevich Golovkin or “GGG” (37-0-0, 33 KOs) will put his WBC, WBA, IBF and IBO titles on the line against two weight world champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (49-1-1, 34 KOs) in the middleweight “Supremacy” fight.

The bout creates a great sense of intrigue and has the boxing public split down the middle the sport’s current two biggest stars and if there is anything to take away from this fight is that it should be a cracker.

In Golovkin we have one of the most avoided fighters in the sport; a heavy handed come forward fighter with one the of the highest knockout ratios in the sports history. Canelo is the golden boy of Mexican boxing and the whole country seems to come a standstill when the red-haired Mexican steps through the ropes.

The best attributes of either fighter match up so well that it wouldn’t be a far-gone conclusion to expect a knock out finish or at least a stoppage. Canelo has the advantage of having superior hand speed and is an excellent combination puncher. Golovkin has the obvious power advantage and comes from a great amateur background with sound fundamentals.

Other aspects of the sport that either fighter are not good at also match up well together. Canelo has been described as a flat footed fighter who tends to use superior head movement to avoid punches to the head so he won’t be trying to run from Golovkin. Golovkin has the better footwork of the two, but his lack of head movement has been highlighted as a point of concern after he was hit with fast combinations against welterweight Kell Brook last year.

There are questions yet to be answered about both fighters on fight night. Canelo, despite having held the middleweight WBC and Ring Magazines titles, has not actually fought at 160 lbs before with both his fights being at the catch weight of 155. So it begs the question how will the Mexican acclimatize himself against a real middleweight?

One thing Canelo has in his favour is in the age disparity between the two fighters. Canelo is 27, while GGG is 35 and there have been suspicions that father time has finally caught up with the Kazakh destroyer after he had appeared less than impressive in his previous fights against Kell Brook and Daniel Jacobs.

With all things considered spectators should expect nothing less than an intriguing contest which might turn into a straight shootout between the two rather than a game of cat and mouse.