The last time we could say, "Leicester City are top of the Premier League," interns were still slut-dropping in the Oval Office (probably). The year was 2000, the month October, and Bill Clinton had just a handful of days left to abuse his power inside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
If you watched the Liverpool-Manchester City match on Saturday, the one thing you were probably thinking was, "what is going on?" A Kompnay-less Manchester City defense was shredded by Jurgen Klopp's bunch en rout to a 4-1 victory in the Etihad. All of Liverpool's goals vs Manchester City were beauties aside from the own-goal by Mangala. The Brazilian's for Liverpool were who stole the show though. Philipe Coutinho and Roberto Firminho each registered a goal and an assist to one another.
This clearance did not go according to plan. You can beat the other team, but you can't beat Mother Nature. Somtimes, when you try to beat Mother Nature, Mother Nature strikes back in the most embarassing way possible, as Mothers are prone to do, and makes you lave like a wind own goal or something.
This defender in an amateur English game found that our the hard war when he tried to send a long ball through the air during a windy day.
It did not go well.
Rafa Benitez is one of the first names you think of when you think of successful managers in Europe. Valencia, Inter, Liverpool, Chelsea, Napoli and Real Madrid are the big name clubs he’s had the luxury of managing, and he has led these teams to many trophies in his time with them.
*Warning to readers with even a shred of dignity: do not read any further if you are offended by any and/or all references to Steven Gerrard's penis. Thank you.
Chapter six of Steven Gerrard's new book, "My Story," starts like this:
"The magic of the FA Cup was ruined the day my penis was bloodied and then stitched shut on an unromantic night in Bournemouth."
On the official Tottenham Hotspur website, the club invites you to support the side because “in a world full of Uniteds, Citys and Rovers there is only One Hotspur - Tottenham Hotspur.” Spurs, undefeated in their last eleven matches dating back to the start of the campaign, are threatening to disrupt the established hegemony of familiar contenders.
Mathieu Flamini is about to save the world. Maybe.
In the sort of revelation that you don't normally see from footballers, Flamini revealed that he owns a biochemical company, founded in 2008 when he was in Milan, that produces acids that could potentially replace molecules.
Manchester United have been having problems at striker, with their only three options being possibly-over-the-hill Wayne Rooney, midfielder Marouane Felaini and 18-year-old Anthony Martial. That's why it seemed to many an unwise decision when they sold 27-year-old Mexican striker Chicharito Hernandez to Bayer Leverkusen during the transfer window.
Hernandez has been on fire for Leverkusen, scoring eight goals in his last six games, propmting one prominent Manchester United player, goalkeeper David de Gea, to question the decision to sell Chicharito.
Jesse Lingard has been called up to the senior England team in the wake of injuries to Michael Carrick and Jamie Vardy. The question is, what has he done to deserve it?
As we are in the midst of yet another two-week international break 12/38ths of the way through the English Premier League season (which Men in Blazers’ Michael Davies would insist we point out reduces to 6/19ths), we at The18 decided to look at the top five things that we have learned about the league so far this season.