Thierry Henry - "Arsenal & Liverpool have helped Chelsea" - Sky Sports
An action-packed December produced bundles of goals, but what"s your No. 1? Shaka Hislop is not surprised with Swansea"s sacking of Bob Bradley and looks ahead to their next potential manager. craig burley praises chelsea for continuing to grind out results in their impressive 13 game unbeaten run.
Adam "Football Cliches" Hurrey is back with his latest monthly review, in which he surveys the winners, losers and major talking points of December.
Who won the month?
The marathon men of Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham
This was a truly hectic holiday period of matches, living up to its status as a separator of men from boys. Jose Mourinho"s Manchester United were the only side to emerge from weeks 14 through 20 without a defeat and indeed could have taken maximum points if not for some late carelessness against Everton.
Further up in the title-race mix, though, three well-drilled and sweat-soaked game plans emerged from the fixture maelstrom with reputations more or less intact. Chelsea"s record-threatening run of victories finally ended, and tellingly, it was against the one side who you could bank on to match them for sheer yardage. Spurs bounced back from a 1-0 defeat to United with four wins and 15 goals, seven of them from a flying Dele Alli, as Mauricio Pochettino"s machine began to grind into action again.
While Liverpool were perhaps the most fragile of the three, they remained sturdier than either Manchester City or Arsenal, both guilty of dropping precious points against teams in their top-four midst. The title was neither won nor lost over the last few weeks, but the benchmark was certainly set.
Who lost the month? Swansea City
The festive period ended with a much-needed boost for Swansea City, as Crystal Palace somehow conspired to lose to them for a second time in barely a month, but that won"t paper over the worrying cracks that widened toward the end of 2016.
A desperately one-sided defeat to Tottenham began their latest slide, as 5-0 quite feasibly could have been 10-0, so often did Spurs find the target. A 3-0 win over Sunderland gave both Swansea and Bob Bradley some hope of a fresh start, only for them to ship 13 goals in their next four matches, all defeats.
Bradley"s near-impossible job of proving his credentials became an untenable one as soon as his players lost faith. As for the players -- the graceful figure of Gylfi Sigurdsson apart -- there is little about Swansea"s squad that suggests Premier League solidity. It looks increasingly likely that a new era under their American owners will have to be built from Championship foundations, unless Paul Clement can get his ideas across quickly that is.
Player of the month:Zlatan Ibrahimovic
Zlatan Ibrahimovic has acclimated incredibly well to the Premier League, ranking second in the league with 13 goals.An utterly unique player at 35 years old, he has played every minute he was eligible to in the Premier League, and at 6-foot-5, he is neither constrained nor pigeonholed by his height. There is a hint of Eric Cantona in the way Zlatan Ibrahimovic carries himself at Old Trafford, a place that has needed an unyielding character like him ever since Roy Keane"s passive-aggressive departure in 2005.
That presence is backed up by the numbers: six goals in seven Premier League games over December and the festive period; 12 in his past 12 in all competitions. Ibrahimovic stormed through English football"s proudest tradition at the first time of asking and, with a final flourish, gave his few remaining skeptics some seriously short shrift to start 2017.
Match of the month: Bournemouth 4-3 Liverpool
"It"s a wonderful story if you"re not part of it on the wrong side. Today, that"s where we were." - Jurgen Klopp
Jurgen Klopp, usually philosophical in defeat, did well to hide his almost certain exasperation at the Vitality Stadium. A 2-0 half-time lead (sufficient to avoid Premier League defeat 98 percent of the time, the statisticians say) became a 3-1 lead and stayed that way until there was less than a quarter of an hour to go. Not even the most optimistic Bournemouth fan could have expected to be queuing up to get a photo of the scoreboard after the final whistle.
Bournemouth had generously given before gleefully taking away. Artur Boruc stationed himself in no-man"s-land twice in the space of three minutes to give Sadio Mane and Divock Origi sights of an unguarded goal. Half-time: two shots on target, two goals, three points on the way.
The home side needed some of that straightforwardness, and they found it almost by accident, as Ryan Fraser bounded on as a 55th-minute substitute for the injured Junior Stanislas. Within 90 seconds, the youngster had ruffled Liverpool feathers to earn a penalty. Game on.
Emre Can artfully steered in a third for the visitors -- a goal that felt like a reassertion of their respective statuses -- only for Fraser to rifle beyond an increasingly suspect Loris Karius 12 minutes later to cut the lead to 3-2.
The equaliser, again involving Fraser, was a slightly surreal moment: Steve Cook plucking Fraser"s cross out of the south coast air, and swivelling to poke a half-volley into the corner, all in a manner very unbecoming of a centre-half. At that point, anything was possible. Bournemouth won a corner at the death and the ball was laid inside to Cook, who decided to test Karius" mettle once more -- the goalkeeper"s nervous injury-time fumble felt inevitable. In stepped Nathan Ake -- on loan from Chelsea -- and the "wonderful story" was complete.
Goal of the month:Olivier Giroud vs. Crystal Palace
Perhaps it was the tired legs opening up the space -- or, conversely, the adrenalin of the Christmas period -- but December and early January were spoiled for well-constructed and exquisitely taken goals. Steve Cook"s aforementioned touch, turn and shot against Liverpool flew the flag for goal-scoring defenders, as did Stoke"s Marc Muniesa, who scored his first career Premier League goal by beating three Burnley players in his own half, charging upfield and tucking home a superb volley.
Emphatic finishes also caught the eye. Jeff Hendrick"s arcing volley against Bournemouth was as good as his two touches to set it up, while Wilfried Zaha"s dainty footwork against Hull were the subtle prelude to an astonishingly powerful finish into the top corner.
Above all, though, this was a month (and a bit) for elite impudence. West Ham were already well beaten when Arsenal sliced through them once more to allow Alexis Sanchez the time and space to pull off the most devastating of dummies at Darren Randolph"s expense -- feinting to hammer the ball into oblivion before simply dinking it into the corner instead.
Even that, though, was overshadowed by 2016-17"s new Premier League fad: the scorpion kick. The name needs some work, clearly, but tidy descriptors are hard to come by for such an intricate piece of instinctive technique. Henrikh Mkhitaryan laid down the gauntlet on Boxing Day with his diving back-heel flick against Sunderland. While that was marginally the easier of the two, Olivier Giroud"s improvisation against Crystal Palace was far more camera-friendly. And as plenty have already observed, a goal in off the crossbar deserves a bonus point. Giroud"s fantastic goal on New Year"s Day didn"t qualify for December"s goal of the month vote, but expect it to be a top challenger in next month"s poll.
A good month for: Postmatch interviews
They generally look like they"d rather be pulling their own teeth out than offering answers about penalty incidents, "turning points" and "bouncing back from here". Football management is clearly stressful enough without having to bring your heart rate down sufficiently to avoid saying something noteworthy just after the final whistle.
Pep Guardiola, though, has taken it to a whole other level. Long before his monosyllabic stare-off after Manchester City"s win over Burnley, Guardiola was showing little willingness to play the TV game. Even the friendly innocuousness of prematch interviews -- "what"s the thinking there, Pep?" -- were being turned into wars of attrition.
He wears the look of a man who spends every waking hour (so, about 23 a day) thinking about how to solve microscopic football problems, but a two-minute chat with a TV reporter needn"t be one of them.
A bad month for: High-profile referees
It"s moved from cult status to mainstream success, but the Mike Dean Show now threatens to jump the shark completely. However, while the facial expressions and hand gestures of a referee provide the centre-stage entertainment, the debate over Premier League officiating remains dead in the water.
Fury over refereeing decisions can often be disingenuous. The counter-debate in their favour -- that split-second judgements for tackles and offside calls are incredibly difficult to catch with the n***d eye -- is ignored, to an infuriating degree. TV coverage is well within its rights to establish whether, for example, a player was in an offside position or not -- but using that freeze-frame analysis to declare that refereeing standards are on the slide is exceptionally unhelpful. But as long as there is a human being with a whistle in the middle of the pitch, this circular debate will go on eating its own tail.
What January needs to deliver
Some stomach for the relegation fight from the bottom three. Hull and Swansea, in the midst of the customary new year managerial upheaval, currently look in no state to stage a great escape. Sunderland have pedigree for that sort of thing, of course, but there"s a reason why they have so much practice. All three will be hoping for Crystal Palace to continue their slump, regardless of the Sam Allardyce Effect.
Adam Hurrey analyses the language of football. You can follow him on Twitter: @FootballCliches.
Source: http://www.espnfc.us/english-premier-league/23/blog/post/3032116/chelsea-and-zlatan-ibrahimovic-were-the-big-winners-in-december-but-swansea-city-and-referees-lost
