The Weekend Awards: Parker, Harper, Liverpool and Birmingham among this week's winners
The Premier League is back, and with it the thrills, spills and talking points that are all brought together in MirrorFootball's Weekend Awards. Karl Sears gives you the lowdown.
Finish of the week: The key to winning our 'Finish of the week' award is composure. It's not necessarily given to the player who scores the best goal, but to the coolest operator when given a goal-scoring opportunity. Sometimes though, both of these things combine and we get Scott Parker 's consolation effort against Chelsea. In the 84th minute, Petr Cech's punch from Mark Noble's corner kick fell straight to Parker. His first-time lob from the edge of the box looped over the crowded penalty area and into the goal, and in doing so ticked all of our boxes.
Honorable mentions: Alex Song and Dimitar Berbatov
Save of the weekend: A tough one. There were many admirable stops at crucial times from the Premier League's keepers this weekend, but the winner is Steve Harper for his double save in the early stages of the game against Blackpool. He did well to close down the angle and block DJ Campbell's one-on-one effort, then did even better by having the awareness to locate the ball and dive at full stretch to smother Brett Ormerod's effort from the rebound.
Honorable mentions: Pepe Reina and Simon Mignolet
The 'Foot like a Traction Engine' Award: There's no point masking it, there were a pitifully small amount of contenders for this award. There were no netbusters, screamers or piledrivers from outside of the box, no hit-and-hope wondergoals from an inordinate distance, not even a well-hit strike that stood out from the crowd. So, for the simple reason that there was nothing better, Didier Drogba wins it for the free-kick which led to Chelsea's second goal. It was was a decent hit which Robert Green spilled, but he's hit many better before, and he'll hit many better in the future.
The 'Oh dear ref' Award: Stuart Attwell, you've done it again! Gary Cahill's tackle on Marouane Chamakh was maybe a little ill-advised, but was it dangerous enough to receive a straight red card? To Chamakh's credit he didn't make a meal of the challenge and feign injury. But perhaps all the media coverage and criticism of hard-tackling teams, and the calls in the past by Arsene Wenger to protect skill players, played on Attwell's mind a little and he was too eager to pull out the the red card. The decision was made more controversial by Attwell not awarding Bolton a free kick just a few moments before.
The 'Maybe we should have seen that one coming' Award: This one goes to Birmingham 0-0 Liverpool . Past results are not always a good indicator of how games will pan out, but a quick look at the history books will tell you that the last six league meetings between the two teams had been draws. Now make that seven. Liverpool, despite struggling last season, had one of the league's meanest defences and Birmingham are notoriously hard to break down at St Andrews. A 0-0 was always on the cards.
The 'Most boring game of the weekend' Award (as decided by the Match Of The Day panel): Wigan versus Sunderland always looked as though it could take this honour even before a ball was kicked, so it was essential the game had a large amount of controversy or razzmatazz to boost it up a couple of slots. It never did. So Wigan and Sunderland share this award.
The 'Well played, mate' Award': If a promoted team who are operating on a tight budget are going to do well, their goalkeeper is going to be required to keep them in a few games. Blackpool's Matthew Gilks ' performance can only be described as 'match-winning'. He made save after save to deny Newcastle their second home win of the season. The best was a finger-tip, one-on-one save from Joey Barton, but in truth any one of about three stops could have been deemed as his best.
Honorable mention: Michael Essien and Moussa Dembele
The Captain Mainwaring 'You Stupid Boy' Award: I probably could have made this award into a 'Top 10' piece in its own right this weekend, with an array of misses, goalkeeping blunders and defensive errors to sift through. Just days after telling the world that he was not a dirty player, Lee Cattermole would have hoped that he could back up his statement by having a controlled, dominant and (mostly importantly) controversy-free game against Wigan. However, 22 minutes and two justified bookings into the match, he was trudging off with his second red card of a season that's only four games old. Cattermole will perhaps find some solace that Wolves' Karl Henry is taking some of the glare of his latest sending off incident.
Honorable mention: Robert Green and Joe Hart/Kolo Toure
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