Beefy Bites: Wolves gobble up an opportunity, Sheffield United close a gap and Atalanta have a gem
The FA Cup dominated the weekend but Plymouth’s win over Liverpool wasn’t the only surprise
Well, wasn’t that just a solid weekend of football? Well done, everybody. Here’s your Monday round-up.
Liverpool went out of the FA Cup against Plymouth Argyle but Manchester City dug themselves out of a hole to avoid the same fate at Leyton Orient. There weren’t many players who had a better game in the Fourth Round than Morgan Rogers of Aston Villa.
Speaking of individual performances, there was a noteworthy one in Serie A over the weekend. Mateo Retegui scored four times to become the third player in Europe’s so-called Big Five leagues to reach twenty goals.
Wolves look to the FA Cup for a survival springboard
Blackburn Rovers v Wolverhampton Wanderers might not have been the headline act of FA Cup Fourth Round weekend but it was the tie most conveniently timed for me to watch, so watch it I did. Moving it to 12.30pm on Sunday just to be hidden away on BBC iPlayer is something that needs to be reconsidered – it surely had an effect on the attendance at Ewood Park – but it worked out nicely enough for me.
Dom Hyam’s header for Blackburn was wrongly disallowed before a quickfire Wolves double settled the tie in the first half. The first goal was fortunate. João Gomes’ shot squeezed through Rovers goalkeeper Balázs Tóth after the hosts had coughed up possession while playing out from the back.
Matheus Cunha blasted the second across Tóth and into the bottom corner to make it 2-0 almost from the restart and the scoreline never seemed likely to change at any point in the second half.
Vítor Pereira will be eager that a straightforward win over a competitive Championship side will give Wolves some momentum in the Premier League relegation battle. They lost four of their last five in the league but last weekend’s win against Aston Villa showed much more bite and took them out of the drop zone.
The FA Cup gets serious
There are still a couple of FA Cup Fourth Round ties to be played but there’s already been plenty to enjoy. Plymouth Argyle knocked out Premier League leaders Liverpool with a 1-0 win at Home Park on Sunday before Aston Villa saw off Tottenham Hotspur to reach the Fifth Round for the first time in a decade.
In Saturday’s games, there were wins for Brighton & Hove Albion and Newcastle United, who overcame a venomous Tomoki Iwata strike to knock out Birmingham City. AFC Bournemouth consigned Goodison Park to FA Cup history by beating Everton, while Manchester City, Fulham and Ipswich Town avoided upsets.
Preston North End and Cardiff City won by penalty shoot-out, Burnley beat Premier League strugglers Southampton, and Leeds United lost at home to Millwall in one of the round’s more surprising results.
Friday night’s tie sent Leicester City to Manchester United, where the Red Devils took advantage of Harry Maguire’s winning header from a position that was offside in any era and by any definition, and should have been flagged as such by any assistant referee.
Blades take advantage but Sunderland fall short
With Leeds and Burnley in action elsewhere, Sheffield United and Sunderland made up their games in hand at the top of the Championship.
The Blades slashed the gap at the top to a mere two points by beating Portsmouth at Bramall Lane. Gus Hamer opened the scoring with a typically nifty curled finish before Conor Ogilvie equalised for Pompey. Jesurun Rak-Sakyi won the game in the second half. Portsmouth’s expected goals total was higher than three and most of that was from two missed sitters.
Sunderland stay fourth after a 2-2 draw at home against Watford, and they needed a late Dennis Cirkin equaliser to get even that. Cirkin finished sharply to make it 2-2 after Tom Dele-Bashiru’s penalty cancelled out Luke O’Nien’s opener and Imran Louza put the Hornets in front with a howitzer.
There will be a full programme of midweek fixtures to help shake the top four out even further and there’s not a tap-in among them.
Retegui hits twenty
Mateo Retegui, the latest in a long and proud history of Oriundi, scored four goals in Atalanta’s dismantling of Hellas Verona on Saturday to take his tally for the season to twenty.
In fact, he scored four goals in 35 minutes – a mix of scrappy striker’s goals and the sort of finishes from the edge of the box that seem so easy for players at the top of the game and the height of their confidence. Atalanta might be a handful of points off the top but their leading marksman is five goals clear of Fiorentina’s Moise Kean in the Capocannoniere stakes.
Retegui is flying. His 20 goals make a mockery of an xG of 11.6 for the season. He’s scoring at a rate of 1.37 goals per 90 minutes. The Italy international is in the form of his life by a massive distance and is responsible for more than one in three of La Dea’s goals in 2024/25 so far.
Spoils shared in Spain
It’s getting good and tasty in La Liga, where the big game of the weekend was the Madrid derby between the top two. Real Madrid had to come from a goal down to draw at home against Atletico Madrid, allowing Barcelona to gain ground on them both in the Sunday evening fixture.
Julián Alvarez’s gorgeous Panenka gave the visitors the lead from the penalty spot ten minutes before half time at the Bernabeu. Kylian Mbappé equalised five minutes after it, sweeping in a loose ball from ten yards.
It wasn’t a thriller – neither team’s xG reached two goals – but the home side had nine shots on target in search of a vital home win.
Real now have 50 points, Atleti 49, and Barcelona 48. Barcelona have the best goal difference by miles, too. It’s all to play for, as they say.
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