Chris Kamara reflects on Chelsea's 3-1 win over Man Utd, Emmanuel Adebayor's form and the crucial penalty awarded to Liverpool against Aston Villa.
Tim Sherwood has learnt a thing or two from Harry Redknapp...
KAMMY SAYS: Emmanuel Adebayor scored his sixth goal in five Premier League games to help Spurs beat Swansea.
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Tim Sherwood, since he's come in, has got him in the team and performing. You can tell Sherwood has been around Harry Redknapp because that's one of Harry's traits: getting a player who is discarded from the team and who has people questioning whether he's good enough firing. Adebayor was discarded by Andre Villas-Boas but Tim's brought him back in, given him confidence and it's paying dividends.
Sherwood has also put a few youngsters into the team. The people who gave him the opportunity - Daniel Levy and the owners - at this moment in time will be delighted. They couldn't have asked for any more since they gave him the job and they'll be hoping it can continue.
Palace fans are right behind boss Tony Pulis and his methods
KAMMY SAYS: I was at Crystal Palace on Saturday and Tony Pulis said to me his team, on paper, are nowhere near the best in the league but with organisation they can get results. The crowd stuck with them during their 1-0 win over Stoke, too, and that was crucial. Palace didn't have a shot on target in the first 45 minutes but there was no jeering, the crowd just cheered them all the way through. Palace nicked their goal, sat back and tried to catch Stoke on the break and it worked. Sometimes as a manager you need to educate the crowd when you play like that at home but you don't have to do that at Palace. There's an acceptance that 'we're in the Premier League, we're enjoying it and we've got someone in charge who is doing his best to try and save us from going down so let's give him as much support as possible'.
The Stoke fans also deserve a mention. When their old boss Pulis came out at the end of the game, they stood to a man and applauded him for his efforts. It was nice to see. There was no animosity between them; the fans accept what a good job he did while he was at Stoke and, as long as they are safe, they'll be hoping Pulis and Palace stay up.
Liverpool's penalty is up for debate - but Brad Guzan shouldn't have dived in
KAMMY SAYS: We slowed down the Luis Suarez penalty incident on
Goals on Sunday and there was slight contact between Villa's Brad Guzan and the Liverpool striker. The momentum from the goalkeeper, even though he was trying to put the brakes on, was always going to take him into Suarez and it was one of those which, from the ref's angle, looked like a penalty. When Suarez is involved it's always going to be controversial and I'm not sure if there would have been the same furore if it had been someone else. But, as you tell every defender, don't go to ground unless you're 100 per cent certain of getting the ball because if you make contact with the man - even slight contact - you could give away a penalty.
We had Stuart Pearce and Roberto Di Matteo - experienced football people - on the sofa on
Goals on Sunday and they said that it could have gone either way - but Guzan gave the ref a decision to make.
Aston Villa's team are built to counter-attack
KAMMY SAYS: During
Goals on Sunday we got some Twitter questions from Villa fans saying how come they can play like that away from home but not at Villa Park? Well, counter-attacking football seems to suit them. Maybe they should take a leaf out of Tony Pulis' book and sit back and defend at home and then attack once the opposition have committed themselves? That's probably not what the Villa fans want to see because they want to see their team going for it at Villa Park. But when teams come to Villa Park they are sitting deep and there's nowhere for Gabriel Agbonlahor and Christian Benteke to make runs.
They showed in their 2-2 draw with Liverpool, though, that they have players capable of making inroads into one of the best teams in the league.
