Blackburn 1-0 Everton, Big Nog out of UFC 119

After all the pre-season talk of being potential dark-horses this year, Everton began the new Premier League season with a disappointing defeat against Blackburn Rovers.

Ewood Park has become a difficult place to pick up points since ‘Big’ (which is just a nice way of saying fat) Sam Allardyce rolled into town with his barbaric brand of percentage football. Blackburn only lost something like three home games last season, but Everton were so poor that it makes it difficult to simply put this one down to a one-off stumble in the face of difficult opposition.

Much of the praise that is heaped on David Moyes and his players is well-deserved. We have a good team who work hard for each other and, more often than not, play with some style. However, such are the gaping holes in certain areas of the pitch that I can’t help but feel as though a lot of Evertonians think we’re a lot better than we actually are.

Many blues have been boldly predicting Champions League qualification, pointing to the superb run Everton went on during the second-half of last season as evidence that Moyes finally has a squad good enough to compete at the top-end of the table. Factor in the manager finally having the majority of his players available to him after various long-term injuries, as well as there being no added Europa League fixtures to deal with, and it’s easy to see why people are feeling so optimistic.

Unfortunately though, things are rarely as easy as they first appear in football. Going on a great run of form when your season is effectively dead and buried anyway and there’s no real pressure or expectation from the fans or media is all well and good, but it means very little if you can’t repeat the feat when there are prizes to be won. Losing away from home on the opening day of the season is hardly an indication that a team is doomed to fail, but there were a number of issues evident on Saturday that need to be addressed.

Everton’s biggest problem lies in the final third, where a total lack of movement from the forwards prevents space being opened up for the midfield to attack. Louis Saha and Tim Cahill are useful players in their own ways, but as a pair they seem more interested in contesting individual battles with centre-halves than linking with the midfield or running the channels to drag defenders out of position.

It remains to be seen whether or not Jermaine Beckford is going to cut it in the Premier League or if Yakubu even has a future at Everton, but at this point it looks as though Moyes is going to have to find someone better to lead the line. Money is clearly in short supply so the only option is to move on the likes of Yakubu and Joseph Yobo - two big earners who really shouldn’t be at the club if the manager doesn’t rate them as good enough for the bench.

Speaking of the bench, where was Seamus Coleman? The lad has excelled whenever given a chance in the first team and featured in every pre-season fixture. Considering Everton’s total lack of attacking pace, and the fact Johnny Heitinga was on the bench, it seems bizarre that Moyes felt the need to include Tony Hibbert among his substitutes at Coleman’s expense.

It’s fairly obvious that Everton can’t afford to buy Landon Donovan or any other winger of note to play on the right of midfield, which makes having Coleman over-lapping one of our many centre midfielders that get stuck out wide seem like a no-brainer. Unfortunately Moyes appears to value shoe-horning class prefect Phil Neville into the side above all else.

The goal itself was a freak. As much as I don’t rate Tim ‘lead boots’ Howard it would be stupid to call his comical dropping of a standard catch anything other than a one-off that could have happened to anyone. The American doesn’t seem to let errors damage his confidence so hopefully this won’t lead to a run of poor form.

It’s difficult to say how big an impact Howard’s calamity goalkeeping had on the match. Kalinic’s goal certainly gave Allardyce the invitation he craves to have his team sit back and smash the ball as hard and far as possible, but given how much Everton dominated possession there’s little excuse for not being able to carve out a couple of chances against limited opposition.

Moyes made the changes you’d expect when chasing a game: Beckford came on for the obligatory ten minutes of 4-4-2, Cahill moved to the right of midfield because taking him off is apparently incomprehensible, and Diniyar Bilyaletdinov was given fifteen minutes to try and score a screamer. Jack Rodwell also got on the pitch but didn’t have much time to make an impact.

Everton’s only real effort on goal came from a Phil Jagielka piledriver in the dying minutes, although Beckford did manage to drag a shot about twenty yards wide on the turn. Blackburn didn’t do much themselves but still looked the more likely to add to the scoring with on-loan forward Mame Biram Diouf looking particularly dangerous after replacing Kalinic.

A convincing performance is a must in Everton’s next game at home to Wolves on Saturday. Saha deserves to be dropped and Leon Osman has no business playing wide-right. It’ll be interesting to see whether Rodwell comes into the side at the expense of the blatantly unfit Marouane Fellaini (who was all over the place at times on Saturday), though it seems more likely that the only change will be Bilyaletdinov coming in for Osman.

In other news, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira has pulled out of his UFC 119 main-event rematch with Frank Mir, citing long-standing hip and knee injuries which require surgery. Former Pride GP winner Mirko ‘Cro Cop’ Filipovic has agreed to step in and face Mir in the card’s headline bout.

As a big Cro Cop fan who can’t stand Frank Mir I’m really hoping to see a vintage Filipovic performance, but even in his recent win over Pat Barry the Croatian Jack Bauer looked a shadow of the man who terrorised heavyweights in Japan. It’d be sweet to see Mir be the first to suffer a classic Cro Cop left high-kick knockout in a UFC ring though, even if it is pretty unlikely.

UFC 117, Arteta signs new deal

The surprises have been coming thick and fast in MMA throughout 2010, and last night the main event of UFC 117: Silva vs. Sonnen came within half a round of topping the lot.

Outspoken All-American wrestler Chael Sonnen made good on almost every threat he made towards Anderson Silva during the protracted build-up to last night’s middleweight title bout, except the most important of all: that he would take the champion’s belt.

Sonnen used his elite wrestling and suffocating top-control to keep ‘The Spider’ on his back for the majority of all four and a half rounds, only for Silva to prevent one of the biggest upsets in UFC history by submitting the challenger with a triangle choke at 3:10 of the fifth and final round. Sonnen had dominated virtually every minute of the fight up until that point, even getting the better of Silva in stand up exchanges on several occasions, but once again the Oregon-native’s poor submission defence cost him at the death.

From the opening bell Sonnen took the fight to Silva; boldly refusing to show any respect for the champion’s vaunted muay-thai skills as he searched for takedowns. Sonnen displayed solid striking himself as he rocked Silva with a straight-left hand, with which he became the first man to visibly hurt Silva during his UFC run.

Much of Sonnen’s pre-fight rhetoric centred around forcing Silva to leave his comfort zone and engage from bell to bell, and that was certainly the case as he got in the champion’s face from the opening seconds of each round, refusing him the opportunity to feel his way into the bout or gauge striking distance.

Despite appearing to have absorbed far more damage than Silva after leaving the Octagon, Sonnen managed to land 298 strikes during the 23 minutes and 10 seconds of the fight – an MMA record. Silva dropped Sonnen with a hard elbow and looked to mount early in the fourth, but even then the Team Quest wrestler was able to demonstrate his superior grappling by reversing position and again riding out the round on top.

The moment Silva lost his footing at the start of the fifth round and again allowed Sonnen to pin his back to the mat, it seemed all hope was lost for the widely-regarded pound-for-pound king. Sonnen continued to rain down punches on his battered foe, apparently unconcerned with the position which Silva was working his legs into.

Having secured wrist-control and shifted his long legs up towards Sonnen’s shoulders, Anderson Silva slapped on a triangle followed by an armbar to coax a submission out of the no.1 contender at 3:10 of round five. Initially there was some debate over whether or not Sonnen had tapped, but replays showed that referee Josh Rosenthal had made the right call and Silva extended his record-breaking UFC run to 12-0.

In the wake of the fight Silva spoke of how a rib injury sustained in the week before UFC 117 affected his performance on the night, and given the champion’s nervous disposition upon entering the cage and complete lack of any takedown defence it isn’t difficult to believe him. ‘The Spider’ looked out of sorts from the opening bell and failed to demonstrate any of the glittering stand-up offence that has defined his dominance over the UFC’s 185lbs division.

Maybe Silva was injured, but it’s also entirely possible that a wrestling juggernaut like Sonnen could dominate the middle-weight champion even without bruised ribs. At 35 years old Anderson Silva could well be starting to slow down, and only a re-match will confirm whether or not Sonnen has the champion’s number.

If Silva vs. Sonnen taught us anything it’s that beating ‘The Spider’ takes three things: world-class wrestling, a willingness to fearlessly absorb strikes in search of takedowns, and, perhaps most importantly, a slice of good fortune. Chael Sonnen was all out of luck on Saturday night.

MMA websites and message boards are predictably filling up with talk of how Sonnen’s manhandling of Silva proves that the much-discussed super-fight between the middleweight champion and welterweight ruler Georges ‘Rush’ St-Pierre would follow the same pattern, only with GSP having the submission defence to finish the job. I disagree.

Regardless of whether Sonnen’s dominance was a result of injury or subpar takedown defence, of equal importance was the fact that he is an enormous middleweight who showed absolutely no respect for Silva’s knockout power. While I believe too much is made of GSP’s TKO loss to Matt Serra in terms of judging his chin, there’s no way he would be willing to recklessly storm into the pocket like Sonnen did. Add to that doubts over whether GSP, a natural at 170lbs, would have the size to ragdoll Silva at middleweight, and I don’t think there’s reason to suggest that St-Pierre is a sure bet to squash ‘The Spider’.

Elsewhere on the card John Fitch scored his second UFC win over Thiago ‘Pitbull’ Alves with a unanimous decision victory. Fitch shutdown the Brazilian muay-thai artist throughout the three rounds and cemented his position as the undisputed #2 welterweight in the world. It remains to be seen if Fitch will face the winner of GSP vs. Josh Koscheck in December for the 170lbs title, or if a no.1 contender match with whoever comes out on top between Jake Shields and Martin Kampmann is next for the American Kickboxing Academy standout.

One thing that is certain is that Junior Dos Santos will face the winner of Brock Lesnar and Cain Velasquez’s heavyweight title tilt in October. Dos Santos battered game veteran Roy Nelson for three solid rounds, showing outstanding boxing and takedown defence en route to a landslide decision victory over the durable ‘Ultimate Fighter’ champion.

Clay Guida re-established himself in the lightweight division with a submission victory over top prospect Rafael Dos Anjos. The Brazilian appeared to be ahead on the scorecards only for a broken jaw suffered in the opening round to force him to tap out while caught against the cage during round three.

Matt Hughes shared submission of the night honours with Anderson Silva after causing Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt Ricardo Almeida to pass out from a never before seen front headlock choke. The win re-affirms Hughes’ relevance in the welterweight division after subpar showings in his last two outings against Matt Serra and Renzo Gracie.

There was good news for Everton fans on Saturday as Mikel Arteta somewhat surprisingly signed a new five year contract. The deal, worth a reported £75,000 a-week, will make Arteta the highest earner in the club’s history. The club did well to break the news on the same day that the team were comfortably beaten by the first decent side they’ve faced in pre-season, falling 2-0 away to Steve McLaren’s Wolfsburg.