Team of the Week:

Howard (Everton)

Johnson (Liverpool) Coloccini (Newcastle) Sakho (Liverpool) Gibbs (Arsenal)

Sidwell (Fulham) Fer (Norwich) Assaidi (Stoke)

Berbatov (Fulham) Jerome (Palace) Schurrle (Chelsea)

Hero of the Week:

Assaidi or Berbatov have to go down as heroes this week after their decisive displays resulted in wins for their respective teams. Assaidi came off the bench to score a fantastic goal in the 90th minute to give Stoke a 3-2 victory over Chelsea. It’s the first time Stoke have beaten Chelsea in 10 attempts and will certainly it will haunt Mourinho for a few weeks. Assaidi joined Stoke on loan from Liverpool in August after struggling to get into Brendan Roger’s team after arriving from Herenveen the previous year. With the flair, pace, confidence and finishing he showed in the game, he most definitely would have caught Roger’s eye. He showed great pace, trickery, eye for goal, confidence, and finishing sending the Britannia Stadium wild, however I couldn’t actually see if Mark Hughes did in fact smile – why change the habit of a lifetime even if meant beating Jose’s Chelsea?

Berbatov was also the hero for Fulham during a much needed win at home to Villa. It’s been a big week for the Cottagers after the sacking of Martin Jol and the appointment of his assistant Rene Maulensteen. The former Manchester United assistant seems to have shifted the mood around the club and definitely got Berbatov into gear despite rumours the Bulgarian wants out. Berbatov was his elegant self with great touch, visions and technique that seems to give him the ability to bring the game into slow motion. He set up the opener and scored the second from the spot with typical coolness. It was a massive win for Fulham after a below average start despite such quality in their squad. It’s always important for a new manager to get off to a positive start and with the help of Berbatov, Maulensteen will hope it continues.

Nipple of the Week:

Sorry to say it and I’m sure he’ll be able to turn it around but nipple of the week is David Moyes. I still think he’ll prove to be a success and I think this season was always going to be a struggle but losing at Old Trafford two games in a row in pretty mental. You think he would have learned from the Everton defeat that his team cannot and I mean CANNOT fail to recover from that. Sir Alex’s teams always responded to bad games. It was a blow for them to lose Rooney for this game and forced to bring RVP into the starting line-up ahead of schedule but they still shouldn’t be losing these games. They simply aren’t scoring enough goals, there seems to be no link between midfield and attack. You can’t put it down to not having decent strikers because they have quality in depth but in terms of creativity in midfield they only have Kagawa with any pedigree as Cleverley is still in development as well as Januzaj. Money certainly needs to be spent in January as they can’t afford to miss out on the top four, that’s unthinkable.