The Big Heroes And Zeros Of The Week: Southampton And Stoke City Stars Feature

This week, the top four played against each other and it produced some exciting football. Arsenal hosted Leicester City with Danny Welbeck scoring a last-minute winner. Manchester City faced Tottenham Hotspur with Spurs keeping up their title chase with a 2-1 victory. Sunderland earned a well-fought victory over Manchester United and Liverpool thrashed Aston Villa 6-0. Chelsea produced their best performance of the season with a 5-1 victory over Newcastle leaving the north-east club in the relegation zone.

But who were the heroes and zeroes of this week?

Our first hero this week was Southampton goalkeeper Fraser Forster. Southamton have now got five wins in six games and Fraser Forster has kept a clean sheet in all of them. The England goalkeeper was a rock for The Saints against Swansea this week. Forster will be hoping with his current form he could become England’s number one in the future.

Another hero was Sunderland captain John O’Shea. The former Manchester United defender got one over his old team on Saturday as Sunderland won 2-1 and it was a good performance from the team trying to avoid relegation. A problem for any team trying to avoid relation is that they don’t have many leaders in their team, for Sunderland this isn’t an issue. O’Shea is experienced and is solid at the back.

The next hero is Stoke’s new signing Giannelli Imbula. The midfielder cost Stoke a record-breaking fee £18.3m and he made a debut player’s dream of. Imbula was creative in attack and resilient in defence and scored a fantastic goal on his debut. It was an excellent long-range finish and the former Porto player looks like he could be an important signing for Mark Hughes’ team.

This week did feature some poor performances.

The first zero is Manchester City defender Nicolas Otamendi. The Argentine hasn’t shown he is worth his price tag so far. Man City paid £32.5 million for him, which is a lot for a defender and for that price you would expect solid defensive performances – something Otamendi hasn’t produced this season. Against Spurs Otamendi didn’t look confident at all, you could feel Spurs were looking to capitalise on that and Christian Eriksen did that as he slid the ball through his legs and scored the winning goal.

Another zero this week is Aston Villa defender Joleon Lescott. The former Man City player has a shocking performance against Liverpool and after the game Lescott also apologised for “the team’s lack of commitment”. “I’m not one for tweeting after games whether it’s a good, bad or indifferent result,” said Lescott. “But I would like to apologise for the performance today, personally and collectively”, tweeted Lescott.

Lescott also apologised for tweeting a picture of an expensive Mercedes car after the 6-0 thrashing against Liverpool. The Villa defender claimed it was “accidental” and sent from his phone in his pocket while he was driving.