After 5 weeks it looks like this is a wide open premier league.

City and Mancini look burdened by the weight of expectation and pretty average compared to last year, especially at keeping goals out.

United are having troubles keeping defenders healthy, which somewhat balances out adding quality at the other end in van Persie and Kagawa. Johnny Evans is certainly not in the same stratosphere as Vidic.

Chelsea have showed signs of vulnerability in defence but good in attack, with the notable exception of their £50m striker. They need to get Lukaku back from his loan and ditch Torres. They'll probably end up selling Torres and paying £90m for Falcao instead.

Arsenal look good but will need to show that, unlike recent seasons, they can maintain their recent form for most rather than some of it.

Spurs have had a predictably slow start to the season getting used to a new manager and new players, but haven't lost in 6 games now. AVB appears to be taking a similar approach to Carroll with Wilson, playing conservatively and trying to minimize mistakes while the team gets used to each other. They've looked better when they've been more attacking, however, but with the exception of an arguably unjust draw against a very good Lazio we've won our last few games and have only played badly once this season.

Liverpool are having a similar season to last and are generally playing better than the result would suggest, but lacking consistency.

Everton appear to be this season's Newcastle while Newcastle should still be in the mix, despite struggling a little more than last year.

It's shaping up to be a good season yet again.

For a tournament that everyone blasted Liverpool winning last year there were some competitive matches featuring the some of the world's best players. Funny enough, Liverpool played a very young squad. City and Villa went after it, as did Newcastle and United (for the most part, a good balance of reserves and starters).

Hope it lasts into the later rounds.

It was nice to see Liverpool beat a BPL team, even if it wasnt within league play.

A question for those of you in the US: how do you guys watch premier league games? Are you able to watch all games on TV or is it necessary, as it is in the UK, to employ hooky methods. Over here, depending on which team you support, you get between about 6 and 15 live matches, spread between 2 different subscription providers. Any other games you either have to attend or watch via illegal streams.

Fox Soccer channel actually does pretty good, and ESPN2 shows some matches, too. You can also get Fox Soccer Plus for even more games. Between those three, most of the major teams are covered, but for FSC and FS+, you're probably forking out $20 a month or more. Seems like ESPN handles the early Saturday matches (12:30 kickoff), FSC and FSplus each show one of the 3:00 matches, FSC shows the late game, then they each show a couple of the other 3:00 matches later in the day. Sundays, between FSC and FSplus, we get most of the games, usually the ones involving the bigger teams.

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Rzzzzz...

Fox sports, espn or illegal streams. I have a site I usse that shows basically every game. just synch it and attach the laptop to the tv

I usually go down to a good local football pub that 99% of the time has Liverpool on live, or on a 1 or 2 hour delay. If I lack the motivation or funds to head down I just type "Liverpool stream" into the twitter search, and viola!

Cheers. Si, I take the same approach that you do. The quality now is generally very good so it really does make paying £40 extra a month for Sky and ESPN and still getting only about a third of the matches hard to justify. I get to spend a bit of that money on NFL Gamepass instead.

From what Peaches says you guys have better access to games on TV, which doesn't surprise me.

I'll be interested in hearing the details, but John Terry appears to have gotten off pretty lightly at first glance. 4 games and a weeks wage fine? You can get 3 games for a bad tackle. I'm sure Suarez will feel a bit hard done by.

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what Chelsea does about this. They recently banned a fan for life for racially abusing Drogba and make a lot of noise about having zero tolerance of racism so I'd expect Terry to have played his last game as captain at the very least.

Christ on a bike.

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Rzzzzz...

Honestly, the COC is only called the Mickey Mouse Cup if that fan's team is knocked out.

Alright, now that I've had time to let it sink in, I'm utterly FURIOUS with Terry and the FA. What a F***ing sham. Seriously. Complete bollocks to punish one player who admitted what he did and tried to offer explanation, even when no video or audio evidence was available, with an 8-match ban, then punish another player who very clearly called a player a 'black c**t' with video evidence to prove it, with a 4 match ban even after he refused to plead guilty.

I'm done this season, i think. I can't be arsed watching anymore.

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Rzzzzz...

It's pretty poor alright.

The FA seem to be absolutely incapable of making a good decision. Ever.

For Liverpool fans (Suarez, peaches)

What do you think of Sterling, Suso and now Wisdom, Yesil, Assaidi, Pacheco, even Sinclair?

Sterling is top-drawer. Fantastic wee player.

Suso impressed me so far.

Yesil I haven't seen much, so I can't give an accurate assessment

Assaidi is fast. REALLY fast. good skill and I think should be working his way into the first team sooner rather than later.

Pacheco I've always rated as a youngster, not sure how well he'll do in the first team though. Doesn't hurt to have another striking option around though.

Haven't seen sinclair

Wisdom is a puzzler to me. He's looked fantastic at times and seems to disappear at other times. I'll wait and see on him.

Future looks very bright with these young lads, though.

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Rzzzzz...

I pretty much agree with everything said here. I haven't seen much of Yesil either, but if Borini's dip in form continues who do you reckon gets the call up? Yesil? Assaidi out wide and move Suarez to the center?

I watch via streams and games on ESPN3 (I don't have cable TV of any kind). I will usually download a game or two the day after they are played and then I'll also snatch Match Of The Day. My roommate and I watch that every week. 80 minutes and it gives you extended highlights for all the days matches. A must watch for me...Their analysis is pretty interesting too.

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Man up, stand in line.

Wow. What an intense game of football that was.

Go AVB! Come On You Spurs!

Well done Spurs. Exposed Man Ure's problems for all to see.

Livepool were excellent today save for two defensive mistakes, both coming when then game was already put to bed.

Chelsea are the team to beat this season. Incredible squad they've put together.

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Rzzzzz...

I agree about Chelsea being the team to beat. I don't think anyone else is guaranteed to finish in the top 4 at this stage.

It's been a good week and a half for Liverpool, and that coming after a controversial loss to United too.

I'm looking forward to Match of the Day now, especially so that I can see 'Arry try to take the credit for the win today. The Sun will no doubt be finding some way to say that by letting United back into the game that AVB has 3 games to save his job as well.

Better by Liverpool... but still frail in the back. Depsite giving up two goals well after the game was settled, they looked vulnerable for decent stretches. Still, this match belonged to Suarez, and it wasnt just the hat trick. his movement was fantastic and kept Norwich pinned back, really allowed the rest of group to move forward.

Great job by Spurs, but what a game. Spurs the faster, more incisive team up until the 60th minute. United really pushed Spurs all over their defensive third those last 30 minutes. the fact they didnt equalize is almost a mystery. Van Persies left footed miss was a shocker.

Chelsea dont look as strong as their point total indicates. Arsenal deserved better from the game, and Terry was constantly out of sorts dealing with Girouds runs. If they dont find help in that cback position I can see them starting to drop. Not out of the top four, but maybe out of the top spot.

The team that needs to be given some due right now is Everton. Simply winning matches.